Fighting against the Ethnic Niche: Debjani Chatterjee’s Literary Production
Fighting against the Ethnic Niche: Debjani Chatterjee’s Literary Production

Summary/Abstract: The concept of ethnic niche featured in the title of the present paper is tightly connected with the definitions of Bengali/ Bangladeshi communities in the UK provided by critic Jamil Ali as “highly segregated” (Ali, 2000:7), and by sociology and anthropology professor John Eade as “encapsulated” within the British territory (Eade, 1997: 94). The numerous “Banglatowns” spread across the country can still be regarded as real enclaves in which the “official language” is Bengali (or Sylheti, a Bangladeshi regional variety). In them traditional, gender-related roles and the hierarchical relationship between the sexes typical of patriarchal societies (domineering, active man Vs. dominated, passive woman) which was rather plausible in the immigrants’ mother country back in the ‘70s and the ‘80s - when wives started to join their husbands in the new land of settlement - are often faithfully reproduced by first and sometimes even by second generation immigrants. These immigrants find it difficult to share their cultural heritage and to effectively dovetail with the extended community (many women, for example, still have a poor degree of literacy in English and their experience of the “external world” is therefore limited and shrouded in silence).

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