Imaginary Homelands

Salman Rushdie is an author that has intrigued me for quite some time. Sadly, I have not read any of his novels, though I do own a copy of Midnight's Children. Needless to say, I think that Rushdie is the perfect person to write about so called "imaginary homelands," since he has had several homelands over the course of his life. What I find most intriguing about Rushdie's essay is his claim that, "redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it" (14). My 499 this semester, The Asian-American Diaspora, makes an argument for the very same idea and the more I read for that class, the more I understand this to be true. I feel that Rushdie does not believe that to have imaginary homelands is erroneous but rather, that the writer is able to cross these perceived borders without consequence or censure from the government. While he focuses on Indian writers living in England, there is an underlying universality to his argument. Nowhere does he make this clearer than with his final plea to his readers: "'For God's sake, open the universe a little more!'" Here he is urging everyone to forget about their preconceived national boundaries and begin living as a united people, instead of continuing to be defined by what "country" we live in.