Little Nationalities: Writing in English in the North-East
Authors :- Watitula Longkumer
Publication :- Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics Vol. 44, No. 2, Summer 2021 (Special Issue – Indian Writing in English: Perspectives on the Plural Nationspace)
This essay studies the narrative expressions in the fictional work of Easterine Kire’s When the River Sleeps. I look at some of the region’s common literary tropes, specifically the indigenous and ethnic representations, and examine how the multiple layers of linguistic expression and new narrative representation allow writers to engage with topics of oral and indigenous narrative. The essay brings the argument forward by addressing the problems of linguistic representation in the Indian postcolonial scholarship. The linguistic framework of writers like Salman Rushdie and Mitra Phukan and their idea of constructing “new Englishes” (Phukan 2013; Rushdie 1992) is adapted appropriately to work towards cultivating and maintaining a unique collective “Englishes”.