Postcolonial Homelands

Bharati Mukherjee explores the life and experience of an Indian girl as she immigrates to America and ingratiates herself into American culture. The main character of Jasmine during this journey has many experiences of home and building a new home, after she gets married and leaving her childhood home, to going to New York, to moving to Elsa County in Iowa. It is important that Mukherjee chose to show the immigrant experience as an immigrant herself in this time where our country is so divided about the issue of immigration and if the United States should close its borders. Jasmine experiences people all along this spectrum of opinions around immigration. The people of Elsa County are the most open to Jasmine as opposed to the more immigrant populations of New York and Tampa. Jasmine is confused by the American people’s apathy and hatred towards immigrants. There is one scene in the novel when she is watching the news and it is covering a raid by Immigration officials of a warehous...

Bharati Mukherjee develops an image of sexuality and femininity tied to purpose with the character of Jasmine that is entirely not cut and dry. One side of this idea of identity tied to sexuality is presented by other characters’ interactions with Jasmine. There is a consistent theme in this novel of men seeing Jasmine as an object for their taking.  Jasmine’s first experience with pain (that the reader is told) is tied to her womanhood. The Astrologer predicts her fate to be consumed by her widowhood and exile (Mukherjee 3). Throughout the novel, Jasmine comments on men staring at her for her beauty. Even her adopted son cannot resist glancing at her. Jasmine has internalized this view of herself as she dresses up to go see Prakash and she knows she can use her looks to become desirable.  When Jasmine does get the chance to be free of male judgment, she rejoices. This highlights the struggle that she has internalized as a woman: her identity is tied to what other people ...

          "Jyoti of Hapsanur was not Jasmine, Duff's day mummy and Taylor and Wylie's au pair in Manhattan; that Jasmine isn't  this  Jane Ripplemeyer... which of us is the undetected murderer of a half-faced monster, which of us has held a dying husband, which of us was raped and raped and raped in boats and cars and motel rooms" (Mukherjee 127). Throughout this course, we've seen many characters struggle with self identification. The struggle of self identifying so far has generally been presented as a conflict between oneself and the cultures around them. Often, there are other characters who oppose their identification. For Jasmine, however, the challenge of defining herself comes less from other's limitations of her, but from her own freedom to choose.        Obviously, as an immigrant and a woman, Jasmine is vulnerable. There certainly are restrictions and obstacles she must face, but much of her internal conflict comes from...

There is an intriguing parallel between the Hindi belief in reincarnation and the variety of ways in which Jasmine identifies herself throughout the text. Mary Webb first introduces the concept of reincarnation in her conversation with Jasmine at lunch. She tells Jasmine “‘This idea cannot be new or bizarre to you. Don’t you Hindis keep revisiting the world?’” (126). In other words, she assumes that Jasmine believes in reincarnation. Jasmine goes on to confirm this assumption. She responds to Mary Webb, “‘yes, I am sure that I have been reborn several times,’” (126). While it is possible that Jasmine actually does believe that she has been reincarnated, her experience of her present life actually resembles a type of reincarnation. Jasmine identifies herself differently depending on her current circumstances. In the second half of the book we are introduced to “Jase” (176), the name that Taylor calls Jasmine. Jasmine characterizes this new name by deciding “I like the name he gave me.....

Jasmine Bharati Mukherjee Chapters 1-17 Bharati Mukherjee -           Born: July 27, 1940 – Died: Jan 28, 2017 -           Born in Kolkata, West Bengal, India -           Attended the Loreto School in Europe, going back to U of Calcutta in early 1950’s -           M.F.A from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop in 1963 o    Big program for creative writers §   Very successful, 17 Pulizter Prize winners came from here as of 2018 ·        Philip Roth & Flannery O’Connor o    Met her husband, Clark Blaise, here §   Born in Fargo, North Dakota and attended Denison University and U of Iowa -           Her fiction all revolves around the internal culture clashes of her immigrant characters...

If a person’s character is flawed, how do you judge their words? If a person is proven to be a liar, cheat and debaucherously individual, can you trust what they say at face value? Or do their underlying principles fundamentally change the definition of their comments, regardless of whether or not you believed them at first? These are the questions that are posed when dealing with the yogi Babu Vivekanand. At his first introduction in the beginning of chapter 9, Babu spouts revelation after wise proverb, one upping each statement with one even more profound than the last. He poses to be an interesting character. On one hand, he delivers much of what this book is about, traditionalism vs modernism and, more importantly, that we are all brought together through the fundamental nature of the similarity of human existence. Or, that we all share something between us, a desire to have community with others, pain from the countless physical irregularities, prejudices and evils that affect ...

