The Craving for an Identity in Meatless Days

Abstract

Postcolonial literature is an increasingly rich area of study in the new world scenario when the East and the West are trying more than ever to get closer across apparently insurmountable rifts. The trans-national muddled voices of the colonized states are to be heard distinctly now in English literature, more than ever, pointing at the widening gap between the margin and the centre. The English language, which is the largest legacy of colonization, is made to voice the predicament of the postcolonial experience. The severe feeling of inadequacy and estrangement, resulting in a loss of identity, is one of the prominent issues being addressed in the postcolonial literature. Sara Suleri in her Meatless Days boldly delineates the discomforts and inadequacies of belonging to and living in two cultures at the same time. Though Suleri’s father was a renowned Pakistani journalist and her mother was Welsh, still she could not help the feeling of being lost somewhere between the margin and the imperial centre.