外國語文學系外國文學與語言學碩士班
碩 士 論 文
書寫南亞英國女性：以蜜拉‧賽耶爾的《安妮塔與我》
及《生活不全是嘻嘻哈哈》為例
Writing South Asian British Womanhood:
Meera Syal’s Anita and Me and Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee
研 究 生 ： 林 美 序
指 導 教 授 ： 馮 品 佳 博 士
及《生活不全是嘻嘻哈哈》為例
Writing South Asian British Womanhood:
Meera Syal’s Anita and Me and Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee
研 究 生：林美序 Postgraduate: Mei-hsu Lin
指導教授：馮品佳 博士 Advisor: Dr. Pin-chia Feng
國 立 交 通 大 學
外 國 語 文 學 系 外 國 文 學 與 語 言 學 碩 士 班
碩 士 論 文
A Thesis
Submitted to Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics
College of Humanities and Social Science
National Chiao Tung University
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Master of Arts
in
Graduate Institute of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics
July 2012
Hsinchu, Taiwan
書寫南亞英國女性：以蜜拉‧賽耶爾的《安妮塔與我》
及《生活不全是嘻嘻哈哈》為例
研 究 生：林美序 指導教授：馮品佳 博士 國立交通大學外國語文學系外國文學與語言學碩士班 摘 要 本論文主要藉由閱讀印度裔英國女性作家蜜拉‧賽耶爾（Meera Syal）的《安妮 塔與我》及《生活不全是嘻嘻哈哈》以探討身為英國南亞移民的蜜拉‧賽耶爾如何書 寫其離散經驗及南亞裔女性對於英國和原生文化雙重影響的回應。生於長於英國的蜜 拉‧賽耶爾在其成長過程中深受充滿西方意識型態的英國文化影響，同時又受到原生 印度文化的教導和傳統觀念的約束，身兼劇作家、作家、製作人及演員等多重身分的 她成功地將其生命經驗以詼諧卻深刻的方式投射於作品之中。蜜拉‧賽耶爾初試啼聲 之作《安妮塔與我》描繪在英國六○年代下，一個居住在已漸凋零的挖礦社區裡的南 亞移民家庭和其白人鄰居，又或和時常來訪的南亞裔故友們之間有著趣味卻又發人省 思的互動，尤其蜜拉‧賽耶爾帶領讀者透過九歲女主角蜜娜（Meena Kumar）的觀點 去觀察身處在移民家庭和西方文化之間的第二代青少年如何面對不同文化的衝突，以 及她如何在雙重文化夾擊下去摸索並釐清自身的歸屬感，在蜜娜找尋自我的過程中， 她意識到自身的中介特質（in-betweenness）不再是一種徬徨的不確定性（uncertainty）， 反而是一種她所特有的優勢。蜜拉‧賽耶爾的第二本小說《生活不全是嘻嘻哈哈》不 同於前本小說的人物、時空等背景敘事，進一步地刻劃成熟南亞裔女性在婚姻、兩性 關係及家庭之間所面臨到更為複雜、更為難解的生命課題。延續著南亞移民第二代身 處雙重文化下的自我徬徨，《生活不全是嘻嘻哈哈》描述三位在英國九○年代晚期的 倫敦大都會生活的南亞裔女性，蜜拉‧賽耶爾透過這三位有著不同的成長背景及性格 的女性呈現出更為寫實並震撼人心的文化、家庭甚至是兩性之間的衝突和矛盾，她們 必須在傳統責任（家庭、婚姻及族群）及個人意志之間找出一個平衡點，甚至做出抉 擇。從《安妮塔與我》到《生活不全是嘻嘻哈哈》，蜜拉‧賽耶爾書寫出身處英國的 南亞裔女性對於自我的體悟、檢視、反思進而建構主體的過程，而蜜拉‧賽耶爾所定 義出的南亞英國女性正是本論文所關切並進行討論之重點。 關鍵詞：蜜拉‧賽耶爾、《安妮塔與我》、《生活不全是嘻嘻哈哈》、不確定性、 中介性、自我探索（追求）、南亞英國女性Writing South Asian British Womanhood:
Meera Syal’s Anita and Me and Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee
Postgraduate: Mei-hsu Lin Advisor: Dr. Pin-chia Feng
Graduate Institute of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics
National Chiao Tung University
ABSTRACT
By reading Meera Syal’s Anita and Me and Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee, this thesis project would like to explore how the South Asian British woman writer Meera Syal writes about diasporic experiences especially that of the second generations of immigrant women. I shall first present a review of histories about the South Asians’ immigration to Britain as well as the background of Meera Syal to see how she relates her own lived experiences with her professional career as a playwright, writer, producer and actress. Syal’s debut novel, Anita and Me, portrays how an Indian immigrant family interacts with their British neighbors in a sub-urban area during the 1960s. Through the perspective of the
nine-year-old protagonist, Syal depicts the acute sense of dislocation of this child of an immigrant family and the later (re)formation of her identity. Her second novel, Life isn’t All
Ha Ha Hee Hee, which can be seen as a kind of sequel to Anita and Me, focuses instead on
the lives of three adult women of South Asian descent. By presenting the lives of the three London women in the late 1990s, Syal illustrates the tremendous changes that women of South Asian are facing in terms of relationships and belief systems. Syal discloses a more complex yet reality-reflecting account of circumstances faced by South Asian women in Britain. From Anita and Me to Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee, the different age groups and settings sketch a relatively comprehensive spectrum of South Asian British womanhood. Keywords: Meera Syal, Anita and Me, Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee, uncertainty,
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTSThis thesis project would not have seen the light of the day without the support of numerous teachers, friends and relatives who have offered love, patience and words of encouragement. It is a treat for me to thank all of the individuals that have so generously supported me to complete the writing. Many of these need to be thanked individually.
