Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s “The Search Engine”
“The Search Engine” is a short story by Native American writer Sherman Alexie. The story depicts a quest undertaken by a young urban Indigenous woman to find an enigmatic Indian poet and, by extension, her own postcolonial self. This article proposes to read Alexie’s “The Search Engine” through th...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2021
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18041/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18041/1/48387-167713-1-PB.pdf |
| _version_ | 1848814468230807552 |
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| author | Usa Padgate, |
| author_facet | Usa Padgate, |
| author_sort | Usa Padgate, |
| building | UKM Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | “The Search Engine” is a short story by Native American writer Sherman Alexie. The story depicts a quest
undertaken by a young urban Indigenous woman to find an enigmatic Indian poet and, by extension, her own
postcolonial self. This article proposes to read Alexie’s “The Search Engine” through the lens of postcolonial
criticism to investigate the text’s anticolonialist ideology and approaches to resist the colonialist domination and
deal with the postcolonial condition. The analysis reveals that the text presents an anticolonialist sentiments
through marginal characters who are conditioned by the sense of unhomeliness as a result of their socioeconomic
disadvantages. The text then subverts the colonialist ideology by secularising Christian terminologies and
revisiting a literary canon from the point of view of the underclass. Finally, the text suggests that conflicting
postcolonial identities can be reconciled and hybridised through respect and recognition at an individual level. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-15T00:34:34Z |
| format | Article |
| id | oai:generic.eprints.org:18041 |
| institution | Universiti Kebangasaan Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-15T00:34:34Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | oai:generic.eprints.org:180412022-02-13T00:30:17Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18041/ Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s “The Search Engine” Usa Padgate, “The Search Engine” is a short story by Native American writer Sherman Alexie. The story depicts a quest undertaken by a young urban Indigenous woman to find an enigmatic Indian poet and, by extension, her own postcolonial self. This article proposes to read Alexie’s “The Search Engine” through the lens of postcolonial criticism to investigate the text’s anticolonialist ideology and approaches to resist the colonialist domination and deal with the postcolonial condition. The analysis reveals that the text presents an anticolonialist sentiments through marginal characters who are conditioned by the sense of unhomeliness as a result of their socioeconomic disadvantages. The text then subverts the colonialist ideology by secularising Christian terminologies and revisiting a literary canon from the point of view of the underclass. Finally, the text suggests that conflicting postcolonial identities can be reconciled and hybridised through respect and recognition at an individual level. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2021-09 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18041/1/48387-167713-1-PB.pdf Usa Padgate, (2021) Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s “The Search Engine”. 3L; Language,Linguistics and Literature,The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies., 27 (3). pp. 145-158. ISSN 0128-5157 https://ejournal.ukm.my/3l/issue/view/1423 |
| spellingShingle | Usa Padgate, Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s “The Search Engine” |
| title | Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s
“The Search Engine” |
| title_full | Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s
“The Search Engine” |
| title_fullStr | Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s
“The Search Engine” |
| title_full_unstemmed | Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s
“The Search Engine” |
| title_short | Unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of Sherman Alexie’s
“The Search Engine” |
| title_sort | unhomed at home : a postcolonial reading of sherman alexie’s
“the search engine” |
| url | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18041/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18041/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18041/1/48387-167713-1-PB.pdf |