In Search of Identity: Recreating History and Mythology in M. G. Vassanji’s The Gunny Sack

Abstract

M.G. Vassanji, a well-renowned South-Asian-Canadian Diaspora writer is specifically known for his obsession with history and mythology which he uses as a tool of writing. They perform the role of a researcher in his works to attain the true ethnic identity. Having belonged to the syncretistic Khoja Community neither Hindu nor Muslim evokes him the sense of de-centered identity, with this inner conflict of incomplete sense of identity makes him to prepare the plot of colonial and postcolonial history of nations with exploration of his community myth in his works. The novel, The Gunny Sack reveals this sense of Vassanji’s Afro-Indian ancestry as it includes both nations’ socio-political histories and myths. The plot of the novel is drawn from the repetition of history and myth of four generations in which each one is searching his true-self throughout the novel. In the novel, the writer has hugely elaborated the myth of his Ismaili-Muslim Community in fictionalized name ‘Shamsis’. This Shamsi Community stands on the blend of Hindu-Muslim religion and has fantastic mythic origin of the Sufi arrival of India. He uses it with the national history of Africa and this interaction of history and mythology plays the part of cultural identification to the characters.