Brick Lane
12.08.06 (8:35 pm) [edit]I finally picked up the book I had long wanted to read but somehow did not have a chance to do so until very recently;
"Brick Lane" by Monica Ali
this work by the Bangladeshi British author might bring up another INTERESTING issue of Muslim women's lives, how their religeous faith is lived and how their needs to fulfill their individual lives conflict to the community. Most importantly, though, how they struggle to bring about the very concept of basic human rights that are suppposed to be bestowed on men, but not to be ready for women in thei level of awareness the society has.
This protagonist case was initiated bacause of her awakening to love someone when she met someone, and it happened to take place outside of her marriage. She had to learn how to interprete her own desires, which she never allowed herself to follow nor to explore before until the point; she always lived to accept everything that was assigned, decided and imposed upon her life as 'destiny to follow.' Now she had to know what was the destiny and what was the fallacy she should chase away.
This book does not read as one of those insider's expose (sans accent) lit by Muslim women, but it just offers the matter-of-factly look and take on a regular life of a Muslim woman, who was married off her village in Bangladeshi young, barely legal as people in the West might call, to a man two generations older than her. The life was not disheartening to her only if her material needs are met and when her husband not being physically abusive, which implies some dreadful undercurrent; she has to live the perpetual threat that she might be beaten up whenever she misbehaves to the standard the men employ in the culture to measure a woman up whereas women cannot claim their rights to protect themselves from. Her yearning for the better treatment and rights to be a human as oppsed to be an asset and an object for men any longer develops as she starts the life in London, where she is more or less isolated, she stars longing for fulfillment of life that could not be attained when she is living the life with her husband.
Wait for a little while I read on.