While reading Teju Cole’s Open City, I couldn’t help but draw some parallels with Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place.  In a passage describing Julius’s mother’s early childhood, Cole writes “[s]he couldn’t have known the absolute destitution [..], [b]ut she had retained the memory of having been aware of this hard beginning: not the memory of the suffering itself but the memory of knowing that it was what she had been born into” (80). While reading this passage, I was reminded of Kincaid’s critique of small places: places that use past oppression to justify their current situation.

Cole tackles the problem in less clear-cut lines, he presents us with a myriad of characters that have each experienced their own suffering. Julius seems less critical of the characters that do not let their past cast a shadow on their lives. The most prominent of these characters is oma, his grandmother, who “had likely been one of the countless women raped by the men of the Red Army” (80).  Even this piece of information is only speculative, and though we know oma lived and struggled through WWII, she has never complained about it. And this is what Julius values most in her. Cole, like Kincaid, is suggesting that we should not dwell on the past, and that past suffering should not dictate the present indefinitely.

Through my continued reading of Brick Lane by Monica Ali, I noticed how the theme of loneliness and lack of control have developed even further.  Nanzeen describes how she is still adjusting to being alone and not having real connections with her family and friends back home.  Her apparent fascination with suicide is quite clear as her mind continually swirls with the concept, almost to a point of jealousy.  Interestingly, we never see her explicitly act in a way that would convince someone of this obsession; we can only infer this from her narrated thoughts.  The same theme is apparent with Nanzeen’s clear discomfort with the large, black wardrobe.  Although she makes it clear to Charu that she does not like it, it stays nonetheless.  I believe this illustrates Nanzeen’s lack of power with her situation.  She didn’t have say in her marriage partner or location.  What I found interesting is how the black dresser constantly serves as a reminder to Nanzeen of this reality.  Although it is mentioned several times, I found the following passage to be very expressive of Nanzeen’s attitude towards it:

“It was the same every morning.  When she opened her eyes beneath the large black wardrobe she had the sensation- a relief in her bones- that the day had finally arrived.  Then she strained to remember what the day was, its significance, and she realized that it was a day like any other.  This particular morning, without moving from the bed, she ran her hand along the smooth lacquer of the wardrobe door… She had hated it for fifteen years but this had made no impression” (Chapter 12, eBook version)

The symbolic dresser is a proxy for Nanzeen’s loneliness and entrapment.  The shape and size of the dresser is eerily close to that of a large coffin.  I believe it represents the changes that Nanzeen cannot, or at least has not, made in her life so far.  I would definitely like to see Nanzeen eventually destroy the dresser as a way of liberating herself from its hold.

Through Nanzeen’s letters with Hasina, we learn how much she idolizes her sister’s independence and freedom.  She longs for that same experience, however, I believe she feels trapped by her own personal inability to allow herself to be free.  “Whenever she got a letter from Hasina… she imagined herself as independent woman too.  Nanzeen composed and recomposed her replies until the grammar was satisfactory… but Hasina kicked aside all such constraints: her letters were full of mistakes and bursting with life” (Chapter 4, eBook version).  There seems to be a fundamental difference between the sisters.  Nanzeen’s carefulness and obedience show in her writing, while Hasina’s carelessness and rebellious nature shows just as clearly.  Nanzeen admires her sister, even though she admits her unhappiness and struggles with men.  As a brother myself, I can very much relate to how Nanzeen feels in these times.  Although we are quite similar, my younger brother and I have distinctively different personalities and I believe at certain times we both envy certain character traits that the other possesses.

The first scene at the beginning of Chapter 13 serves as a powerful contrast between the culture that imprisons Nazneen and the freedom that she desperately desires. She transitions from carelessly moving throughout the apartment and marveling at the beauty of the red and gold sari, to feeling strangled and needing to rip the garment off of her. The change in her temperament is abrupt and volatile, but in keeping with the dissatisfaction she has with her life and the hostility she feels towards the role she is imprisoned by. The sari is a trigger, it is a physical reminder of the unhappiness in her life. Throughout this scene it seems like Ali is trying to evoke the violent imagery of suicide, while reading it I found Nazneen’s visceral reaction to wearing the sari comparable to someone who is hanging by a noose.

