The God of Small Things has become a worldwide bestseller, has been translated into over 40 languages, and earned Roy millions in royalties. Much loved by American and certain British critics for her English-language novel, she faced ambivalence from British readers and outright hostility from fellow Indians (Jana). Yet, her most lauded accomplishment in The God of Small Things seems to be the themes of migration and hybridity—including both literal migration to and from Ayemenem and the linguistically equivalent of the English spoken outside and inside the town and also a linguistic migration called “cosmopolitical hybridity” (Ghosh 81-82).

Bishnupriya Ghosh’s Indian, postcolonial literary exploration, When Borne Across: Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel, utilizes Roy’s The God of Small Things to examine the Indian writer's use of “organic” language structure—that is, language that develops uniquely from the author to accurately describe the political and cultural landscape in a postcolonial world—to contextualize the author in their geopolitical environment. Ghosh argues that Roy uses her distinctive, lyrical style, combined with a playful vernacular to critique, and in some ways, deconstruct, postcolonial linguistic hegemonies (82). It is a part of Ghosh’s argument that Roy, and fellow writers from Anglophone post-colonies, necessitate a vernacularity that layers language in such a way as to make it completely her own and to heave off the burden of language left by colonial masters. The migration Ghosh speaks of refers to a triangulated movement of language between the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial usage (81). In distilling the essence of the individual to its smallest components, Roy examines the effects of the greater whole on the smallest—ironically, most affected—members of society and utilizes hybrid language to demonstrate the larger effects of smaller movements, like those in vernacular (Ghosh 109).

Migrations in Roy’s The God of Small Things is also the focus of a organized piece posted in English on a German website. The unknown author illuminates Roy’s ltiiterary examinaon of borders: physical, cultural, religious, social, and political. Roy, according to said article, exploits Ayemenem as a focal point, a center point from which many flee and later return—Chacko returns from Oxford with a British wife, Estha returns from being exiled and living with his father, and Rahel returns from New York (“Migration and Return in Arudhati Roy’s The God of Small Things”). The author constructs an argument that the characters must have a point which to return in order to test, refine, and recreate the borders that they have expanded while away. Hybridity is also a focus of this essay; however, the author centers on the hybridity of the culture and it’s effects on a postcolonial cultural identity:

 As in my own analysis, another anonymous author scrutinizes the migration Estha and Rahel make from childhood to adulthood and Roy’s reasoning for leaving most of this journey—from the time Estha leaves Ammu and Rahel, to the time Rahel returns from New York to Ayemenem—unwritten. The critic identifies Roy’s employment of uncomplicated, childish language to describe serious matters (“Alternately Sing-Songy, Brooding, Childlike, and Mature”). It is stated that Roy crafts her tale in such a way to “[show] us how complex the events of the novel are for our characters, and how our young protagonists are forced to deal with tough issues at a tender age” (“Alternately Sing-Songy, Brooding, Childlike, and Mature”).

The hybridity of language is also an academic point-of-interest, specifically Roy’s non-linear story progression and transition (migration) of poetic language to prose and back. The essay “Language, Hybridity, and Dialogism in The God of Small Things” discusses Roy’s migration of the poetic to the mundane as a device constructing the story to draw the reader’s attention to the negative space in which the meaning is formed (Clarke 135). Clarke denotes Estha’s and Rahel’s lack of finality when creating definitions, so as to leave room for borders over which to migrate to form later (136).

The focus, to date, of Roy’s work in The God of Small Things have been limited to explorations and inquires of the work as a postcolonial piece. The conceptualization of border formation, migration, and hybridity of language, culture, and identity are of specific interest. These interests are similar to other observations of postcolonial Indian writing and Indian writers, like Rushdie (although Roy, herself, despises that particular comparison.) Roy's is clearly a work of singular wit and great merit that enhances our view of universal society and humanity, as well as the microcosm of India and the Syrian Christian community therein.