A couple classes ago I mentioned my three - hour conversation over a recent weekend with my roommates about critical and potentially controversial on my part discerning of identity, including that of race, gender, and socio-economic status in particular. Amazingly the whole critical and (at times) tense conversation began with my roommate making a pop-culture reference to our other roommate and my being excited of having been a bit familiar with the case. The controversy of YouTube personality Trisha Paytas’ self identifying as both “trans MTF” and “1000%” with his/her biologically assigned gender [female] confused and offended many audiences, many laughing off his/her ignorance, or in some cases actively discounting the person’s understanding and dignity. I can not speak for this person, but it almost felt like he/she was missing the word gender fluidity, or misguidedly adopting this language to validate controversial desires. Policing and determining our collective social norms i...

Nathan Galloway 10/23/19 EN376 Dr. Ellis Silver Linings in “Kisses in the Nederends”             The driving force behind the plot of Epeli Hau’ofa’s book  Kisses in the Nederends is the pain and suffering that Oilei Bomboki experiences as a result of his multiple anal fistulas. Hau’ofa initially presents Oilei’s experiences as largely negative. However, by the conclusion of the story, Oilei has been transformed into a new man because of the trials he has gone through.               In the first half of the book, the experiences that Oilei has are harmful to both himself and his community. His farting and pain result in arguments between his wife and himself where he threatens her viciously. "I promise you, you dried up old bag, if anyone outside these walls hears of this, I'll wring your fucking neck four fucking times. Do you hear, me?" (Hau...

Epeli Hau’ofa’s novel Kisses in the Nederends satirizes Polynesian societies, commenting on almost every aspect from the daily routine of the islanders to the political corruption of the elite. The fictional Tipota is a stand-in for Tonga or Fiji, both places Hau’ofa lived in for many years. His no-holds-barred style reserves a piece of loving criticism for all the people of Tipota, placing a special emphasis on the stagnation of the island, and the peoples’ inability to escape the middle-point between traditional and modern living. Tipota is juxtaposed somewhere between their past and the contemporary, globalized world of the so-called “First World.” This is especially evident in the medical crisis Oilei finds himself in. When he first experiences his anal pain he goes to a “Western” doctor, who gives him painkillers that, “Were long out of date but were the only ones available in the country” (Hau’ofa 7). Upon returning home he unwillingly sees another healer, Marama. Her practic...

Across many of the texts that we have encountered in Postcolonial Literature there has been an underlying theme of gender and male/female relationships. Not only does examining relationships help readers to understand characters themselves, but it also allows readers to gain insight to cultural and societal standards and aspects of homelands.  Kisses in the Nederends  by Epeli Hau’ofa is a prime example of how romantic relationships help shape cultural stigmas, stereotypes and definitions.              Within the different novels we have looked at there has been different types of romantic relationships in which the power dynamics between male and female shift. In the novel  Things Fall Apart  by Chinua Achebe we see a male dominated society. In  Sons for the Return Home  by Albert Wendt we experience a shift within the male and female roles embracing power and heritage, where a male from a...

            Typically, I relate my homelands analysis to my weekly service-learning session at Bridges. However, I could not pass up the opportunity to share a timely conversation I had with my UBER driver last week. It was as if I had received a personal guest lecture as a supplement to our coursework.             I took an UBER to the airport from campus at the start of the long weekend. I usually endure a rather silent, awkward ride with UBER drivers, yet for some unknown reason (perhaps my excitement at the thought of returning home), I felt compelled to spark a conversation. When the driver mentioned that he was attending college, I asked him about his school and his course of study. The conversation quickly transformed into a discussion surrounding opportunities for social mobility in the United States. When he inquired about my own experience, I shared my belief that some people have...

From King’s famous line “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” to the refined mission of the Jesuits Kolvenbach deposits as moving from “ ’the service of faith,’ [to] also include ‘the promotion of justice’ ” (23), these speakers are among many who raise a call to action to work to expand our sense of community and shift from concepts to action, to context, to experience, to the now. They both address justice, the role of experience, (directly and indirectly) the role of leaders for change, and the need to name a particular group to be protected now. Both work their messages through a faith structure assuming their audiences have connections to the respective faith bases. The directive to consider an action-based pursuit of faith and actualizing it challenges the understanding of our individual roles. Thus, that role, unlike that of professing the idealism of the concepts like peace and justice ad nauseam, requires preference and action for specific groups of parti...

Violence permeates the atmosphere of this novel. A dark sense of hopelessness prevails from the very first lines of the prologue mark this with the poem, “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes, there will also be singing. / About the dark times.” This poem is of two people speaking to one another. Maybe it is a child speaking to an adult, or a young person who has not yet experienced the ills of life. Whoever the person speaking might be in the first couplet, they show a kind of unknowingness and naivety, or hopefulness, of a better tomorrow. The hope might be that the singing is of better times, or times yet to come that will be better than what they are now. Yet the older, or more experienced, individual shows the first speaker of their lack of understanding by confirming that songs are sung, but that the songs are of their current situation. There is an acceptance of their current, “dark” situation that the second speaker has. It almost seems to be an apathy to it,...