First and foremost, I would like to dedicate my extreme gratitude to my advisor,
Professor Pin-chia Feng, who has greatly provided sage and effective guidance. She was the source of advice and inspiration, and throughout the long haul of my thesis project her critical comments and enthusiasm helped me in more ways than I can recount here. Her words and instructions are always delivered in a spirit of encouragement and challenge, which have shepherded me through this project. I also remain grateful to my committees Professor Ying-hsiung Chou and Professor Shyh-jen Fuh, whose penetrating feedback has made some very helpful comments and valuable suggestions regarding my thesis.
I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of incredibly intelligent and wonderful friends for their continued support. Ada Wang, Angeli Lin, Daisy Tsou, Eleana Chen, Evonne Chen, Frank Li, Forgetta Chen, Kevin Tang, Lan Lo, Lynn Chen, Tuan-jung Chang, Wawa Yang and everyone, who have buoyed me when my spirits were low. Writing is an essentially lonely business, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without their help and encouragement. They have sustained me through the inevitable difficulties of persevering with this thesis. In particular, I would like to thank Howard Liu, my boyfriend, for whose companionship, practical support and perpetual encouragement I am extremely grateful. Howard’s continued advice and support give me hope that the work I do has impact and worth.
The most important of all, I am deeply indebted to all my family members who have been sources of the deepest sustenance. Their countless considerations through difficult times have been the driving force in the completion of this piece of work. Also, their belief in my ability has been inspiring and no words can fully express my debt. Thanks finally, to my biological mother and my adoptive mommy, Fanny Huang, for teaching me about life and love. They have offered a loving and companionable space for my own belonging. Here I want to say a special thank you for your love and care, which have been ever sustaining.
Chinese Abstract
... i
English Abstract
... ii
Acknowledgements
... iii
Chapter One
... 1
I
ntroduction: South Asian Voices in Britain
Chapter Two
... 19
K
nowing and (Re)figuring the In-betweenness in Self
Chapter Three
... 47
S
eeking and Becoming Her South Asian British Self
Chapter Four
... 73
C
onclusion: “No name is yours, until you speak it”
Works Cited
... 78
Chapter One
Introduction: South Asian Voices in Britain
Indian writers in England have access to a second tradition, quite apart from their own racial history. It is the culture and political history of the phenomenon of migration, displacement, life in a minority group.
— Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands The second half of the twentieth century saw a great increase in large-scale
immigration, including people who fled war, persecution and poverty, or who looked for a better life. In fact, Continental Europe experienced two distinct forms of immigration in the postwar period.1 Some European countries, notably Germany, encouraged immigration through labor recruitment. Other countries, such as Britain and France, received vast inflows of people from their former or present colonies. For an extended period of time, the majority of immigrants to Britain were from the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean. Today, people of South Asian descent collectively constitute the largest ethnic group in Britain.2 They are not only considerable in terms of population number but also have immense influences upon the whole British society. However, South Asians have gone through a difficult journey before Britons approve of their influences on the British society. It is also noteworthy that most South Asians, the second and the third generations in particular,
1
Post-war or postwar is defined by Oxford English Dictionary as “pertaining to, or characteristic of the period after a war.” Naturally, a postwar period, in Western usage, refers to the time following the ending of the First and the Second World Wars. The “postwar” in my thesis is used to mark the period of time after the Second World War in particular.
