South Asian Cultural Productions and the Garden
Humanities
FMST 194M Empire and Sexuality
This paper will explore the space of the garden through analyzing specific cultural productions. The first section will analyze how the garden becomes integral to the home and how this space has been influenced by colonial and imperial projects by looking at Shani Mootoo's "Cereus Blooms at Night" along side Jamaica Kincaid's short essay "In History". The next section will argue how the garden through time becomes an archive of feelings. By analyzing "Cereus Blooms at Night" along with the film Mississippi Masala I work out how the garden and memory are connected to trauma. The final section will explore the liminal possibilities of the garden. The garden mediates certain crossings between the public and private spheres and tracing this generates narratives of particular diasporic experiences articulated in these productions. Again I will analyze passages from "Cereus Blooms at Night" along with Jamaica Kincaid’s "Alien Soil". Highlighting these three areas expands the histories and understanding of diaspora and home as imagined in these specified narratives.
