Cultural Dilemma in the Works of Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri

This paper aims to explore the cultural conflicts experienced by the fictional characters of Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri, two prominent Indian-American writers. The protagonists of their works usually originate from India and live in culturally plural societies in the USA and Canada. The simultaneous exposure of their fictional characters to both their home culture and the alien culture prompts them to undergo a sort of cultural conflict and spiritual crisis, leading to a dilemma over their cultural identity. These characters cannot sever their ties with the ancestral cultures they practiced back home in India, nor can they fully accept the values and beliefs practiced in the adopted land. As they belong to neither culture in the true sense, they, thus, are often alienated and depressed and suffer from an unending sense of nostalgia. They look for a home but never find it, as they constantly oscillate between the culture they were living in and the one they are now living in.