The portion of Salman Rushdie's "Imaginary Homelands" that resonated the most with me was the assertion on the final page that "displaced" writers shouldn't try to conform to a cultural stereotype or cater to a specific audience. They "have access to a second tradition, quite apart from their own racial history. It is the culture and political history of the phenomenon of migration, displacement, life in a minority group" (20). They have a unique voice bred from physical alienation and distorted memories. They can embrace their heritage as "translated men" (17).
This notion reminded me of Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican, which is written from the perspective of a young girl who grows up in Puerto Rico and moves to Brooklyn. After years of adjusting to urban life, learning English, and pushing past degrading expectations in school because of her heritage to become a successful Ivy League student, she stands in a supermarket pressing a guava to her nose and feeling conflicted. She is a product of Puerto Rico and her mother's traditional upbringing. She is also a product of her mother's decision to transport seven children to New York and the education and culture that transforms her. Just as Salman Rushdie speaks of a haunting, partial memory of Bombay and a hybrid identity, Esmeralda cooks frijoles in a cramped Brooklyn kitchen and picks guavas from a supermarket bin instead of from a tree. "We are Hindus who have crossed the black water; we are Muslims who eat pork" (15). This fusion, this ambivalence creates a fresh, exciting voice.
Did "Imaginary Homelands" remind anyone else of other texts they've read?
This notion reminded me of Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican, which is written from the perspective of a young girl who grows up in Puerto Rico and moves to Brooklyn. After years of adjusting to urban life, learning English, and pushing past degrading expectations in school because of her heritage to become a successful Ivy League student, she stands in a supermarket pressing a guava to her nose and feeling conflicted. She is a product of Puerto Rico and her mother's traditional upbringing. She is also a product of her mother's decision to transport seven children to New York and the education and culture that transforms her. Just as Salman Rushdie speaks of a haunting, partial memory of Bombay and a hybrid identity, Esmeralda cooks frijoles in a cramped Brooklyn kitchen and picks guavas from a supermarket bin instead of from a tree. "We are Hindus who have crossed the black water; we are Muslims who eat pork" (15). This fusion, this ambivalence creates a fresh, exciting voice.
Did "Imaginary Homelands" remind anyone else of other texts they've read?
Now that you mention it I can remember this kind of character struggle in a few works, the one that jumped to my mind first was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Although the story is complete fiction, the character of Captain Nemo has a similar life experience. He was originally Prince Dakkar of India and abandoned his ties to humanity after his family was killed in the British conquest. He then went on to live a completely different life as a new man yet when he rescues Professor Aronnax and treats him as a guest, he is reminded of his old life, how not all men are inherently evil, and that he has these two very different life experiences that define him.
ReplyDeleteI've never read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but that seems to fit the mold of binary characters like this. Another example I thought of was Cristina Garcia's "Dreaming in Cuban." The novel's main characters are multiple generations of women. The granddaughter, Pilar, is a stereotypical, artsy punk raised in the United States, but she has an uncanny ability to remember her infancy, sitting on her grandmother's porch in Cuba by the ocean as she played with her drop pearl earrings. She's torn between the desire in her gut to return to the homeland of her infancy and remaining in New York with her possessive mother. I think the reason why Latin American novels come to mind is because of so many present day American citizens with these heritages who may feel torn or ambivalent. But, the fact that you came up with a science fiction novel touching on the same themes is pretty fantastic.
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