Resistance through Language: Reconstructing Issues of Identity and a Sense of Belongingness in Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom
| Authors |
| Bachaspatimayum Vimi Devi & Saugata Kumar Nath |
| Date of Publication: December, 2025 |
| Volume: XXV, No.- XXVIII |
| DOI:10.65734/tgi.ssei.avp.ijcsss.ti.25.28.8 |
| Abstract |
| In India, mental illness still persists within a matrix of cultural silence, stigma, and clinical marginalisation of the patient, culminating in the suppression of individual’s subjectivity and disintegration of familial identity. Linguistic issue is one of the cores of this problem as there is a lack of socially appropriate lexicon for expressing psychological distress without provoking stigma or exclusion. Within such an environment, issues of identity, belongingness, and resistance become inextricably linked to language politics. Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom addresses this issue by providing a counter-narrative in which language serves as a tool to reclaim voice, agency, and belongingness for people living with mental illness. The novel presents the lived experience of a mentally ill patient Em and her family. The novel uses Em’s fragmentary, humorous, and transgressive speech to challenge the clinical objectification of the “mad” person and redefine language as a tool of resistance rather than a construct shape by clinical discourse. The narrative structure which was moulded by the retrospective narration of her son helps to recreate identity and belongingness by translating unpredictable lived experience into meaningful connections. Humour, narrative attention, and interpersonal caregiving emerge as alternate linguistic strategies for overcoming silence and reconstructing interpersonal identities within the family. The primary focus of this paper is to study the role of language which is, on the one hand, disintegrating and dysfunctional to express the inner nuances of the patients, and, on the other hand, is a tool of resistance and identity construction. The paper aims to explain how the linguistic strategies and narrative structure serve to undermine traditional discourses of illness, thus offering a more humanised understanding of mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. The paper also aims to discuss the caregiving relationship in the familial context, which reveals the importance of caregiving as a moral and a relational process that preserves identity and belongingness amid the chaos imposed by the illness. |
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