It is interesting to see the notion of “justice” be so highly disputed in its definition and its usage. Of course, it sounds ignorant to say that my personal definition of a vague term is fully, and without need of definition or refinement, the same as everyone else’s. It is a term that produces a different image in everyone’s mind, yet revolves around similar themes of right and wrong. That is, perhaps, the biggest underlying theme that both of these letters discuss. What is justice? And through what methods can justice be attained? Both of these writers come from Christian backgrounds and so their understandings of justice would, one would think, be certain to be the same, if not with some minor differences. And for these two writers I would argue that they largely agree with one another. They are both writing to religious community leaders as a response to the keeping of the status quo. They both call for change, not change that comes through the “inevitability of time” which Ki...

Both Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and Peter-Hans Kolvenbach  in his speech on the “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Education” write about injustice and how the world is reacting to these injustices compared to how the world and how society should be reacting to these injustices. While King focuses on internal and national injustices in the immediate aftermath of his arrest after the protest in Birmingham in 1963, Kolvenbach who wrote more recently in 2000 focuses on the apathy of our Jesuit universities to the suffering on an international scale. Both of them focus on an idea that King states in his letter, “the ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never” (King 2). When as the politically advantaged elite, we turn our cheek away from what is going on around us on both a national and international scale we are refusing justice to those less fortunate than those of us born into the elite. Kolvenbach states that it is ou...

Nathan Galloway A Letter From Birmingham Jail The  Letter From Birmingham Jail lays out Dr. King’s thought process behind direct action in the form of protest in Birmingham, Alabama. His letter responds to the criticism of his protests by white religious leaders in the south. What makes this letter so powerful and keeps it relevant today is the interconnectedness Dr. King argues for throughout the letter. Instead of using possible divisive rhetoric, he looks to the similarities between these religious leaders and himself. In his introduction, he reminds his audience, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” This quote is strikingly similar to many teachings in the Bible that call for a pursuit of justice and peace and that all God’s children are equal. These southern pastors would have seen this correlation and would ha...

Kolvenbach and Dr. King both urge their audiences to not only educate themselves in injustices occurring everywhere, but to commit one's entire life to the promotion of justice. Both activists explain their opposition to people who only learn but do not act, “Fostering the virtue of justice in people was not enough. Only a substantive justice can bring about the kinds of structural and attitudinal changes that are needed to uproot those sinful oppressive injustices that are a scandal against humanity and God” ( Kolvenbach, 27).  Kolvenbach even admits he was ignorant once and sat on the sidelines when there was a call to act. “Many of us failed to see the relevance of his message to our situation” (Kolvenbach,  24).  Justice is not something that waits for anyone, it is a bold demand. Learning about injustices is great but it is not enough to be well-meaning and leave it at that. Dr. King wrote this enrapturing letter with it's shrewd messages because "well-mea...

Fr. Kolvenbach and Dr. King both claim that justice is universal. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” writes King. Kolvenbach claims, “Tomorrow’s whole person must have, in brief, a well-educated solidarity.” In other words, all people share an obligation to denounce oppression, wherever it exists. If all people are created in the image of God, as Kolvenbach and King would certainly argue, than we have a responsibility to defend the humanity of everyone across the globe. This is quite the task. There seems to be a subtext to both of these pieces. Action is critical, words alone can not fight injustice. Kolvenbach spends a large part of his writing addressing this conflict within the Jesuit order. The Jesuits are largely centered around education. While Kolvenbach points out the critical role higher education plays in promoting justice, he also argues that this is contingent on its commitment to action. “To make sure that the real concerns of the poor find their p...

Throughout the course of the semester our class readings have had underlying aspects of inequality and justice. The term justice, to “just behavior or treatment” is a main theme discussed in both Peter-Hans Kolvenbach’s  Service of faith and promotion of justice in Jesuit higher education  and Martin Luther King Jr’s  Letter from Birmingham Jail . Throughout both of these texts there is a relationship to societal injustices to specific groups of people as well as the speech about systemic change.              Both of these texts discuss inequality in relation to the actions of the man. Both Kolvenbach and King accumulate the idea that man himself needs to change his actions in order for justice to be brought and inequality to be irradiated.  It is interesting to see the trail that each text traces as a source of inequality. King focuses specifically on the institution while Kolvenbach looks at t...

In discussing postcolonial literature, the class has encountered people who face a variety of forms of injustices. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fr. Kolvenbach each present a distinct guide to justice which serve as a potential solution. Although their ideas were originally documented for different audiences, they contain several similarities. They both, for example, identify man as the source of injustice and place responsibility upon man to amend it. King recognizes the temptation to view time as a cure. However, he argues that “time is neutral,” (4). Instead he encourages people to make action and make use of time to combat injustice. While Kolvenbach casts blame on man as well, he cites another reason in addition to “lukewarm complacency,” (3). He blames man’s “selfishness” in light of the solutions to injustice which have been made available through modern technology. According to Kolvenbach, in addition to being complacent, “we are simply not willing to pay the price of a mor...