Finals week is for everyone else -- for English majors, finals week is the week BEFORE finals when they turn in their final papers.
(For more on Matt, check out his Blesis -- Blog for my Thesis -- here)
So very true. So, in lieu of a real post, an excerpt from the paper I'm working on now, my second-to-last Post Colonial Lit paper.
In the great Literature family, we could say that Post-colonialism is something like the middle child, trying to stand up to the reputation of their older, more recognized sibling while at the same time trying to strike out on their own to form a new reputation altogether.[1] Trapped by accepted modes of transmission for stories, both in terms of language and form, Postcolonial authors still continue trying to tell stories that are relevant to them and counteract the last generation’s misinformation. This has been the case in all of the seven postcolonial novels we have read so far this semester, authors trying to tell stories that are relevant to themselves, their people and place, and their causes. Such is also the case in Alaa Al Aswany’s Chicago, a 2007 novel about the lives of Egyptian immigrants and some of the Americans in their lives living and working in and around the city of Chicago. Throughout his novel, Aswany uses many of the same techniques the authors we read in class did to make a point about how we think we understand life and minority populations in the United States.
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children gives us a wonderful example not only of middle child trying to step beyond older child’s shadow, but middle child openly making fun of the whole concept of the western construction of novels. With his absurdly omnipotent Saleem, the young man narrating the story with a healthy helping of god-like panache who takes credit for everything that happens to anyone in the story, Rushdie suggests that one person is insufficient to knowing the whole story, and that many perspectives are needed both to relate the story and also provide connections between all of the characters. That Saleem should be responsible for all events, large and small, is almost laughable. Rushdie’s other lesson in this book is that, at the same time one person cannot know a whole story, a single character cannot be a story unto themselves, and many characters are needed to fully form a cohesive tale. Saleem makes himself into the embodiment of the country of India, just as older sibling’s novels once made other main characters into the embodiments of virtue or experience, held up for the world to see and compare to. Saleem cannot possibly be India, and the experiences of the west’s chosen main characters cannot possibly be everyone’s. Aswany uses both of these concepts to a certain extent in Chicago – realizing that one person cannot know the whole story, he distributes the experiences of the story between many people, providing the necessary perspectives to fully understand the events. And none of these characters are the stereotypes the western audience is accustomed to seeing in their literature – the women are not submissive and veiled (or at least, they do not seem so), the men are neither feminine no brutish, and their culture is not one that wants to blow America to smithereens. Aswany uses his diverse and different cast to show his readers that the story of ‘the immigrant experience’ cannot be shown by one voice alone, just as Rushdie shows India’s story cannot be told by one voice alone either.
[1] I am aware that the ‘older/ younger’ divide is a poor choice of words. Certainly the argument can be made (and proven) that non-western literature has been around for generations longer than western literature. However, the west refuses to see it that way, (the entire reason we have this divide in the first place) and so, for the purposes of this paper, the categories will remain as I have named them.
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Hmmm... I'm wondering about the random capitalizations: Literature, Postcolonial. These are not proper nouns, unless you've decided to literally give literature a family name.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, to respond to your content. First, the main issue. Is your thesis that Aswany's novel "makes a point about minority populations in the United States"? Is that it? I think you can say more than that. If your point is that he uses literary techniques to do so, then that's a more clear thesis, but you should identify what those literary devices are.
Also, generally we think of postcolonial fiction being set in the former colonies (India, etc.), but this is in the United States. Would we call a novel by Ralph Ellison postcolonial? No, because Ellison is African-American. But it seems the literary techniques you identify in Aswany are not uniquely postcolonial -- they might apply to all novels written anywhere by anyone.
A second point, you say they are writing literature that is relevant to the lives of the authors, but of course that begs the question of why you are reading it. The fact is, it's possibly relevant to all kinds of readers, but not necessarily in the same way.
Now, here's the most interesting point you make -- that postcolonial writers are trapped by accepted modes of transmission. (Now, be careful of this sentence because your phrase "accepted modes of transmission" is passive and begs the question -- accepted by whom?) So, if Aswany is trapped, as you say, though I'm not sure he is, then how might you consider that situation of being trapped when you analyze his representation of minorities in the U.S.? That might lead you to a more daring thesis statement than the one you have at the end of your first paragraph. Just a thought.