My term paper is aimed at finding out, how Meena’s identity changes throughout the book and how growing up with two cultures affects this process. Freud’s psychoanalytical model is extensive and implies many statements, but I will mostly zoom in on his “Provinces of the Mind”, which are the id, ego, and superego. 16) I found it meaningful to choose his theory to support my analysis. According to his ground-breaking discoveries and his popularity (Feist, p. The inclusion of several theories would be rather imprecise, so I chose to restrict the focus on Freud’s view to get a detailed look on one possible approach. The psychoanalytical view on this character will refer to Sigmund Freud’s theoretical assumptions. The following thesis investigates Meena’s identity and its development during the story line of Anita and Me. Also, my thesis is that Meena tries to rebel against her Indian identity at the beginning of the book, whereas later she allows a balance between her British and Indian identity.

The main question is: How does Meena’s identity develop throughout the story and how can that be arranged in the bicultural context in which she grows up? I assume that the process of developing Meena’s identity is based on a constant balancing act between the British and the Indian culture and according to the circumstances one side predominates the other one. The topic “identity” is very interesting in Meena’s case, because she grows up with two cultures and her personality changes during the plot. When reading Anita and Me it becomes obvious that identity evolves, among other factors, from the person’s surrounding and is never constructed only once to a fixed one (Oyserman, Elmore, Smith, p. Generally, the plot deals with Meena’s friendship to Anita, but also with several other events, which lead her personality to undergo a remarkable development during the book. In the novel Anita and Me, Meera Syal writes about the girl Meena, whose parents are first generation immigrants from India and live with her in England. Meena comments on herself stating that she is aware of being neither completely British nor Indian.

I knew I was a freak of some kind, too mouthy, clumsy and scabby to be a real Indian girl, too Indian to be a real Tollington wench, but living in the grey area between all categories felt increasingly like home. 3.1 British and Indian Identity in Anita and Me

Anita and me by meera syal