Later on in Chapter 14 her description of Mrs. Islam states “her voice was barely louder than the rustle of her lilac chiffon sari.” This line stuck out to me, because I thought it was a subtle commentary on the roles that imprison women in the Bangladeshi culture and this notion that women should be seen and not heard.

The element of clothing as well as the idea of Ice –skating are extremely influential in Ali’s development of Nazneen. Clothing becomes very important to Nazneen because she is always wearing a sari while American women wear short skirts and trousers. Because clothing is on the exterior it automatically singles her out in a group of Americans making it difficult for her to be more like them. The idea of Ice-skating becomes eroticized for Nazneen ever since she saw the woman ice0skate on television on page 20. These two elements provide Nazneen with an outlet for her to experiment with her place in the world.

On page 201 Nazneen has a virtual battle with her best Sari and because “it demanded her attention”, and  as she plays with it it catches her by the neck and  she feels as if it is strangling her and she pushes it away. This scene is very important because it shows Nazneen beginning to resent the sari that she has always worn and consciously recognize it as an impediment to her independence. She soon after realizes: “that if she changed her clothes then her entire life would change…it was clear that clothes, not faith made her life”(201) Ice skating and the experimentation of clothing go hand in hand in this book because for Nazneen they are the epitome of independence. The woman she saw ice skating on television seemed so powerful that Nazneen wanted to be like her. We see that Nazneen is making progress toward this goal on page 100 where she makes a triangle by lifting her left leg up exactly in the same way the woman on the television did.  For Nazneen part of being empowered is taking control of her sexuality. She also uses clothing to fulfill this desire. For example on page 99 she tries on her husband’s trousers but then instead hitches up her skirt and admires her legs. Again on page 158 she puts on one of the sequin shirts that she was working on and pretends to ice skate while also trying to accentuate her breast.

After being empowered by keeping the girls in London with her the book comes to an interesting end when her daughters take her ice skating and she sees a woman skating in jeans but then Razia decides to skate in her Sari  and says to Nazneen: “this is England… you can do whatever you like” (369) This is interesting because throughout the book Ali seems to idealize western clothing as better but in the end also says saris are just as good. I believe that Ali is trying to say that it is not the clothing that matters, but what you do in your clothing which in this case is Ice-skate which is empowering. This makes sense because Ali acknowledges earlier inn the book that is t is not the clothing itself that makes the women powerful, but the way in which they wear it. For example the woman on page 36 wears her clothing as armor  and weapons while Nazneen wears hers as a prison.

In our previous two classes we paid close attention to Nazneen’s fascination with the ice skaters.  Through the TV medium Nazneen watched the ice skaters perform.  She did not understand how they did not fall.  She did not understand why they wore so little.  She could not even pronounce the sport’s name.  Nazneen was separated from this way of life, yet she still was fascinated by their movements and admired their precision and control.  They would never fall.

The ice-skaters and what they represent makes this novel’s ending particularly intriguing.  On the final page Nazneen is surprised and taken to an ice-skating rink.  Although extremely excited, Nazneen still questions taking her Sari off.  Razia replies to Nazneen’s hesitance, “This is England… You can do whatever you like,” thus ending the novel in grandeur fashion. (Ali 415)  Ali ends her novel with an image of Nazneen potentially ice-skating in her Sari.  Nazneen represents a Bangladesh woman, who holds onto to her cultural roots, while also attempting to immerse herself into a new unknown way of life.  However Nazneen’s hesitance to take her sari off, although she has lived in England for a while, shows that she still struggles to adapt and break her own cultural norms.  Nazneen is clearly still in limbo and the reader does not now her route.

Ali’s ending of Nazneen finally breaking through the TV’s medium to physically experience freedom and England being a place of freedom feels cheap and grandiose.  I feel that after all she has endured in England throughout the novel that Ali is in fact being sardonic with this final statement.  It seems that, although the ending on the surface looks cheery, Ali leaves her reader’s with an unresolved pessimistic outcome. We know that England has some of the same repressive qualities as Bangladesh, and that the textile industry is almost just as bad, if not worse.

