A Study Of Cultural Hybridity In Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri(1967-),the Pulitzer Prize winner in 2000,is one of the most promising South-Asian American writers in the contemporary literary world,and most of her works focus on exploring the living state of Indian ethnic groups in the heterogeneous cultural environment.Her debut novel,The Namesake(2003),portrays distinctive life experience and feelings of Indian immigrants in the context of multi-cultural differences.While current researchers at home and abroad mainly investigate this novel in perspectives of diaspora,identity and feminism,there still remains large space for exploring the cultural phenomena in the novel.Based on postcolonial theorist Homi Baba's theory of hybridity,this paper analyzes cultural hybridity in aspects of cultural carriers,cultural traditions and cultural identities with regards to the novel's narrative level of space,time and character to discuss the resisting cultural hegemony for ethnic groups and the possibility of multicultural coexistence.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One begins with a brief introduction to Jhumpa Lahiri and The Namesake,literature review of domestic and foreign researches on the work,the theoretical base of hybridity and thesis statement.Chapter Two discusses the hybridity of cultural carriers across space which is manifested by the negotiation of multinational languages and diverse culinary cultures.Chapter Three elucidates the hybridity of cultural traditions through time identified in the compromise of naming traditions and interaction of literary traditions.Chapter Four probes the hybridity of cultural identity in the character's level,which is reflected in the process of two Indian immigrant generations who get over the dilemma of losing cultural root and the confusion of bicultural identity to form hybrid identity.Chapter Five concludes whole thesis and discloses that through probing cultural hybridity,this thesis discusses the trend of multicultural negotiation and integration with attempts of ethnic groups' resistance against total assimilation of mainstream culture and revels the idea of harmonious coexistence of multi-cultures conveyed by Lahiri's work.