Negotiating Indo-Canadian Diasporic Identity, Memory, and Belonging in Gurjinder Basran’s Someone You Love Is Gone

Abstract

Gurjinder Basran’s Someone You Love Is Gone (2017) presents an intricate portrayal of family, migration, memory, cultural inheritance, and belonging within an Indo-Canadian context. The novel follows Simran, a middle-aged woman living in Canada, as she confronts the death of her mother, strained family relationships, unresolved childhood memories, and the return of experiences rooted in her family’s Indian past. Through its interwoven temporal structure, the novel connects the lives of different generations and demonstrates how migration does not simply produce geographical movement but also creates continuing emotional and cultural relationships between homeland and hostland. This paper examines the novel as a representation of Indo-Canadian diasporic experience, with particular attention to cultural identity, intergenerational memory, gender, family expectations, homeland consciousness, belonging, and the negotiation between Indian cultural inheritance and Canadian social experience. Drawing on the ideas of Stuart Hall, Avtar Brah, Homi K. Bhabha, and Arjun Appadurai, the study argues that Basran represents diaspora as a continuing process of negotiation rather than a simple movement from India to Canada. The novel ultimately presents identity as dynamic, relational, and shaped by memory, family history, and multiple cultural locations.