Navigating Identity and Trauma in Globalized Contexts: A Comparative Study of Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss and Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Women and Other

In today’s rapidly changing world, the interplay of globalization and colonial legacies significantly influence individual and collective identities, often leading to complex experiences of trauma and cultural displacement. These experiences provide a psychological, cultural, and social narrative of loss. This paper shall study Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other to illustrate how different cultural and historical contexts reflect these themes through their characters’ struggles with identity, belonging, and the psychological impacts of their environments. Both novels feature characters with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Their journey illustrates the duality of globalization, which, on the one hand, poses opportunities for connection and, on the other, poses challenges that question one’s cohesive sense of self. Desai and Evaristo use race, class, gender, and the characters' cultural backgrounds to show the convergence that shapes their identities while delving into the intricacies of intersectionality. The paper shall also highlight how both texts use postmodern features such as non-linear narrative structure, interconnected storylines, and polyphonic voices to reflect the contemporary discord in identity, emphasizing the characters’ struggles to reconcile their pasts with their present realities and fragmentation of traumatic experiences. The interplay of personal and collective traumas highlights the broader societal implications of globalization as characters navigate their identities within a rapidly changing cultural landscape. The paper shall also delve into the Postmemory theory and Cultural trauma theory to understand the ontological process of how individuals react and cope with the growing contemporary sense of alienation arising from significant social changes.