CLEOPATRA'S LIBRARY

Tuesday, 25 September 2012

What to watch: Devil in a Blue Dress

The Buddha of Suburbia (1990)

About the Author:-

Hanif Kureishi

Kureishi was born in South London to a Pakistani father and an English mother. His father was from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of British India in 1947. After his parents married, the family settled in Bromley where Kureishi was born.

Contextual information:-

Immigration in the 1960s. Britain saw the first significant wave of immigrants in the late 1940s and carried on through to the 1960s (Caribbean, African and Asian). In the text Haroon and Anwar; faced a “colour bar” in housing/employment.

Most immigrants received hostile treatment and racism by British white working class organisations – (In the novel page 149; “Eat, Shit Pakis,” & p. 53).

However advocacy of ‘Black Britain’ emerged in the 1960s as a response to discriminatory social conditions. Immigrants in Britain came together and drew on the US Black Power movement (e.g. Angela Davis and Malcolm X for inspiration – see page 95 of text).

In the 1980s Thatcherism, followed by high unemployment as well as nostalgia for Imperialism (restlessness and violent racism increased by Thatcher’s famous ‘swamp’ speech: - “People are rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people with a different culture.” - 1978)

Around the same time Enoch Powell’s and “Rivers of Blood” speech also criticized Commonwealth immigration: “Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with much blood.” (1968)

Kureishi’s novel is profoundly anti-Thatcherite and argues against the idea of “domestic colonization.”

Narrative devices:-

Bildungsroman

The novel is a coming of age novel tells the story of a first generation of British-born immigrant coming of age and asserting their rights & culture. It is a multicultural novel that signifies generational differences (e.g. between Haroon vs Karim)

Themes:-

Race/ Racism/Resistance to Racism

Kureishi ionizes assumptions of immigrants and “Pakis”:- (Haroon, Princess Jeeta offer different historical contexts for racism). He also crosses racial lines: Allie, Charlie, Karim and Jamila negate and offer alternative to Edward Said’s colonial discourse (Eva exoticises this and Haroon exploits this).

Racial intermixing/ changing landscape of Britain

Duncan Sandys (Conservative MP) said in the 1980s that: “The breeding of millions of half-caste children would merely produce a generation of misfits and create national tensions.” (1967)

Kureishi who himself was of mixed heritage, wrote in reply: “I wasn’t a misfit, I could join the elements of myself together. It was the others, they wanted misfits; they wanted you to embody within yourself their ambivalence.” (Dreaming and Scheming, 27-8) In the novel Kuerishi reflects this defiance- (Karim says: “having emerged from two old histories.” Page 3)

Racial prejudice & Stereotypes

Karim asked to play Mowgli in his school play of the Jungle Boy: “You were just pandering to prejudices” (p.152)

Class

There is a shifting meaning of class in Britain in 1960s and 1970s with increasing class divisions and social mobility in post-war Britain.

“For immigrants and their families, disorder and strangeness is the condition of their existence. They want a new life and the material advancement that goes with it. But having been ripped from one world and flung into another, what they also require, to keep everything together, is tradition, habitual ideas, stasis. Life in the country you have left may move on, but life in the diaspora is often held in strange suspension, as if the act of moving has provided too much disturbance as it is.” -- Hanif Kureishi, Dreaming and Scheming (3)

Gender and Sexuality/ crossing boundaries

The novel shows sexual experimentation and freedom from strictures of gender roles and sexuality. (Depicted in Karim’s bisexuality and mixed-race origins).

All in all resistance to racism is depicted through crossing race/class/gender/sexual boundaries but at the same time it is limited, so there is desire for greater historicisation of Britain and immigrant histories to combat racism.

Alternative identity

The novel shows a new way of being English: “That is, it [Kureishi’s work] reconceives urban Englishness as a racially mixed, erotically charged, and economically determined state of being; as a condition of painful ambivalence […] ; as a mode of life encompassing both violence and toleration, both cynicism and heartfelt commitment to “the new enterprise culture.” From Jefferson Hunter, English Filming English Writing (Indiana UP, 2010): 4-5

Further reading

Hanif Kureishi, Introduction to London Kills Me: x

Hanif Kureishi, Dreaming and Scheming

W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

Paul Gilroy, ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation’ (1987)

From Jefferson Hunter, English Filming English Writing (Indiana UP, 2010): 4-5

Ball, John Clement. "The Semi-Detached Metropolis: Hanif Kureishi's London." ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature. Vol 27, No 4 (October 1996): 7-27

Rushdie, Salman, Imaginary Homelands

Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Hanif Kureishi. (Manchester UP, 2002)

Edward Said’s Orientalism.

Saturday, 15 September 2012

What to Watch: "Dis Poem" by MutaBaruka

Season of Migration to the North

Author

Tayeb Salih (1929-2009):

• Studied at the University of Khartoum before leaving for the University of London in England.

