Negotiating Cultural Translation from a Dislocated Identity in Imam Verjee's Who Will Catch Us as We Fall?

Abstract

This paper examines the Indian immigrants in Kenya and how they perceive as well as present the modern Kenya as home away from home. It looks at issues surrounding the reconstitution of identities in Kenyan-Indians and their significant interventions, which influence the presentation of narratives of dislocation and translocation in Imam Verjee's Who Will Catch Us as We Fall? The paper further examines how the experiences abroad manifest themselves in the text, influencing the interactions between the KenyanIndians and the natives. It also interrogates the resistance Kenyan-Indians encounter, both from their own community and the native Africans, while attempting to negotiate belonging through cosmopolitanism, many years since emigrating to East Africa. This aspect of cosmopolitanism reveals how Kenyan relationship to the outside world is imagined, reflected, conceptualized, researched and criticized, as written by the Kenyans who have been abroad. In this paper, I argue that the Kenyan-Indians present Kenya as a country that has embraced cosmopolitanism, with its positive and negative aspects such as cross-cultural relationships/marriages, corruption, murders and robberies. This study will contribute in the understanding of process of cultural translation as a form of identity formation.