Reorienting the Afghan woman in Denmark: Negotiating gender and xenophobia in Amulya Malladi’s The Sound of Language

Abstract

In Europe, the increasing transnationalization of borders has given rise to a new economy of xenophobia and nationalist sensibilities. Muslim women bear the brunt of Europe's orientalizing epistemologies that tokenize their bodies as sites of gender and cultural otherness. One of the challenges for Women's Studies is not only how to dismantle such epistemologies, but also how to celebrate women's differences without homogenizing their experiences. Rosi Braidotti has recently proposed a transpositional approach that highlights the importance of creative and ethical insight in engendering other, alternative ways of knowing. This article argues that fostering alternative ways of knowing, being and becoming lies at the heart of Amulya Malladi's novel, The Sound of Language (2008). Set in Denmark, the novel tells the story of an Afghan refugee, Raihana, who feels traumatized by the war being waged in her country, but also by the Danish integration programme that strives to assimilate her to Danish culture via the so-called praktik (involving three years of language and vocational training). Through Raihana's encounters with various inflections of racism, but also through her growing friendship with Gunnar, a Danish beekeeper, Malladi not only debunks the traditional epistemologies underpinning European multiculturalism, but also exposes the Muslim community's own prejudices, whilst simultaneously creating bridges across cultural and gender divides. Read against the background of Danish immigration policies, Malladi's novel provides valuable lessons about the role literature can play in transforming stale multicultural positions into transpositions that are not only ethical, but also feminist and political.