2
South Asians in Britain mostly refer to those who immigrate from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, and their descendents. Even the BBC News groups list these countries under “South Asia” on its website. And on the authority of 2011 UK Census, a nationwide census conducted every ten years, South Asians make up approximately 4.0% of the total population of the UK and 50% of the UK’s non-white population. The most recent census of the UK took place on March 27 2011.
encounter the uncertainty of self identity—resulted from their position in between two divergent cultures. Nonetheless, some of them integrate those distinct cultures and further develop the perception of “in-betweenness” into a positive initiative for higher achievement. This thesis project would like to explore how the South Asian British writer Meera Syal displays the power of ethnic in-betweenness through writing about diasporic experiences, especially those of South Asian women of the British-born generation, in Anita and Me (1996) and Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee (1999). Within the two intriguing novels, Syal veritably offers a relatively comprehensive spectrum of South Asian British womanhood in the postwar Britain.
Postwar Britain not only allowed the entrance of colonial immigrants but also encouraged labour migration. Nevertheless, the successive decline of Britain’s economy and power consequently made the issue of immigration the most vexed problem that Britain has confronted. Therefore, immigration control becomes a policy debate between different parties, especially during election time. The response to the immigration issue has mostly concerned about the growing populations and the problems of unemployment, poor housing, and even street crime. According to James Hampshire, it is all about “racial.”3 In British society, the “non-white” immigration has been predominantly viewed as a negative term. Some politicians even have made a supposed link between the “non-white” immigrants, diseases, and violent crimes. Therefore, British government drew up certain policies on controlling immigration. The decision made up by politicians, nonetheless, becomes “an official policy of discrimination” (Brown 9) such as Commonwealth Immigration Act (1962) and Enoch Powell’s speech of “rivers of blood.”4 Non-white immigration, in brief, has
3 Hampshire, in Citizenship and Belonging, argues that immigration is unwelcomed by the receiving
country; furthermore, he critically points out the policy such as immigration control in postwar Britain has a racial demographic purpose because “they were intended to prevent, or at least limit, Britain developing into a multiracial society” (11).
been perceived as a “problem” associated with social disorder that needs to be “controlled” (Hampshire 10). Undoubtedly, South Asians, the major group of
non-white immigrants in Britain, have been discriminated against by this problematic prejudice. Under the Imperial regime, although they can enjoy the same citizenship as indigenous Britons do, they still have been regarded as those who do “not belong in Britain” (Hampshire 16). In other words, the racialized debates on immigration control and the imputation of social malady have made most South Asians feel
“unhomely” in Britain—the supposed Home.5 As mentioned, the South Asian British people are regarded as minority because of misconception and unfairness bestowed on them. Yet, the performance of South Asian British people is by no means “minor” but outstanding and significant.
When referring to the achievements of South Asians, Shinder S. Thandi proposes a term “Asian Cool” to describe the vibrant South-Asian presence in British popular culture. South-Asian food and outfit, which once had been derided as “smelly ‘colonial’ food” and “peasant-like garments,” now are accepted as authentic ethnic fashions. Owing to the increasing popularity in both cuisine and fashion, celebrations or street parades of South-Asian festivals have also gained attentions. Thandi makes note that they “are all cultural expressions of this new confidence and re-affirmation of new hybrid British-Asian identities” (198). By examining different dimensions in popular culture such as the media and performing art, he highlights that South-Asian culture is definitely chic in Britain now. Perhaps the most significant achievement is that South Asians associate new thoughts from the host country with their cultural expressions inherited from the mother country. This combination results in a potent
made the controversial speech “Rivers of Blood” criticizing on Commonwealth immigration. The speech invokes a fierce storm of protest around the British society, especially among the non-white ethnic groups. This period of history also plays an important role in Meera Syal’s writing background.
