[W]e are also the generation that can change things, redefine what being Asian and male or Asian and female means, without losing pride in who we are. Because culture evolves and changes, just like human beings.
— Akash, Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee This thesis project has drawn upon how Meera Syal, as a South Asian British women writer, pens the negotiations of identities, self-awareness and the process of self-discovery in her two novels Anita and Me and Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee.
Through the four heroines from the two novels, she not only explores individual awareness and development of self, but also presents a relatively comprehensive spectrum of South Asian womanhood in Britain. As well, these heroines’ experiences, to a certain extent, are Syal’s autobiographical projections. She writes about South Asian women within Britain but also automatically deals with issues about herself.
Through the process of writing, she not merely offers a fictional array of South Asian British womanhood through her characters, but at the same time re-examines her own self-development. Writings become a way of self creation and a proof of her being as a South Asian British female. As Homi K. Bhahba says, “No name is yours, until you speak it” (xxv).
Immigrants from South Asia have been coming to Britain for about as long as the British first sailed to India in the seventeenth century. Over four centuries, people of South Asian descent have been facing shifting attitudes in British society. Their struggles for advancement dramatically turn them from “unwelcome guests” (Fisher xx) into “Asian Cool” (Thandi 198). As Shinder S. Thandi has suggested, the upward
social position is “enthusiastically celebrated by South-Aisan communities themselves and supported by the general British public, which has embrace South-Asian cuisine, music and fashion” (204). Yet, to such a phenomenon, Meera Syal shows her dislike by commenting that, “you’ve got to use being Asian in a way that you want it to be used and not as a stamp of approval” (O’Connell 17; qtd. in Gunning 125). For Syal, being a South Asian is not a tool to gain celebrations of cultural differences and to earn diversities from such an ethnic background. Instead, she obtains her fame as an accomplished novelist, playwright, and an award-winning actress both on stage and on screen to celebrate her ethnicity formed within South Asian community. Regarding Syal’s achievement, Yasmin Hussain praises Meera Syal as “possibly the most
influential South Asian woman in the British media” (15). In fact, underneath the success of her career in the British media, what is hidden is her past unhappiness and uncertainty:
Because I was always the outsider, it forced me to look at the bigger picture, and I think that every creative person is somewhere an outsider . . . you are always having to ask yourself the big questions, like who am I? Where do I fit in? Where do I belong? I realized early on: well, nowhere, actually, but that’s not bad, that’s good.26
Syal also admits that she needs to reconcile two very different cultures as those second-generation South Asians do. Facing such a hybridity in identity, she deals with her in-betweenness in a positive way: “That was my gift, not my curse.”27 Thus, it can be observed that she deflects her lived experiences, including overt racism, disorientated youth and failed marriage, by writing them into her novels. Through storytelling, she constructs a space to express her concerns for South Asian British
26 It is Syal’s reflection on the racism and isolation she has experienced. Now, she believes all the experiences prove to be salvation. Details about her interview, please see Jonathan Owen.
27 Please see the Interview with Lydia Slater.
women and also offers them positive and inspiring role models to think of, and learn from.
The second-generation South Asian, as cultural navigators, in fact, exist in a doubly estranged condition. My reading of Anita and Me examines how a
middle-class South Asian girl, Meena Kumar, reconciles two different cultures in a predominantly white working-class village. Meena’s transformation from immaturity to an astute awareness of her in-betweenness in self is a process of self-development.
This process, in the end of the story, allows her to become an in-between subject with a rather fluid identity possessing the characteristics of both British white culture and South Asian heritage. Recognizing the advantage and potential of in-betweenness enables Meena to liberate herself from the burdens brought by her cultural
backgrounds, further expending her horizons and opening more possibilities in her live. She has moved on at the end of the novel and keeps on moving beyond her white identification and South Asian ethnicity.
Following Syal’s changed narrative perspective, my focus shifts to her second novel Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee to inspect how Syal’s three grown-up heroines, after undergoing conflicting dilemma and internal struggles, eventually find their voice within South Asian community in Britain. Distinct from Meena’s doubly estranged dilemma, the three women are now in a doubly disempowered position.
And the double oppression of South Asian adult women in Britain arguably
demonstrates that ethnic women in fact suffer more constraints than their male peers do. Rather than elevating her three heroines to a better position directly, Syal depicts them with human flaws. Throughout the novel, the three adult women have been going through a process of self-development and free themselves from patriarchal institution within South Asian community.
Evidently, from Anita and Me to Life, Syal interweaves her personal and social
experiences within literary works, which accords with Salman Rushdie’s saying that writing is a self-validating process (14). Syal never avoids those cultural stereotypes imposed on South Asians. Instead, she even deliberately sets her characters, men and women, to fit these stereotypical images. As she says, it is her in-betweenness that allows her to step back to see a bigger picture of South Asian people in Britain. Syal strategically and intentionally applies gender and racial stereotypes to interrogate both the problems within South Asian community and the false perceptions within the white society. In both writings and performances, she provides the reader and audience a bitter but introspective view on South Asian British womanhood. It is worth stressing that Syal undertakes the exploration and rediscovery of her personal experiences with respect to the impact of South Asian tradition.
In the post-9/11 periods, there has been a worldwide anxiety about the Islamic extremist ideology. And the emergence of home-grown suicide-bombers in July 2005 in London especially shocked the British public. Politicians even have blamed the economic decline since 2008 to the rapid growth of immigrants, who are believed to cause serious social problems, such as unemployment and shortage in housing.
Recently, the incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron’s speech about the failure of multiculturalism further sets non-white people back to an awkward condition like before.28 Therefore, through my thesis project, what I want to convey is not merely women’s strength to assert their selfhood when faced with conflict and predicaments, but a full picture of how South Asian British women experience uncertainty,
self-doubt and finally come to awareness of their inherent strength and value. I hope
28 “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel want to belong” states David Cameron to claim that state multiculturalism has failed because of the lack of a national idenity for all British to feel belonged to. In this regard, Cameron believes that multiculaturalism is not workable in Britain and they should develop a shared national identity.
Full transcript of Cameron’s speech, please see
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/02/terrorism-islam-ideology
the demonstration of South Asian British women’s struggles and awakening can inspire those who are in similar situations to take a positive view toward their difficulties. Obviously, there remains plenty of work to do for the study of minority groups or immigrants in Britain. Even so, I still hope this thesis project has offered certain positive strength to those who are doubly estranged or oppressed.
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