FEMINIST AND ANTI- RACIST DISCOURSES IN HIMMANI BANNERJI’S “WIFE” AND “PAKI GO HOME”

Abstract

India and Canada have always been pluralistic societies which have assimilated several ethnicities. Whenever a new community conflates into the prevalent society, it has been marked with frictions and adjustments. These frictions along with nostalgia have become the central theme for diasporic writings. Indo-Canadian writers take their themes both from India and Canada. Himani Bannerji is an Indo–Canadian writer, sociologist, and philosopher from Kolkata. She was born in 1942 in West Bengal, India. She migrated to Canada in 1969 and has published two collections of poetry, A Separate Sky (1982) and doing time (1986), a children’s novel Coloured Pictures (1991), and several short stories. She is interested in feminist theory, gender and colonialism, class and race issues. She voices against all forms of domination, whether of gender, class or race. Bannerji’s works revolve around Marxist, feminist and anti-racist themes. This paper is an attempt to study the two poems, “wife” and ““PAKI GO HOME””, of Himani Bannerji who sensitises the readers to patriarchal and racist issues. She also raises her voice offering resistance against female subordination and the racist ideologies.