The Journey Toward Negotiating Transnational Cultures: A Postcolonial Reading of Lisa Allen-Agostini’s Home Home (2018)

Abstract

Postcolonial writers have made heavy emphasis on the aftermath of colonialism especially at the cultural level. Similarly, Lisa Allen-Agostini’s novel Home home, tackles mainly multiculturalism and identity crisis. Home home depicts the duality of the immigrant’s life which obstacles him/her to integrate within multicultural nation. Agostini portrays the mass cultural difference between multicultural Canada and conservative Trinidad, as well as, she presents the issue of alienation through her protagonist. Nonetheless, the protagonist faced the issue of alienation already in her home Trinidad; her mental illness was the main cause to be outcast by the society and even her mother. Hence, Canada was as a refuge that may embrace her. This dissertation aims to present immigration to multicultural nation and the issue of belonging through the lens of some theories and aspects of post colonialism, which are applied in analysing the novel like Homi Bahaba’s concepts of culture and identity. The qualitative approach will serve to examine how the intersections of cultures influence identity construction, in addition to the interference of the analytical and descriptive method to extract the causes of non-belonging that keep the individual alienated, and result in duality. Consequently, the study reveals that the individual can succeed to cope with the social hindrances and establish new identity, regardless of the social pattern he is derived from.