5 The “Home” here is capitalized to emphasize that most South Asian immigrants have viewed Britain
as a symbol of homeland, apart from their real hometown, after the long period of colonization. But it is ironical that Britons seldom accepted these people of South Asian descent as one of their groups.
voice consists of Asians’s belief and the younger generations’ rebellious yet
innovative expressions. Such a “fusion” of traditional inheritance and modern culture has grown into a powerful medium which enables South Asians to regenerate new possibilities in Britain. As a matter of fact, the new angles of identity have already been discussed by Salman Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands, which reads:
Our identity is at once plural and partial. Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools. But however ambiguous and shifting this ground may be, it is not an infertile territory for a writer to occupy. If literature is in part the business of finding new angles at which to enter reality, then once again our distance, our long geographical perspective, may provide us with such angles. (15)
South Asian British writers, such as Hanif Kurieshi, Monica Ali, and Meera Syal, all obtain such a double identity described by Rushdie. The double or even plural identities result in an uncertain feeling about their social position. Nonetheless, such doubleness or plurality also affords South Asians an opportunity to make use of the uncertainty—or “the in-betweenness”—to redefine themselves in British society. The concept of “in-between” firstly derives from the postcolonial theory, and it is exemplified as a liminal space by Homi K. Bhabha to demonstrate the ambivalence between the colonizer and the colonized. In his introduction to The Location of
Culture, Bhabha elaborates the idea of liminality through the example of Renée
Green’s museum installment. He explains that Green’s stairwell, connecting the attic and the boiler room, is transformed into a liminal space. According to Bhabha, this particular space locates “in-between the designations of identity, [and] becomes the process of symbolic interaction, the connective tissue that constructs the difference between upper and lower, black and white” (5). In general, the concept of liminal space discussed by Bhabha mainly refers to the slippery features within the binary
relationship in postcolonial discourse. However, it involves a notion of
in-betweenness that can be applied to an uncertain condition bore by those who have difficulty in defining themselves. As Bhabha points out,
[t]he move away from the singularities of ‘class’ or ‘gender’ as primary conceptual and organizational categories, has resulted in an awareness of the subject positions—of race, gender, generation, institutional location,
geopolitical locale, sexual orientation—that inhabit any claim to identity in the modern world . . . . These “in-between” spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself. (2)
In sum, the in-betweenness can possibly be found among those people or
communities located “in-between” different cultures. They occupy an in-between
position, which does not belong to either culture but actually bridges the two. In Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry,6 Amy Ling argues that a “between-world consciousness” (105) is a dual characteristic of people in a minority position. Ling defines it as a “feeling of being between worlds, totally at home
nowhere” (105). The “between-world consciousness” with which Ling uses to characterize the duality of American-born Chinese women equally characterizes the in-betweenness of South Asians in Britain. People with in-betweenness might find themselves lost in a liminal space belonging to neither side. And the pain of loss would be intensified by uncertainty in their in-between position. As Ling states, “For
6 Amy Ling’s Between Worlds: Women Writers of Chinese Ancestry concerns about women writers of
Asian American literature. She talks about the duality and complexity between two worlds by drawing examples from the literary works of Chinese American writers such as the Eaton sisters, Amy Tan, and Maxine Hong Kingston. Her response to the between-world condition of women in Asian American literature fairly characterizes the in-between position shared by South Asians in Britain. Ling’s focus on women writers and her positive attitude toward the in-betweenness support my argument about South Asian British womanhood.
the person between worlds, the loss is intensified: it is both physical and
psychological, for it is loss of the mother as well as loss of the motherland” (108). However, it shall be noted that the in-betweenness does not only carry negative charges. It also brings positive strength to the between-world people. When Amy Ling expounds how Chinese American writers right people’s prejudices by writing, she lauds the privilege deriving from the in-betweenness. She first interprets the
in-betweenness as a condition “occupying the space or gulf between two banks; one is thus in a state of suspension, accepted by neither side and therefore truly belonging nowhere.” (177). Then, on the positive side, she speaks for the in-betweenness and recognizes it as “having footholds on both banks and therefore belonging to two worlds at once” (177). For South Asians in Britain, being trapped in-between the cultures of the homeland and the host society is unavoidable. So it is important that how the between-world people make use of their in-betweenness.
Along with the long history of immigration in Britain, South Asians have experienced the struggle between past and present, old and new, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. Although they have been trapped by bitterness and suffering resultant from the in-between experience, they have made the in-betweenness become a privilege to reverse their social position. They have tried to attune all the cultural differentiations, once seen as conflicts, into making “newness” out of the past and the present. The term “newness” here does not refer to the chronological continuum but is rather a notion of the new in culture and identity. Bhabha suggests that work of
culture, especially the “borderline” work, bears the form of newness. Such work of culture de facto “renews the past, refiguring it as a contingent ‘in-between’ space, that innovates and interrupts the performance of the present” (Bhabha10). Furthermore, while speaking of newness in the borderline works, Bhabha also points out that the essential element “past-present” now has become “the necessity, not the nostalgia, of
living” (10). Thus, South Asian British writers cannot cling solely to the new British culture and reject the old South-Asian one. They have to reconcile the past and the present and incorporate the two into a new voice.
