Reading Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi’s Sonam: A New Historicist Perspective

Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi is a prominent name inAssamese literature and he has received national recognition with his novel Mouna Ounth Mukhar Hriday which won the Sahitya Academi award in 2005. As an insider, Thongchi has been able to present a new perspective of Arunachalee society-its rich social and cultural diversity. Thongchi announced his arrival on the literary scene of Assam with his first novel Sonam (1981). The novel was translated into English by Mridula Barooah in 2001 (Spectrum Publishers). The story of the novel is set against the Brokpa tribe (a section of Monpa), a community owning yak herds. Polygamy and polyandry are widely accepted in the Brokpa community. The family system of the Brokpas, where a woman is socially allowed to marry more than one man is the custom around which the story of the novel revolves. This paper will be an attempt to analyze the collective beliefs, social practices and cultural discourses that shaped Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi's views as well as his concern in depicting the life and society of the characters of a particular time. New Historicism believes that a literary text is always subject to the particular conditions of a time and place, and is therefore, an appropriate tool with which to interpret the world of the novel.