ABSTRACT
Whereas I have established that in most novels in this sample there is little sense that Indianness is constructed or fl uid, several of the diasporic Indian children’s novels do portray young second-generation Indian characters’ bicultural identities in this way. I discuss identity as “bicultural” because almost all diasporic characters view themselves as simultaneously Indian and British, American, or Canadian (depending on the country in which they live). In these texts, protagonists try to make sense of this duality at the individual level by grappling with issues of their bicultural identity, consciously examining the ways they are socially coerced into believing they are “Indian,”
and manipulating these and other aspects of subjectivity to negotiate a sense of self which satisfi es them because it includes elements which they consider both Indian and western.
