The Right to Narrate: Diasporic Identity and Belonging in Janika Oza's A History of Burning

Abstract

This article examines the representation of diasporic identity and belonging in Janika Oza's A History of Burning (2023) through Edward Said's postcolonial concept of the “right to narrate.” Despite growing scholarship on the novel's treatment of colonialism, migration, and historical memory, comparatively little attention has been paid to storytelling itself as a form of narrative agency through which displaced communities reclaim voice. The study therefore investigates how migration, memory, and intergenerational storytelling shape the construction of diasporic identity across the generations of one family, and how belonging is negotiated rather than inherited. Employing qualitative textual analysis within Said's theoretical framework, the article argues that the novel's characters are never treated as passive victims of displacement but as active narrators who reconstruct their own histories through fragmented, multi-voiced remembrance. The analysis shows that personal and familial narratives function as alternative archives preserving collective memory and sustaining cultural continuity despite geographical dislocation. Key findings demonstrate that identity in the novel is continuously reconstructed rather than fixed, that belonging is achieved through narration rather than territorial permanence, and that storytelling operates as an ethical and political act of resistance against historical erasure.

Keywords: Diaspora, Identity, Belonging, Storytelling, Migration, Cultural Memory.