• Came from a background of small farmers and religious teachers

• Worked as a broadcaster

• Worked with UNESCO

About the text:

• 1966 novel – published in Beirut in 1967

• Banned in Sudan

• Novel about two Sudanese men of different generations, each of whom

• travels North for education in England and returns to the Sudan

• Investigates colonial racism and sexism

• Explores identity split between West/East and North/South

Contextual information:

• Sudan gained independence from Egypt and the UK in 1956

• Novel returns to the colonial era: The character Mustafa was born in Khartoum in 1898 (page 18), the year of the bloody defeat of the Mahdist forces by Kitchener's army in the battle of Omdurman, which signalled the final collapse of Sudanese resistance to British encroachment.

Interesting narrative techniques:

• Framed narrative

– 1001 Arabian Nights

– “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

– The Reluctant Fundamentalist

• Dislocations among spaces: England, Egypt and Sudan

• Use of Doppelgänger

• First-person perspective is turned inward and registers a series of visions in which inner and outer realities are often fused

• Relational stream-of-consciousness

• Reference to Othello

• Reference to Ford Madox Hueffer (Ford)

Characterisation: Doppelgänger:-

1. Mustafa Sa’eed	2. Primary narrator
• Studies and becomes a Lecturer in Economics at University of London • Nicknamed “the black Englishman” • Drives three women to suicide and murders one • Jailed for 7 years when he kills Jean Morris • During a flood, disappears (presumed dead) • Secret locked room that is a kind of shrine to his English life/wife	• Studies English poetry (doctorate) • Goes to Khartoum to teach pre-Islamic Arabic poetry at the secondary school level • Later works as a bureaucrat in the Education ministry in Khartoum • Falls in love with the widow of Mustafa • Novel ends with him floating on the Nile, yelling for help.

Themes:

Arab Patriarchy:

• Whether father, brother, or husband, man is guardian or master of woman and totally controls her life. (From text: “Does she imagines she's some queen or princess? Widows in this village are more common than empty bellies. She should thank God she's found a husband like me .... She'll marry me whatever you [the narrator] or she says or does. Her father's agreed and so have her brothers. ... In this village the men are guardians of the women.” (pp. 97-98)

• Early marriage is welcome to guarantee the bride's virginity, a symbol of family honor. Forced marriages are customary and it is taken for granted that the girl has no say in the choice of her husband. (Example from text- Hosna's father promises her to Wad Rayyes, then swears at her and beats her until she yields (p. 122). Mahjoub himself, the narrator's life-long friend and Hosna's former playmate, says, "Women belong to men, and a man's a man even if he's decrepit" (p. 99). /The narrator's mother also judges Hosna in the following terms: "What an impudent hussy! That's modern women for you!" (p. 123).

• Sexual life and sexual fulfillment are therefore prohibited to women, while men indulge in polygamy and concubinage.

• Indeed, the circumcision of women is still practised and is often mentioned in Season (p. 80 for example), curbing sexual desire in the woman. Salih and Mahfouz dramatize this traditional outlook on marriage and sex in their novels.[1]

• In the novel, Sudanese wife (Hosna Bint Mahmoud) is, however, left prey to the sexual fancies of the much-married, 70-year-old Wad Rayes with the complicity of the village patriarchy, she is forced into marriage while the narrator is away in Khartoum and he sexually assaults her and she kills him and commits suicide.

Cultural/Racial Difference &
Sado-Masochistic Sex:

• “Just as imperialism had violated its victims, Mustafa violates his, and his unwitting lovers become sacrifices in his violent campaign. The acts of finding lovers and engaging with them sexually become scouting operations and skirmishes in a war fought on the personal level. The descriptions used by Mustafa for his conquests are couched not only in terms of military operations in general, but in terms of traditional Arab military campaigns in particular: going to meet new victims is described in terms of saddling his camels; the process of court-ship is compared to laying siege, involving tents, caravans, the desert, and so forth. The imagery associated with sexual acts are those of battle: bows, axes, spears, and especially swords and knives. He compares his exploits to those of Tarik ibn-Ziyad, the commander of the Arab army that conquered Spain in the eighth century, as he tells the narrator, ‘I imagined the Arab soldiers' first meeting with Spain. Like me at this moment, sit-ting opposite Isabella Seymour, a southern thirst being quenched in the northern mountain passes of history’” (S, p. 46).

Source: Saree S. Makdisi, “The Empire Renarrated: "Season of Migration to the North" and the Reinvention of the Present,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 18, No. 4, Identities (Summer, 1992), p. 811.

Sexual desire North/South:

• “In her eyes I was a symbol of all her hankerings. I am south that yearns for the North and the ice" (30).

• Mustafa embodies an "icy" aura and contends to have no feelings or emotions, just a heartless and reckless person.

