Myth, Memory, and Migration: Transcultural Storytelling in the South Asian Diaspora

This article examines the dynamic interplay of myth, memory, and migration in shaping transcultural storytelling practices within the South Asian diaspora. Situated within postcolonial and diaspora studies frameworks, it argues that storytelling functions as a vital mode of cultural preservation, identity negotiation, and transculturation for displaced communities. Analyzing literary narratives, oral histories, and digital expressions, the research demonstrates how inherited myths and collective memories are strategically adapted, reinterpreted, and fused with experiences of migration and settlement in new homelands. This process generates hybrid narrative forms that navigate the complexities of belonging, challenge essentialist notions of culture, and articulate distinct diasporic subjectivities. The article contends that these transcultural stories are not merely acts of recollection but active processes of meaning-making, enabling diasporic communities to maintain connections to ancestral pasts while simultaneously forging new cultural syntheses and engaging critically with both homeland and hostland societies. The negotiation of myth and memory through storytelling emerges as a crucial site for understanding the resilience and transformation of South Asian cultural identities in global contexts.