Disruption Of First- And Second-Generation Immigrants In Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress Of Spices

Abstract

In the immigrant literature, the word first generation means the people who have actually immigrated to a host country. On the other hand, the secondgeneration Diaspora usually means the children who are born to the immigrant parents in a host country. The first-generation immigrant caught between two worlds, the native land and the immigrated. The characters, both liberated and trapped by cultural changes, struggle to carve out an identity of their own. Second-generation immigrant lives are fraught with tension and uneasiness while following their parents lives as well asthe lives of their friends, their peers, and their fellow compatriots. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the Indian author, focuses on the roles of women, mostly immigrant women, living in India and America. She conveys their struggle at the time of regulating themselves to the new ways of life while confronting the culture and tradition that strongly tie them up. This paper attempts to understand the first and second-generation Indian Diaspora in the views ofChitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Divakaruni’s fearless heroine Tilo. learns the secrets of spices and she becomes trained as a mistress of spices, she evokes the magical powers of the spices of her homeland to help her customers. These customers, mostly first or second generation immigrants, are struggling to adapt from their old world ideals to the unfamiliar and often unkind new world.Tilo is devoted to the art of healing for Indian immigrant.