The art or literary work can be the best way to present the new voice of in-betweenness to the greatest extent. Through writing, South Asian British writers project most of their life experiences into their writings. They not only make stories but also exquisitely map out potential energy that lies in their in-between position in British society for themselves as well as for their descendents. Writing not only provides them a way to voice their uncertainty, conflict, and struggle in the host country, but also makes them reflect on how to reconcile the differences between two cultures. Writing, moreover, provides a way into a process for South Asian writers to achieve self-understanding and to discover power and perseverance in their
in-betweenness. In order to explore how South Asians overcome the hardship in being as immigrants and finally acquire their place in British society, this thesis project attempts to employ Meera Syal’s debut novel Anita and Me and its sequel Life isn’t
All Ha Ha Hee Hee to be the principal focuses of discussion.7
From New Delhi, Meera Syal’s Punjabi-born parents came to Britain in 1960.8 Syal was born the next year and then she was brought up in the mining village of Essington, on the outskirts of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands. She received British education and went to Manchester University to study English and Drama. Syal is talented. Her outstanding performance in acting both on radio and television and her impressive ability in creative writings well demonstrate her capability and
7 In fact, Syal does not clearly define Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee as a sequel of Anita and Me.
However, from the settings of characters to the storylines in both novels, it can be found that Syal attempts to complement and continue the concern about South Asian women’s social position and dilemmas in life. In later discussion, I will exemplify Syal’s intention in employing these two novels to present a relatively comprehensive spectrum of South Asian British womanhood.
8 Details about Meera Syal’s upbringing backgrounds and careers are derived and collected from
Internet sources, especially her talks in interviews. Please see Chris Green, Rebecca Hardy, Gaby Huddart, Indi, Alice-Azania Jarvis, Jack Lefley, Nick McGrath and Dan Waddell.
creativity. When she was a college student, she won the National Student Drama Award with her performance in One of Us, scripted by Jacqui Shapiro and staged at the Edinburgh Festival. Later she wrote the script for the acclaimed film Bhaji on the
Beach (1993), directed by Gurinder Chadha. She also joined the team in writing and
performing in the BBC comedy sketch series Goodness Gracious Me (1996-2001) from which she earned her fame. Because of the success of the show, Syal began to get recognized. Subsequently, she played an outrageous grandmother and made herself almost unrecognizable in Sanjeev Bhaskar’s comedy talk show The Kumars at
No. 42 (2001-2006), which was awarded the International Emmy in both 2002 and
2003. Syal has doubtless become one of the best known faces on TV screens in Britain. Aside from her achievements in acting and hosting, Syal’s genius for writing is also well acknowledged. In 1996, she published her first book Anita and Me, a novel about the inner and external conflicts in the life of a nine-year-old girl of South Asian descent. Later, the novel was adapted into a film, in which Syal was casted a minor character. About three years later, her second book Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee
Hee was published and further made into a three-part BBC TV miniseries in 2005.
Syal was the lead in the series.
In common with characters in her works, Syal is potentially rebellious in her personality: she often uses her wit to subvert ossified thinking and challenge social authority. In fact, Syal possibly inherits her defiant nature from her family. In the eyes of the more traditional generations in India, her parents are comparatively
unconventional because of their different religious backgrounds: her father, Surendar Syal, is a Hindu and her mother, Surinder Syal, a Sikh. After a seven-year secret romance, they finally got married in Delhi in 1958. Surendar headed for Britain to study accounting in 1960; a few months later, Surinder set her foot on the land of Britain to join her husband. Meera Syal’s parents originate from the farmlands of the
Punjab, in north-west India. Although the Syals are from a small village called Lasara, Surendar Syal did grow up in Lahore during the 1930s because his father, Tek Chand Syal, had decided to go for better prospects. As a student at the DAV College in Lahore, Tek Chand was keen on participating in student protest movements against the British rule. In 1936, Tek Chand decided to join the radical newspaper Milap, at the vanguard of the Indian independence movement, to initiate his career as a
journalist and still endeavored to fight for the independence of India. The struggle for independence from Britain eventually ended in 1947, but the success was won at a hard price—the Partition—which cut Punjabi into two, with one part as the separate state of Pakistan, and the other one as part of India. When the Partition took place, the Syals, like millions of other Partition refugees, were forced to abandon their home and flee to Delhi. The family of Meera Syal’s mother demonstrated “rebel roots” too. Meera Syal’s maternal grandfather, Phuman Singh got involved in Jaito March in which he paraded with hundreds of other Sikhs to struggle against the British for two months. During these marches, more than 300 Sikhs were killed and up to 20,000 were arrested, Phuman Singh was among them and was imprisoned for more than a year. In 1972, he was awarded a Freedom Fighters Pension.