Lastly, as Nazneen watches the skaters she witnesses them be graceful and elegant.  They do not fall.  What is Ali saying at the end of the Novel when Nazneen, who has never skated before, approaches the ice with her sari?  Does she end up taking it off? We the readers imagine Nazneen rocking back and forth on the ice.  We the readers are left with the uncertainty of Nazneen’s final choices.  We never know if she takes the Sari off.  We never know if she falls or becomes fallen.  There is an uncertainty in the outcome for immigrants, cultural ties and assimilation.  Ali therefore leaves her readers without clarity or optimism.

In the second half of the book, Monica Ali takes upon herself to liberate her female characters; the only problem is that the liberation seems to always happen in the absence of men. Brick Lane cleverly uses gender relations as a tool to make the Bengali culture seem like a limiting culture. Ali’s oversimplification paints an image of a backwards culture that is making women either run away and/or fall.

Ali’s characters are often portrayed as post-colonial dependent workers who express their mixture of traditional and newly adopted culture in an aggressive and schizophrenic manner. Chanu continues being a very dull character, mostly unaware of how he is hurting Nazneen and their girls. The way Nazneen deals with him is by engaging in a love affair with the middleman Karim. Although it goes against everything her traditional culture stands for, the way Nazneen is empowered in the novel is by cheating on her husband. It seems like for Ali empowerment for Nazneen comes from disrespect towards the Bengali culture and everything that is traditional. Karim and Nazneen’s relationship is described often as an exciting teenage fling without further meaning, and not until further in the book we get a deeper connection between the two.

Chanu on the other hand is a man who embodies the schizophrenic cultural struggle the most. Once leaflets start coming in, Chanu changes his narrative on being an immigrant every day. He is making his daughters, depending on the day, wear their skirts or their less revealing clothes. Here we can see, besides the internal cultural struggle many characters share in the book, a carefully constructed emphasis put on clothes. It is often a restricting element, which makes the characters fall, and makes them stumble and suffer, and not until the end of the book is the garment element described as something liberating and empowering.

In our last discussion we talked about the significance of clothing in Brick Lane. Paying special attention to the sari, we noted the significance behind how and which garments are worn in the novel. One aspect of this discussion on clothing that stood out to me in this last section of reading was the relationship between clothes and letters. In multiple scenes, we see Nazneen either hiding the letters from her sister within clothing. In one instance the unread letters are kept away in Nazneen’s underwear drawer until Chanu is out of the house. Towards the end of the novel, we are left with the striking scene of Nazneen concealing her sister’s letter within the underskirt of her sari. Throughout the book, the correspondence with Hasina acts as a sort of semi-subversive feminine sub-plot… Hasina is, in a lot of ways, a complete opposite to her sister Nazneen. Nazneen conceals her sister underneath her clothing—specifically underneath her underwear—as a way of concealing her sister’s so-called impropriety. What’s interesting is that Hasina’s story is so closely linked to Nazneen’s body. It is almost as if Ali is suggesting the existence of an untold story beneath the sari of all women, and that perhaps that story should be told (rather than hidden). Even more interesting is the fact that the last letter reveals the secret of Nazneen’s mother’s infidelity—in this way, the letter and it’s physical proximity to Nazneen—underneath her clothing—represents a certain familial truth and bond between the women.

Dhakians vs. Sylhetis

In Brick Lane Monica Ali deals with the many issues that come with the mixing of cultures in a globalized world. Although Ali does a good job of displaying the many differences between the Bangladeshi culture and that of the U.S. she also shows how they share human similarities. Although the U.S. has a more materialistic society the Bangladeshis are not so different in that both have social classes. All countries in the world are based on a system of classes. In the U.S. there are the rich and the poor just as there are in Bangladesh. Money does not have everything to do with it; there is something to be said for sub cultures that define your place in society.  In Both cultures Ali points out that there exists discrimination: “is it better than our own country, or is it worse? If it is worse, then why is he here? If it is better, then why does e complain?” (47) The difference between the two however is the groups that are being discriminated. In the U.S., the Bangladeshis are seen as foreigners and are stereotyped as all being poor and uneducated. It is for this reason that Chanu claims he cannot get the promotion he deserves. “If they see us rise then they are resentful because we have left our proper place… the middle classes are more secure and therefore more relaxed” (21) this would make Chanu out to be the victim to be pitied. Ali points out however that this same sort of social structure and discrimination exists Within the Bangladeshi community. In Bangladesh, Dhaka is the metropolitan capitol where Chanu is from while Sylhet is located in the north-east on the edge of the country. Chanu not only uses all his degrees to make himself feel important however he also uses his association with other Dhakians to make him better compared to others. Chanu show that within Bangladesh there is the same unjust dynamic. For example: “this area is very respectable. None of your Sylhetis here. If you see a brown face you can guarantee it’s not from Sylhet” (73) Here Chanu blatantly classifies being of Sylheti origin as being lower than himself just as many in the U.S.  see the Bangladeshis to be below them. Through this parallel Ali bring s up an interesting question of racism. Although In this book the Bangladeshis seem to be the victims the truth is that all people not just the whites are racist. Ali shows that we all want to believe we are better than others and that we deserve things more therefore we try to seek out a group to blame. This is well outlined in Chanu’s desire to return home: “Here I am only a small man, but there… I could be big.” (93) Ali suggests that racism and discrimination stems not from actual hate for the “other” but from the human desire to progress and make something better of one’s life.

