British Asian Literature Research Articles

A decolonial reading of the Punjabi (m)other in British Asian literature

ABSTRACT This reading focuses on the mother figure in recent novels and memoirs by Punjabi-origin male writers. These texts can be seen as forms of translation into modernity, of subjects that are rarely represented in English-language literature, that cannot be recognised by the text, that exist at its margins. These texts are founded in the idea of the nation; which is unable to contain or represent these mother figures. Where is the nation for the non-English speaking Sikh and Muslim mothers in the texts if it is neither India nor Britain (where acceptance is conditional on being ‘modern’, speaking English, secular)? The ‘difference’ of these mother figures means that they don’t fit into the idea of Britain; their identities are tied up with the immediate communities in which they live and the regions from whence they hail. There is little connection to the British citizen-making project and ‘multiculturalism’. Decolonial readings of these texts through regional (Punjabi) lens can help to read the mother figures better, reading her ‘difference’. Meanwhile, resilience can be seen as a form of resistance to British hegemony – connected to rural Punjabi female resistance (resilience) to British and Indian elite hegemony under British colonialism.

Postmigrant Revisions of Hybridity, Belonging, and Race in Gautam Malkani's Londonstani

This article argues that black British and British Asian literature has changed faster than the postcolonial/migratory theories through which it is often read and has entered an "indigene period" (Osborne 3). The ways in which ideas like hybridity, belonging, and race are usually employed are no longer useful for analysing this literature, mainly because they originate in binary conceptualisations of migrant and non-migrant identities that are increasingly disappearing in the literary works themselves. The concepts remain relevant but need revision. To contribute to this work, the article explores the emerging concept of "postmigration." Postmigration breaks away from the migrant/non-migrant binary by arguing that migration and cultural and racial heterogeneity are no longer exceptional phenomena. They have become the norm in European societies and are now ordinary features of everyday life that affect all citizens, regardless of background. The article focuses on the postmigrant idea that in order to normalize migration as integral to everyday social reality, migration must no longer be positioned as an object of research but should instead become its point of departure. This transformation requires two shifts: research on non-white European art and culture needs to be "de-migratized," while European social and cultural studies need to undergo a general "migratization" (Römhild 44). The article then shows how concepts like hybridity, belonging, and race signify differently in black British and British Asian novels when "de-migratized" by a postmigrant perspective. The article provides a reading of Gautam Malkani's Londonstani that demonstrates how the postmigrant perspective develops as an analytical tool in conjunction with the literary works it explores.

Reading the whiteness of British Asian literature: A reading of Sathnam Sanghera’s The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton

A text is assumed to reflect truth when its ideology meets that of the reader. British Asian literature has tended to be read as giving an insight into South Asian communities, as reflecting “truth”. Dominant readings do not tend to “see” the ways in which this literature, in terms of perspective, ideology, and the direction in which it faces, is located in Britishness as whiteness. This article, through a close reading of Sathnam Sanghera’s popular memoir The Boy with the Topknot, reverses the gaze on the community that the memoir is assumed to reveal, in order to highlight and identify what becomes normalized, invisible, universal in such a text. The article seeks to show how “Britishness” as whiteness is the normative perspective of the text, embodied in the second-generation British narrator as ideal integrated/assimilated citizen. From this perspective, non-whiteness, in the form of first generation immigrants as well as Sanghera’s younger self, is othered. The text reflects the state’s integrationist and assimilationist policies, founded on the assumption that “identity” is a construction that needs to be left behind, while intimating that a normalized whiteness/Britishness as “non-identity” should be embraced, revealing an internalized historicist racism. Meanwhile, “identity” and “difference” are used to sell British Asian texts such as this memoir — they are packaged as “multicultural”, “hybrid” (and, increasingly, “diverse”) products, and this is also how they are popularly read. Therefore, my reading of this text, as located in Britishness as whiteness, unpacks what terms such as multiculturalism, hybridity, and diversity may conceal. A counter reading of the text, which draws out the violence it reveals, of the historicist British racial state, highlights the role of readers’ assumptions in the construction of a text, suggesting that other readings are possible. This is also illustrated by alternative readings of the book by Sikh readers.

Mother-Weights and Lost Fathers

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The relative absence of South Asian American male writers, especially in comparison with British Asian literature, may be explained by the fact that Asian American literary traditions have generally proved more favourable to women than men. In the absence of a significant literary father figure in the manner of, for example, Salman Rushdie or Hanif Kureishi for younger British Asian male authors (and of course female writers too), South Asian lines of literary descent in the US have generally been female, following the success of Bharati Mukherjee. South Asian American men – including Dhan Gopal Mukerji, Dalip Singh Saund, Krishnalal Shridharani, Ved Mehta, A K Ramanujan, Agha Shahid Ali, Indran Amirthanayagam, G S Sharat Chandra and Abraham Verghese – have principally gravitated towards life writing, short fiction and poetry rather than the novel. These genres’ lower commercial profile may perhaps explain the lesser prominence of such authors. On the other hand, South Asian American cinema has traditionally been dominated by men, in particular the director M Night Shyamalan and the actors Kal Penn and Aasif Mandvi. 2. For Sameer Parekh, a male writer, the patterns are patrilineal but essentially the same, since his novel, Stealing the Ambassador (2002), explores the difficult interconnections between fathers, sons, grandfathers and national belonging. 3. Similar ideas are explored in British Asian cultural production, where fathers have suffered untimely deaths in texts as diverse as Farrukh Dhondy's short story, ‘East End at Your Feet’ (1976); Suhayl Saadi's stories, ‘Ninety-Nine Kiss-o-grams’ and ‘The Dancers’ (2001); and Sarfraz Manzoor's memoir, Greetings from Bury Park (2007 Lalwani, Nikita. 2007. Gifted, London: Penguin. [Google Scholar]), which is powered by the personal impact of Manzoor's father's unexpected death. In David Attwood's 1992 film, Wild West (written by Harwant Bains), the British Pakistani protagonist's father has already died when the film begins. 4. Ironically, neither Raj nor Nina is American-born; rather they belong to the so-called ‘1.5 generation’, born in one country before settling in another at a young age. 5. Occasionally the figure of the deceased mother haunts South Asian American literature: for instance, in Kamani's short story, ‘Just Between Indians’ (1995 Kamani , Ginu . ‘Lucky Dip’ . Junglee Girl . San Francisco , CA : Aunt Lute Books , 1995 . 15 – 43 . [Google Scholar]), and Lahiri's ‘Hema and Kaushik’ short story cycle from Unaccustomed Earth (2008); in each case, it is sons who have lost their mothers, those deaths both premature and tragic. See also Bob Roe (dir.), Dancing in Twilight (2004; written by Rishi Vij) which is premised on parental death, using Sameer's mother's death as its starting point and concluding with the presumed suicide of his father, Madhav. 6. Bapuji's attitude contrasts with Indian parents who encouraged their children to emigrate to the US in the 1960s and 1970s; see Kalita Kalita, S Mitra. 2003. Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage from India to America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP. [Google Scholar] 36.

Sara Upstone, British Asian Fiction: Twenty-first Century Voices

Sara Upstone’s British Asian Fiction proposes to examine the works of a series of British-born or British-raised authors on the basis of the contention that these writers signal the establishment of a “definitive genre of British Asian writing deserving recognition in its own right” (1). Aware of the pitfalls of labelling in a postcolonial context, Upstone proposes a rereading of Salman Rushdie and V. S. Naipaul as “transitional figures in the development of British Asian literature” (17) in ...

Race and antiracism in black British and British Asian literature

Race and antiracism in black British and British Asian literature