As illustrated above, literary writings more or less involve the upbringings and experiences of writers. And it is apparent that Meera Syal merges most of her lived experiences in South Asian community and the history of her family genealogy into novels. Through storytelling, Syal employs her characters to reveal the conflicts within culture and ethnicity confronted by South Asian women in immigration. For her, writing not only responds to her in-between position but also voices for those who are in the same situation. Remarking that “actors don’t have much power but
writers have the power to change things,”9 Syal intends to provide a platform for the concerns of South Asian British women and to “challenge stereotypical notions of a unified and unchanging female ‘South Asianness’ in Britain (Hussain 14). By
following the storyline in her works, her readers can clearly see her ambition in trying to portray a world of conflict and uncertainty, and they also might be impressed by the unyieldingness revealed in Syal’s literary creation. Syal glorifies her inheritance from South Asian traditions, and includes the new thoughts from her growth in Britain into her writings. At the same time, she creates an “in-between” space which does not solely cling to the South Asian culture or to the British but is a space permeated with her “double perspective” (Rushdie 19). Through depicting the change in her four protagonists, Syal ingeniously demonstrates a relatively comprehensive spectrum of South Asian British womanhood. She embraces both cultures and shows audiences the in-betweenness existed in the “in-between subject” (Wilson 113). She seems to
declare that she is “neither here nor there,” but actually “both here and there” (Ling 176) so that she can travel back and forth in-between two cultures.10 Therefore, by examining the different age groups and distinct settings within Anita and Me and Life
isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee,11 we can see how Meera Syal presents South Asian British womanhood through the intense power of in-betweenness.
Janet Wilson, in “The Family and Change: Contemporary Second-Generation British-Asian Fiction,” proposes that a second-generation immigrant, such as Meena Kumar, is often “doubly estranged” (112), first from their family and tradition culture, and then from the British society. Yet, Wilson holds a positive view that whilst Meena
9 About Syal’s statements, please see the Interview with the website Desi Blitz http://www.desi
blitz.com/content/meera-syal-mbe.
10
The excerpt is borrowed from Amy Ling’s discussion about Stephanie Ryder’s “between-world consciousness” in Han Suyin’s Till Morning Comes (1993). The original excerpt is “Stephanie Ryder epitomizes the successful resolution of the between-world dilemma. She is not ‘neither here nor there’; she is both here and there and able to travel frequently back and forth between the two points” (176).
11
AM and Life respectively refer to Anita and Me and Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee in the parenthetical references hereafter.
is oftentimes doubly estranged in the mixed circumstances, she “acquires new value as she comes to distinguish between the self defined by culture of origin and the self defined by her culture of re-location, and learn to blend the two” (113).
Graeme Dunphy also brings up Meena’s in-between position in “Meena’s Mockingbird: From Harper Lee to Meera Syal” and agrees that “She must be both English and Indian to survive, and this duality is at the core of her struggle for identity” (650). Dunphy in fact connects Syal’s Anita and Me with Harper Lee’s To
Kill a Mockingbird and talks about the intertextuality between the two.12 In addition to the intertextual echoes, “writing back” is another topic that Dunphy has discussed. First he compares the two works, which have different backdrops but share the same features of “writing back,” and then brings in more specific analysis about the in-between position that Meena holds. He argues that Meena is somewhere in between and fundamentally “more foreign in India than in Britain” (650). But her duality, standing above and apart from both cultures, will make her be “strong enough to survive—in Tollington, or wherever she chooses” (Dunphy 657). Dunphy,
moreover, points out that both Meera Syal and Harper Lee attempt to “write back” to quest for a kind of integrity through their young heroines’ perspectives. Being a bit different from Lee’s focus on integrity for community, Syal’s “writing back” is to achieve the integrity of self which is suggested by Dunphy: “‘Writing back’, Syal’s quest is also for integrity, but for a different aspect of integrity, namely the courage to carve out one’s own identity and live by it” (656).
