Teatime revisited: An Interview with Shona Patel

Abstract

This paper employs the interview as a key qualitative research method to bridge the gap between authorial intent and textual interpretation in postcolonial literary studies. It features an interview with emerging postcolonial author Shona Patel about her debut novel, Teatime for the Firefly. The questions primarily aim to explore the author’s unique perspectives on the socio-political and ecological landscape of remote Assam tea plantations, informed by her diasporic identity in the USA. Interviewing postcolonial writers offers vital insights into their distinctive views on identity, history, and the enduring legacies of colonialism. Their works often examine themes such as the search for belonging, the complexities of cultural assimilation, and the tensions between tradition and modernity. Through Patel’s discourse, this paper seeks to demonstrate how the rhetoric of 'tea time'—often linked with imperial aesthetics and leisure—has been challenged, redefined, or recontextualised in contemporary postcolonial narratives, thereby highlighting ideological shifts in representing the plantation economy. This research enhances understanding of how diasporic literature contributes to decolonising narratives of South Asian plantation history.