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Date of Award

4-22-2022

Document Type

Restricted Thesis: Campus only access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

English

First Advisor

Dr. Monika Siebert

Abstract

When I began college, however, I began to realize how much of my Pakistani heritage was foreign to me. Yet, when I tried to learn more about Pakistani culture, I was struck by how inauthentic it appeared. While I wanted to learn Punjabi, my mother tongue, most Pakistani people, including my own cousins in Pakistan, aspire to speak English. While I began to desperately miss Pakistan, my family and friends in Pakistan wished that they could be in America. I soon realized that even though it has been nearly a century since we were colonized, the legacies of colonialism still haunt Pakistan in the present day. Being born in Pakistan but raised in America meant that I could not determine what avenue would lead me to find my supposed true identity: should I embrace pre-colonial Pakistan, or learn to love postcolonial Pakistan as it is? Furthermore, should I abandon my U.S. identity in favor of my Pakistani one, as surely there can be no reconciliation? My struggle with identity led me to the works of Mohsin Hamid who, like myself, has lived in both Pakistan and the West. His novels not only address the question of pre-colonial versus postcolonial Pakistan, but they also address the issues that those of us who are multicultural face.

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