One thing I noticed in the reading for this week is that the word “brick” is used a lot. I guess that’s not too surprising since the title of the novel is Brick Lane after all, but it made me wonder about the significance of bricks. One instance when bricks came up was when Razia said that she is “working for bricks” and when she told her daughter to ask her father how many bricks he earned a day (98). In this context, bricks are almost like a salary—a necessity that people work really hard for. Then, there are a lot of imagery involving brick buildings and walls scattered throughout the novel: for example, there is a brick wall in Hasina’s house that leaks water (123) and a brick tower on Brick Lane (208). Brick is seen as a really strong, sturdy, and long lasting material, so I wonder if the bricks are symbolic of something else that the Bangledeshis want to permanently establish in England, like their Bangledeshi culture perhaps? “Brick Lane” after all is like a Bangledeshi community in London, so perhaps the Bangledeshis are trying to work hard to earn bricks and build up and establish their culture in different places around the world.

In contrast though, there are also a lot of images about breaking bricks. In Hasina’s letters, she mentions a widow named Renu who has gums so hard that she can break bricks on them (120) and actual “brick breakers” who squats “over red bricks with little stone hammer” (121). Perhaps these people who break bricks represent the ones who reject the traditional Bangledeshi culture. Renu for instance was married at 15 to an old man who died a few months later. Her life was “over at fifteen” (120) and she has been suffering all alone since then. So she might be disillusioned with her culture. Furthermore, Hasina mentions that children help the brick breakers and that the children are laughing as they hit and break the bricks (122), which reminds me of how Shahana rejects her parents’ culture.

Brick Lane is a story of migration and diaspora. It is a story and a truth that is not advertised on TV. Nazneen is a housewife from Pakistan that arrived to England to live there with her new husband. Of course, the marriage was arranged, and the bits and pieces we get from very shy Nazneen imply a strong discontent with her new husband. Nazneen seemingly did not have the same expectations of England, like her husband did, but now that the immigrant life is her reality she is having second thoughts and doubts about this new life. Nazneen’s discontent goes as far as mentions and descriptions of suicidal thoughts. From that and her other frustrations, the reader is forced to see, at least in the first 3 Chapters, to see Nazneen as a caged woman without any sense of agency.

Another interesting character is her new husband. Monica Ali seems to have a very critical viewpoint on arranged marriages, so she illustrates Nazneen’s husband, Chanu, as a frustrated, chubby and unattractive middle-aged man. Chanu is in a constant fight with everything around himself, but himself not included. The struggles of his life and his rank mobility are often described by him as racially motivated. Chanu seems to be a pseudo-intellectual, often very obsessed with class and qualification. Chanu is not necessarily an over-achiever, but he wants others to acknowledge his importance.

Two other elements that reoccur in the first 3 chapters are ice skating and the tattoo lady. Ice skating is Nazneen’s way into the world, into some other reality than her own. She develops a certain addiction and with it another persona that she takes up every time she watches ice skating. The very fact that she cannot pronounce ice skating serves as a barrier of some sort between Nazneen and the world she views through the box portal.
The tattoo lady is often portrayed as Nazneen’s willingness and desire to interact with more people, and to develop a social life. The tattoo lady symbolizes in many ways the working-class area they live in, but also a trace of something westernized and different.