• The two aspects are present together in this passage dealing with a woman: "...a southern thirst being dissipated in the mountain passes of history in the north" (42).

Critical perspectives:

• The translator, Denys Johnson-Davies, says about the novel: “Season has been variously described as an "Arabian Nights" in reverse, or as a story of a modern-day Othello who seeks to turn the political tables on the West by bedding as many of its women as he can.” (Johnson-Davies v)

Do you agree with this statement?

• “Season is, generally, a novel, a form imported by the Arabs from the West during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Europe and the Middle East confronted each other over issues of culture, colonialism and curiosity. But if Season is, by Western literary critical definitions, a novel, it nonetheless participates as well in what, in Arabic literary terms is called mu'aradah, literally opposition, contradiction, but here a formula whereby one person will write a poem, and an-other will retaliate by writing along the same lines, but reversing the meaning. Tayeb Salih's use of the "novel" form might be taken as a practice of this sort. It is a re-reading of Shakespeare's Othello, a restatement of the tragedy, a re-shaping of the tragic figure of the Moor.”

Source: Barbara Harlow, "Sentimental Orientalism: Season of Migration to the North and Othello," Amyuni, p. 75.

Is it a rewriting of Othello?

Season of Migration to the North & Othello

Othello/ Desdemona

Sa’eed/ Isabella

There are two direct references to Othello in the novel. The protagonist Sa'eed compares himself to Othello as he talks to Isabella Seymour, an English woman whom he seduces (she can be read as a Desdemona figure).

Reference: “There came a moment when I felt I had been transformed in her eyes into a naked, primitive creature, a spear in one hand and arrows in the other, hunting elephants and lions in the jungles. This was fine. Curiosity has changed to gaiety, and gaiety to sympathy, and when I stir the still pool in the depths the sympathy will be transformed into a desire upon whose taut strings I shall play as I wish. ‘What race are you?’ she asked me. ‘Are you African or Asian?’ ‘I am like Othello-Arab-African,’ I said to her.” (Salih, Season 38)

Mustafa as Anti-Othello:

• He says: "I am no Othello: I am a lie," and that "I am no Othello: Othello was a lie" (S, pp. 37, 98).

• Does not kill out of love

• Does not kill himself after he kills the Desdemona figure

• Character seems to be all intellect with no heart

• Masquerade: adopts various identities with lovers: Richard, Hassan, Charles, Amin, and Mustafa

• Senses that he is wearing a mask in the West, but also goes home and hides his identity – so he is in a constant state of masquerade.

Open Ending:

• Image of the narrator as a kind of compass on the river, floating (167). Perhaps the river represents the dying waters of colonialism?

• He is filled with rage at everything that has happened, and also at himself, so the narrator plunges into the Nile. A “numbness” strikes him, “half-way between north and south”, leaving him “unable to return” (167). From the water, he sees birds flying “northwards”, perhaps in a “migration”, and he “wak[es] from the nightmare” (168). He decides that there are things worth living for, and he shouts for help (169).

• Fluid, uncertain ending.

[1] Source: Mona Takieddine-Amyuni, “Images of Arab Women in Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz, and Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Feb., 1985), pp. 25-36

Friday, 14 September 2012

Monday, 3 September 2012

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SAM SELVON’S “THE LONELY LONDONERS”

(Sam Selvon, The Lonely Londoners. Edinburgh: Longman, 1985).

TALKING POINTS:

LANGUAGE

In The Lonely Londoners Selvon does not use Standard English but vernacular Caribbean speech patterns. The Lonely Londoners opens up: “One grim winter evening, when it had a kind of unrealness about London… Moses Aloetta hop on a number 46 bus at the corner of Chepstow Road and Westbourne Grove to go to Waterloo to meet a fellar who was coming from Trinidad on the boat-train.” (23) From the beginning, Selvon weaves his narrative establishing the Caribbean dialect in literary form. Furthermore by addressing his readers with a Trinidadian dialect Selvon draws on the poetics of the oral tradition, as the dialect has a musical air, evident in the rhythm and rhyme of the lines.

NARRATIVE STYLE

Selvon’s narrative style is very optimistic; it seems to echo the early, hopeful migrant Calypso songs about London such as Lord Kitchener’s song, “London Is the Place for Me”. Perhaps in an effect get the British public to sympathise with the migrant experience?

IDENTITY & THE CITY

British identity is reconstructed in the landscape of Britain, particularly London, as the Caribbean migrants adapt but also introduced their own unique culture and customs to the city. Selvon’s migrant characters rename landmark destinations in their Caribbean vernacular so that familiar destinations, such as Notting Hill, Marble Arch and Bayswater are reinvented.

