That "Willful" Migrant Adulteress: Female Embodiment and Diasporic Melancholia in Chandani Lokugé's Softly, as I Leave You

• Published in: Critique - Bolingbroke Society Vol. 64; no. 3; pp. 453 - 464
• Main Author: Zong, Emily Yu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Routledge 27.05.2023; Taylor & Francis Inc
• Subjects: Ahmed, Sara; Diaspora; Embodiment; Females; Gender; Literary characters; Literary criticism; Literary devices; Migrants; Novels; Phenomenology; Plot (Narrative); Race; Rhetorical figures; Sex roles; Women

Sri-Lankan Australian writer Chandani Lokugé's novel Softly, As I Leave You (2011) presents a female troublemaker: she is a narcissistic woman, an unfaithful wife, an ungrateful migrant, and a controlling migrant mother. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's notion of the "willful," this artic...