Indigenizing the Chick Lit: A Contextualized Feminist Perspective in Mohsin’s The Diary of a Social Butterfly

Abstract

This paper focuses on Anglophone Pakistani narratives’ effort to highlight the contextual specificity of Pakistani women in order to understand the heterogeneity and complexity of their experiences and lives in marginalized as well as in resistant positions. They challenge the hegemonic patriarchal discourses both nationally and internationally by not just showing the diversity of the issues and experiences of women but also giving a counter discourse to the Eurocentric essentialized monolithic representation of the Third World or Pakistani women as oppressed and without having any voice. It analyzes glocal concerns in Mohsin’s The Diary of a Social Butterfly in which the genre of Chick Lit is appropriated with the insertion of local perspective and culture that gives it Pakistani dimensions. It considers Mohanty’s arguments regarding the importance of contextualized feminist perspective as the basic theoretical framework to highlight the necessity to consider the contextual specificity while incorporating Western discourses and to argue for a more inclusive approach with pluralistic alternatives.