The ideas discussed in Salman Rushdie's "Imaginary Homelands" line up perfectly with some of the books I've been reading for my Diaspora in Chinese Literature class. We just finished reading America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan. Carlos leaves his native Philippines in search of a better life in America. In "Imaginary Homelands," Rushdie writes:
"Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadaquate materials that we defend so fiercely, even to the death."
I felt like this passage lined up almost perfectly with a passage from Bulosan's book. He writes:
"It came to me that no man--no one at all--could destroy my faith in America again. It was something that had grown out of my defeats and successes, something shaped by my struggles for a place in this vast land, digging my hands into the rich soil here and there, catching a freight to the north and south, seeking free meals in dingy gambling houses, reading a book that opened up worlds of heroic thoughts. It was something that grew out of sacrifices and loneliness of my friends, of my brothers in America and my family in the Philippines..."
While Rushdie is talking about looking back at the things he struggles to recover from his homeland, Bulosan talks about the things which have shaped the journey he has undergone in America. The comparison makes me wonder just how similar the two processes are.
"Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadaquate materials that we defend so fiercely, even to the death."
I felt like this passage lined up almost perfectly with a passage from Bulosan's book. He writes:
"It came to me that no man--no one at all--could destroy my faith in America again. It was something that had grown out of my defeats and successes, something shaped by my struggles for a place in this vast land, digging my hands into the rich soil here and there, catching a freight to the north and south, seeking free meals in dingy gambling houses, reading a book that opened up worlds of heroic thoughts. It was something that grew out of sacrifices and loneliness of my friends, of my brothers in America and my family in the Philippines..."
While Rushdie is talking about looking back at the things he struggles to recover from his homeland, Bulosan talks about the things which have shaped the journey he has undergone in America. The comparison makes me wonder just how similar the two processes are.
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