The products available are also another indication of the impact Caribbean migrants having on the city as: “Before Jamaicans start to invade Brit’n, it was a hell of a thing to pick up a piece of salt fish anywhere, or to get thing like pepper sauce or dasheen or even garlic. . . But now, papa! Shop all about start to take in stocks of foodstuffs what West Indians like, and today is no trouble at all to get salt fish and rice.” (76)

RACISM & THE ‘OTHER’

In The Lonely Londoners the idea of the migrant as an outsider is a recurrent theme, for example when Galahad pushes in the queue and a lady says in response: “They’ll have to do better, you know.” (44) The woman’s language creates an immediate binary between Galahad and herself classing him as an outsider.

CALYPSO & MUSIC AS A UNIFIER

In The Lonely Londoners Calypso music plays a very important part within the narrative. The Calypso music played at the Fete, which is largely Caribbean event, is attended by a mix of people and creates a convivial atmosphere. Thus the music acts as a bridge between cultural and racial barriers.

MULTICULTURALISM, CULTURAL INTERMIXING & MISCEGENATION

Racial intermixing is rejected in The Lonely Londoners, when “The father want to throw Bart out the house because he don’t want no curly-hair children in the family” (65) but it is also celebrated, as Moses describes: “Thus it was that Henry Oliver Esquire, alias Sir Galahad, descend on London to swell the population by one, and eight and a half months later it had a Galahad junior in Ladbroke Grove and all them English people stopping in the road and admiring the baby curly hair when the mother pushing it in the pram as she go shopping for rations” (35). These images are a forecast of the changing face of Britain, since Britain is now one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world.

FUTHER READING

Dawson, Ashley. Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Dyer, Rebecca. “Immigration, Postwar London, and the Politics of Everyday Life in Sam Selvon's Fiction.” Cultural Critique No. 52, (Autumn 2002), 108-144.

Hall, Stuart. “Calypso Kings” Friday 28 June 2002. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2002/jun/28/nottinghillcarnival2002.nottinghillcarnival

Proctor, James. Writing Black Britain, 1948-98: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.

Wambu, Onyekachi. Black British Literature since Windrush. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/literature_01.shtml.

EXPLORING THE POEMS IN LINTON KWESI JOHNSON’S “MI REVALUESHANARY FREN: SELECTED POEMS”

AUTHOR

Linton Kwesi Johnson (aka LKJ) was born in Jamaica, 24 August 1952. He is a UK-based dub poet. In 2002 he became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. Most of Johnson's poetry is political, dealing mainly with the experiences of being an African-Caribbean in Britain. His performance poetry involves the recitation of his own verse in Jamaican Patois over dub-reggae. His performances can be found on YouTube.

“FIVE NIGHTS OF BLEEDING”

Poem is written in a hybrid Jamaican dialect; consisting of a mixture of Jamaican and English, known as “Creole”.

It offers a more expansive notion of British identity through the reconstruction of the urban British landscape. LKJ deliberately takes the reader through highly concentrated Afro-Caribbean areas, such as Brixton and Sheppard’s Bush to draw attention to the strong Afro-Caribbean presence.

The poem also holds violent images: “cold blades as sharp as the eyes of hate” and repeated utterances of “madness…madness…war.” It could be argued that these are violent and possessive images, reminiscent of the violent colonial practices employed by empirical powers to take possession of nations.

“IT DREAD INNNA INGLAN”

Poem is also written in the same style of “Five nights of Bleeding.” Apparently LKJ wrote it after Margret Thatcher won the election, so could be seen as a response to Margaret Thatcher’s ‘swamping’ speech. LKJ mockingly addresses “Maggi Tacha” and calls on all British migrants, from “African/Asian/ West Indian/ an Black British”, to “stan firm inna Inglan”, declaring “we are here to stay”. In this poem LKJ offers a diverse representation of British identity, uniting the perceived outsiders and resolving his racist opponents to the status of the nameless ‘other’.

“FORCES OF VICTRI”

LKJ was politically involved in the carnival movement and wrote the poem, “Forces of Victri”, to celebrate the continuation of the Noting Hill Carnival. The poem begins: “We’re di forces af vicri/ An wi comin rite through/ We’re di forces af victri/ Now was yu gonna do”. The poem has echoes of a defiant protest chant. The poem also has an evident rhyme and rhythm pattern, which makes the tone very challenging, with the Creole vernacular also enhancing the challenging sentiments.

FUTHER READING

D’ Aguiar, Fred. Introduction in Mi Revalueshanary Fren: Selected poems, Linton Kwesi Johnson. London: Penguin Classics, 2002.

Dawson, Ashley. Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Hall, Stuart. “Calypso Kings” Friday 28 June 2002. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2002/jun/28/nottinghillcarnival2002.nottinghillcarnival

Proctor, James. Writing Black Britain, 1948-98: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.

Wambu, Onyekachi. Black British Literature since Windrush. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/literature_01.shtml