Exploring the Problematics of Negotiation and Identity Construction: An Analysis of Roma Tearne’s The White City (2017)

Global migration has turned more complex in the wake of twenty-first century.The twenty-first century has witnessed unprecedented changes in global politics that contribute to the socio-political dynamism, problematizing the notion of diaspora, migration and the construction of ethno-national identity.Roma Tearne, a British-Sri Lankan Diasporic fiction writer, depicts the predicament of global migration in The White City (2017).Set in the backdrop of the terror attack in London on 7th July, 2005, The White City (2017), a political dystopia, delves into the perception of an artist who employs art as a mode of articulating her innermost struggle and turmoil.This paper is to explore the interface between the 'personal' and the 'political' that lays bare the complexity of diasporic sensibility in The White City.Tearne' s kaleidoscopic description of the predicament of the diasporic subject calls into question racial stereotyping, the monopoly of nation-states and ethno-nationalism.Tearne explores the plight of immigrant experiences through the protagonist Hera who epitomizes the timelessness of art that aesthetically portrays migration as a process transcending spatio-temporal construct.Thus, The White City presents another dimension of diasporic experience from the perspective of an artist.My purpose of study is to situate The White City, Tearne's latest novel in the context of the trajectory of Global Migration in today's scenario.