African Psycho and the White Tiger
02.14.09 (12:53 am) [edit]The novel the white tiger was after all a great read. While I read on, what kept occurring to me was not other Indo-Anglo authors but African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou. These two authors tell almost identical stories in different locations, one in Congo and the other is India---an underclass man ending up killing his employer for it seemed the only way to overthrow the dead end of class system--- in totally different manners, so it is worth comparing the two. This is obviously the consequence, or another page, of the global narrative today. Or would it rather be put as the archetype of the universal struggle people are put through? This brought me back to Franz Fanon again. It seems the time finally caught up with Fanon's insight and theories. The mission of our time is, though, to come up with a way to be rid of the very justification of violence from his stance, if there would be any to process the revolution without it. Theoretically, though, there wouldn't.
ABC, ABCD
02.04.09 (12:04 pm) [edit]There is a term such as ABC that refers to American Born Chinese. If you add D to it, it would be about South Asians of the same situation; American Born Confused Desi. There was an independent movie entitled exactly ABCD released more than a decade ago. It was a mediocre movie about an Indian family in NJ, especially highlight ed the agony a pair of second generation siblings, a son and his younger sister, went through and the very realistic conpromises they made in their adult lives in the US, the ambivalence over pursuing their potentials and the burnden of family obligations they had, especially for the choice of who they would get married to and who they were really attracted to, and would split. Since it is pretty much cliched by now, there is nothing noteworthy that I can add to the film. Still, every time that I encountered ABCD materials, I was vaguely reminded of this film as well as the term of ABCD. In the movie, one of the lines actually addressed&n bsp;the younger sister, a profession, willful, liberated and nubile second generation by the term ABCD in rather a mocking tone. The funny thing about it was that it went as American Born Confused Indian omitting any other connotation desi could bring up but limiting it to only the Indian identity.
So it naturally crossed my mind while I was reading Jhumpa Lahiri's new---a year old already, however---colleciton of short stories. As many people have pointed out so far, this was pretty much the same content of what Interpreter of Maladie or the namesake were about, just in slightly different settings. That was the reason that I no longer got impatient or rushed to a store to buy a copy. Only when it got released, though, I read one story from the book, 'Nobody's Business,' to summarize the impression that I had over Lahiri's works; redundant. thus I did not pick up again until recently.
As a general after thought on Unaccustomed Earth was, after all, the reconfirmation of the stretched impression, or her first collection still seemed to champion its remarkable surprises over this third work of hers, unfortunately. The intersting thing this time was that she came back to the short story genre, rather than novel, which was more marketable. This might explain that she has acknowledged that the form she thrives in is it and she respects quality over any benefit her work would bring her: her popularity alone could bring readers no matter what she would release honestly speaking. Still, the materials she dealt with were amazingly the same from both of her previous works, only with more composure. This seemingly good quality, composure, even worked against the genre this time---it killed surprise potentials---and that might be the reason the whole collection read rather dull than it could have been. The author's observation in detail redeems, though. I was after all content that I had read it for the quality, that fruited from her maturity as a writer. But I would not name this to be her best work. If I picked the best work of the collection was 'Nobody's Business', after all. This time, though it read as different from how it appeared to be to me: this could read as a double of meaning of the covert and subtle political observation of, or even criticism against, the US foreign policy. The story of four people intertwined, Sang, Paul, Farouk, Deidra, could signify possibly the current affair over Middle East, American interference, women's condition, white and of color, and their gender and power struggle gracefully orchestrated in the firm structure. Anybody finds this sound interesting should read how she did that. It was VERY interesting if read intensively.
Just having begun White Tiger, I can't deny the impression of the story so up to date, or too catchy, just as the movie about the Indian Quiz Show that has been talked about, that I got slightly turned off. But is this what makes literary works 'relevent' nowadays?