Immigrant women and the quest for identity in Taos Amrouche's Jacinthe noire (1947) and Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine (1989

Abstract

This work undertakes a comparative study between Taos Amrouche's Jacinthe Noire and Bharati Mukherjee's Jasmine. Our main aim is to examine how the issues of gender and exile influence the lives of the protagonists, and consider their different strategies of resistance to dominant discourses. Through a thematic analysis of the two novels, we attempt to show that although the two female novelists come from different countries, Algeria and India, and use different languages, French and English, they share similarities related to feminist literature. We consider how Jacinthe Noire and Jasmine fit in as a response to the colonial and patriarchal practices of discriminating and oppressing the lives of indigenous women. These narratives constitute a site from which they can claim their rights, a site of resistance in the context of patriarchal and cultural oppression