Memory as a Diasporic Element in Anita Rau Badami’s Tamarind Mem

Abstract

This paper deals with mutability of memory as a diasporic tool in Anita Rau Badami’s Tamarind Mem. Anita Rau Badami is an Indo-Canadian Diaspora writer. Her critically acclaimed first novel Tamarind Mem (1996) explores the sweet-sour nostalgic confrontation of mother-daughter relationship through mutability of memory while focusing on Indian domestic life and life in Canada. The relation of diaspora and memory contains important critical and may be even subversive potentials. Memory can transcend the territorial logic of dispersion and return and emerge as competing source of diasporic identity. In diaspora literature memory is a performative, figurative process.