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Introduction: Bapsi Sidhwa's An American Brat
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12123 |
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BOOK WORLD
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3 / 1994 |
252 Words |
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What happens when an impetuous sixteen year-old Pakistani girl leaves her homeland and wealthy family to encounter America? In An American Brat, novelist Bapsi Sidhwa lets lively teenager Feroza Ginwalla tell her own story and along the way explores the vagaries of two vastly different cultures.
In an effort to reverse Feroza's conservative views, which have been nurtured by Pakistan's rising tide of fundamentalism, her parents send her to visit her uncle Manek in America. Manek is a graduate student at MIT, recently arrived from Pakistan himself. Her parents' ploy works only too well, as Feroza embraces American culture. She enrolls in a university and plans to marry until family influence and differences in tradition erode that relationship. In this issue, we feature an excerpt showing Feroza on her arrival, with flashbacks to her life in Pakistan.
Sidhwa examines two ways of life in Feroza's story, particularly contrasting freedom with responsibility. Underlying themes are the workings of family and the role of women in society. Two commentators, Pakistani scholar Fawzia Afzal-Khan and author Edward Hower, explore by analysis and interview Sidhwa's values and influence.
Sidhwa grew up and was educated in Lahore, Pakistan. She has taught at Columbia, Rice, and the University of Texas. Her previous novels include The Crow Eaters, The Bride, and Cracking India.. A social activist among Asian women, she represented Pakistan at the Asian Women's Congress in 1975. Among other awards, she received the Sitara-I-Imtiaz, Pakistan's highest honor in the arts, in 1991.
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