Dunphy regards the process of Meena’s self-discovery, or self-construction, as Syal’s attempt to write back to quest for an individual integrity, to find the
completeness for second-generation South Asian British people. He also reviews the
12 The 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel by Harper Lee, won the Pulitzer Prize. It has been a
classic of modern American literature. Graeme Dunphy’s article mainly shows how Syal’s novel Anita
so-called “writing back” in Anita and Me through a post-colonial perspective. Berthold Schoene-Harwood, likewise, interprets Syal’s novel from a post-colonial viewpoint in “Beyond (T)race: Bildung and Proprioception in Meera Syal’s Anita and
Me,” with the focus on the novel as a Bildungsroman.13 In the beginning of Shoene-Harwood’s article, he defines conventional Bildungsroman, also known as “novel of self-formation,” as a genre that characters do not in fact change, but develop themselves from an initial position of “social ostracism” to “perfect societal
integration” (159).14 Shoene-Harwood elaborates that the consistency of characters in conventional Bildungsroman is no longer found in the post-colonial experience
because of cultural dislocation. Through Salman Rushdie’s statement,15
Shoene-Harwood suggests that the post-colonial self is “unpredictable” and falls out of the conventional frame of Bildungsroman. As Shoene-Harwood writes, “the self is cast adrift and denied the kind of reassuring, conclusive identity warranted by the seamless past/present/future continuum of cultural traditionality” (159).
Shoene-Harwood, thus, argues that Syal’s Anita and Me is an “anti-Bildungroman” (160) which breaks the conventional consistency and emancipates its protagonist from any single ethnicity or culture. In other words, Syal successfully facilitates “Meena’s emancipation from—and beyond—any single ethnicity or culture” and she also enables Meena to escape from both the stereotypes of traditional South Asian culture and “the alienating influence of English Bildung” (Shoene-Harwood 167).
13 In fact, Dunphy indicates that he disagrees with Sheoene-Harwood’s pessimistic view about
Meena’s doomed failure in questing for self. He claims that Meena is “too strong to be a victim” and he also approves of Meena’s decision to embrace her Indian roots for identity toward the end of the novel (657-58).
14 The characters in Bildungsroman usually remain consistently identical with whom they were at the
outset and will be in the conclusion. Moreover, Schoene-Harwood quotes Paul Ricœr to talk about the consistency “. . . the end of the story is what equates the present with the past, the actual with the potential. The hero is who he was” (Shoene-Harwood 159; qtd. in Ricœr 186; italics in original).
15 In Shoene-Harwood’s words, Salman Rushdie symptomatically says that the displacement and
disruptive impact from migration make the self unsettled and unpredictable. As Rushdie writes in his autobiographical essay “Imaginary Homeland,” “I . . . who am no longer what I was and who by quitting Bombay never became what perhaps I was meant to be” (10).
According to Shoene-Harwood, the postcolonial migrants, outside of
Bildungsroman, find themselves immersed in Bhabha’s “Third Space of cultural
hybridity” a topic also discussed by Shumona Dasgupta. Dasgupta, in “Interrogation the ‘Fourth Space’: Re-imaging ‘Nation,’ ‘Culture’ and ‘Community’ in South Asian Diasporic Fiction,” explores South Asian diasporic experiences in Life from the aspect of globalization. She argues that, in terms of Bhabha’s theory, hybrid identities occupy the “third space” and constitute a condition of cultural in-betweenness that provides a creative and productive site for exploring issues of identity. Nevertheless, she makes a corrective from a perspective of the South Asian female identity. She boldly raises the possibility of a “fourth space” to supplement Bhabha’s “third space,” which is defined by Dasgupta as a “masculinist conception” (117-18). Considering the overlap between race, gender, and class discourses in South Asian female identity, Dasgupta speaks of the concept of the “fourth space” as a “position occupied by black women in the metropole, marginalized by both the white mainstream, and the discourses of an indigenous patriarchy.” She, moreover, states that the South Asian female identity “occupies the interstices of Britishness and traditional prescriptions of Asian
femininity” (118). Inevitably, however, the South Asian female identity in the “fourth space” develops an inability to embrace either culture. In short, the South Asian female identity, according to Dasgupta’s definition, embraces both culture but also becomes disloyal to both. It is trapped in the “in-between position” which actually provides it with a “liminal space” to re-think and create its unknown yet promising value.
