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- Title
Ethnic Outsider as the Ultimate Insider: The Paradox of Verghese's "My Own Country."
- Authors
Srikanth, Rajini
- Abstract
This essay focuses on the element of ethnicity in Abraham Verghese's "My Own Country." The book does not offer an obvious parade of the experiences of a particular ethnic community: there is minimal portrayal of Indian American cultural practices such as food, marriage, religious worship, celebration of festivals, and language use; Verghese does not play informant or cultural guide. His is not the voice of the minority ethnic insider presenting his fellow-ethnics to the dominant majority group (except in a rather cursory way). However, he does not reject his ethnicity as an Indian American he recounts with fondness his attending Indian American social gatherings. The complexity of his self-positioning as insider in certain contexts, as outsider in others makes his narrative hard to categorize. To call it an account of an Indian American doctor would be to overemphasize ethnicity; yet to say that it is primarily an account of the experiences of a doctor who happens to be Indian American is also not entirely accurate. Ethnicity may be incidental but it is not insignificant to the narrative.
- Subjects
ESSAYS; MY Own Country (Book); VERGHESE, Abraham, 1955-; ETHNICITY; GROUP identity; CULTURAL fusion; MANNERS &; customs
- Publication
MELUS, 2004, Vol 29, Issue 3/4, p433
- ISSN
0163-755X
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.2307/4141866