Asha Jeffers, PhD
Asha Jeffers is an assistant professor of English and Gender and Women’s Studies at Dalhousie University. Her work focuses on literature about the children of immigrants, “the second generation,” across national and ethnic lines. She explores the afterlife of migration and is particularly interested in how second-generation literature mobilizes the conventions of coming of age narratives, the relationship between myth, memory and history, and the representation of intergenerational and intragenerational relationships to produce future-facing stories that suggest hope and possibility in trying times. This work is grounded in theories of intersectional feminism, postcolonialism, and critical race theory. She has also published on double diaspora.
She is the organizer of the Daughters of Immigrants Symposium, which is a two-day interdisciplinary and international conference that will bring together a variety of scholarly approaches to topics related to the daughters of immigrants.
Contact: asha.jeffers@dal.ca
Selected publications:
2018. “Myth and Migration in Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.” Critical Insights: The Immigrant Experience. Amenia: Salem Press.
2016. “Unstable Indianness: Double Diaspora in Ramabai Espinet’s The Swinging Bridge and M.G. Vassanji’s When She Was Queen.” South Asian Review 37.1 (June 2016): 31-50.
2015. “Means of Escape, Means of Invention: Hindu Figures and Black Pop Culture in Rakesh Satyal’s Blue Boy.” South Asian Review 36.3 (December 2015): 81-95.
2015. “The Scar.” The Puritan: Frontiers of New English Issue 30 (Summer 2015). [Short fiction]
2011. “How Much More Can We Take?” Small Axe Salon Vol. 4, April 2011