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Culture Clash
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12107 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1994 |
1,638 Words |
| Author
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Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Fawzia Afzal-Khan is the author of Imperialism and the Indo-
English Novel and professor of world literature at Montclair
State College. |
Bapsi Sidhwa's latest novel, An American Brat, announces her entry into the orbit of diasporic fiction shared by such better-known South Asian writers as Bharati Mukherjee and Salman Rushdie. She handles the change in theme and locale just as adroitly as do her luminary counterparts.
Sidhwa's earlier novels--The Crow Eaters, The Bride, and Cracking India--all portray life in her home territory in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent and the tumultuous history of partition and independence. An American Brat moves its locale, for the most part, to the New World, in particular to the United States, that heady place of youthful independence.
The plot is fairly simple. Feroza, a young Pakistani Parsi girl, is packed off for a summer visit to America by her parents, who wish to protect her from the conservative influence of the Islamic fundamentalism weeping the country during the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq. Once in America, however, Feroza, with the encouragement of her rambunctious maternal uncle and guardian, Manek, decides to stay. She enrolls in hotel management at a Midwestern college, much to the chagrin of her parents, who had expected her to return home after the summer. The rest of the story charts Feroza's development, her coming-of-age in an alien culture, and the stress that accrues when colliding cultural values demand expression in her life.
Sidhwa's work comes alive as it presents elements of this cultural clash: from a humorous delineation of Parsi sensibilities wounded by westernization's effects on the younger generation to equally amusing descriptions of immigrants in America. It is the novel's evenhandedness of cultural representation--of Pakistani Muslims and Parsis (Zoroastrians), on the one hand, and of America, largely secular although rooted in JudeoChristian mores, on the other--that truly deserves acclaim for sensitivity in today's climate charged with racial, ethnic, and religious tensions.
Sidhwa's humor is both situational and a result of astute characterization. It keeps the tone lively and entertaining, even when serious issues are at stake. For example, when members of the extended family gather to discuss their shock at learning that their beloved Feroza plans to marry a non-Parsi (an American Jew, in fact), Sidhwa, through the guise of humor, shows how the elders exert the pressures of conformity and tradition on the youngsters by applying forms of emotional blackmail. Reprimanding a young cousin who dares to defend Feroza, the older women terrorize her by relating tales of the horrors
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