Dream, Memory, and Identity: Tracing Inner Experience in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams
C. Jeevanantham, V. Suresh
Bodhi International Journal of Research in Humanities Arts and Science April 30, 2026 DOI: 10.64938/bijsi.v10i3.26.apr053 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Divakaruni's Queen of Dreams spatializes interiority, translating unconscious emotional and psychological states into symbolic landscapes and narrative architectures. The paper contends that the novel portrays identity as contingent and evolving, formed through the interplay of memory, imagination, and cultural belonging, and that Rakhi's engagement with her mother's dream journals enables her to reclaim silenced histories and reconfigure a coherent sense of self. |
Abstract
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams provides a complex and multidisciplinary research of subjectivity through the interrelated modalities of dream, memory, and identity within a diasporic context. Situated at the convergence of psychological inner conciousness and cultural displacement, the novel rearticulates inner experience as a dynamic site where personal history, unconscious desire, and inherited cultural memory converge. Dreams in the text function not merely as narrative augmentation but assemiotic formations that encode subconscious emotions, latent anxieties, and indeterminate psychic tensions, thereby foregrounding the operations of the unconscious in shaping selfhood. Simultaneously, memory executes as both an archival and reconstructive force, mediating between past and present while enabling the transmission of cultural knowledge across generations. Through the figure of Rakhi, the narrative traces a progression of destabilized identity marked by diasporas dislocation, emotional dissociation, and epistemological uncertainty. Her engagement with her mother’s dream journals becomes a critical hermeneutic analysis throughwhich she negotiates meaning, reclaims silenced histories, and reconfigures a coherent sense of self. Drawing upon psychoanalytic discourse, spatial theory, and diaspora studies, this paper elucidates that Divakaruni spatializes interiority by translating abstract emotional and psychological states into symbolic landscapes and narrative architectures. Such a strategy not only represents the invisible dimensions of consciousness perceivable but also underscores the fluid, procession nature of identity formation. Ultimately, the novel conceptualizes identity as a contingent and evolving construct, continually shaped through the interplay of memory, imagination, and cultural belonging, thereby challenging essentialist notions of selfhood and affirming the transformative potential of inner experience.