Evidently, from Wilson to Dasgupta, the “in-between” subject of South Asian immigrants has been a main emphasis. When reviewing Syal’s two novels, more or less, they focus on the in-between position and the hybridity possessed by Syal’s protagonists. And they take Bhabha’s “third space” to represent the liminal place
where the characters inhabit. Dasgupta’s viewpoint about South Asian immigrants in Britain is particularly noteworthy not merely because she brings up the idea of “fourth space” to defy the third space but because she takes into account the double
oppression of South Asian British women. From Anita and Me to Life, Syal effectively unmasks the conflict among race and gender discourses in South Asian experiences. Furthermore, through the four heroines from her two novels, she endows their in-betweenness with power as well as possibility and sketches a relatively
comprehensive spectrum of South Asian British womanhood. However, the comments mentioned above mostly put emphasis on merely one of her works rather than view both novels as a whole. My thesis project, therefore, aims to put Anita and Me and
Life together to examine how Meera Syal juxtaposes her heroines from different age
groups of the second generation to articulate a new South Asian British voice—a non-white and vibrant female identity.
“The negotiation of identities is fundamental to South Asian women’s writing in cross-cultural context,” (1) said Yasmin Hussain in the introduction to Writing
Diaspora: South Asian Women, Culture and Ethnicity to reveal how South Asian
British women writers begin their creative works to represent their experiences and feelings.16 Therefore, Syal makes Meena Kumar, the child protagonist, as a starting point to draw a blueprint of South Asian British womanhood. Anita and Me explores Meena’s life and her dilemmas with conventional norms and the indigenous British society. It depicts how Meena transforms from immaturity to come with a more acute
16
Yasmin Huassain, a lecturer in the Department of Social Policy and Sociology at the University of Leeds, has a particular interest in race and ethnicity. Writing Diaspora: South Asian Women, Culture
and Ethnicity, her first book published in 2005, explores the issues of diaspora and identity. From a
sociological perspective, Hussain analyzes the literary works of the new generation of South Asian British women writers and film directors such as Monica Ali, Meer Syal and Gurinder Chadha. In this book, she not only connects the contexts of the literary works with the experiences of the South Asian British women but also makes a further discussion about individual or group identities in South Asian community. It is noteworthy that she deftly brings out the issues about the interweaving relationships between gender and diaspora, as what Anne J. Kershen has praised in the preface: “[T]hrough Hussain’s guidance, we are able to listen to the South Asian female voice.”
awareness of her position and the ability to construct her own place (Hussain 111-13). When moving on to Life, Syal stages three adult women to illustrate South Asian women’s “attempt to survive.” Bitter but strong enough, they eventually re-assess their roles in family and in society. Although Syal’s four characters seem to struggle with their conflict with family and society, they are actually faced with dissimilar phases of afflictions. Put together, Anita and Me and Life cut across social
stratifications and involve female characters from different age groups and variant social backgrounds. And the two novels limn a spectrum of South Asian British womanhood—from a little girl to three adult women, from a small mining village to the metropolitan London. Through Anita and Me and Life, Syal shows her readers the South Asian British womanhood, which represents not only a rite of passage in an individual’s development but also a collective identity formation. The South Asian British womanhood portrayed by Syal, in brief, is a transition to let her heroines “all learn to look beyond the self at a larger, newly emergent, regenerated British-Asian female community united across differentials of class, age, and sexuality” (Dasgupta 128).
The following chapters will move on to detailed analyses of Anita and Me and
Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee respectively. The second chapter seeks to inspect the
identity (re)formation of the second generation of South Asian immigrants by
examining Syal’s debut novel Anita and Me, the novel of childhood. Meena Kumar’s eagerness to grow up and her friendship with Anita Rutter profoundly present the struggle of South Asian British youth caught between “the world’s attitude towards her and her own definition of her role in life” (Hussain 111). My primary concern about Anita and Me is to focus on the in-between position occupied by Meena’s hybrid identities. In fact, Meera Syal purposely shapes Meena as a character caught “in-between” no matter in her living place, age, or ethnicity. Therefore, Meena’s
in-betweenness provides a productive and creative site for Syal to constitute the South Asian British womanhood which begins with Meena’s initiation to experience a conflict of parental expectations, personal interests, peer attitudes and the reality of social environments around her. Through Meena’s progression toward maturity, the power of the in-bewteenness is explored. And the passage of awakening also endows Meena with “a full complement of self-awareness, wit and intelligence” (Hussain 129) to help her realize her identity, sexuality, and responsibility at last. Last but not the least, by scrutinizing Meena’s personal development, we will find that Meena has free choice to decide her future. Rather than being constraint to comply with the route decided by the conventional norms, she follows individual will and dominates her own future. Admittedly, the struggle between individual will and familial duties is a collective experience for every South Asians. And it will be amplified in Syal’s second novel Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee.
When referring to Syal’s use of a child as the main character, Hussain claims that a child narrator has its limitation because of its naïve viewpoint, which may make the prose “stumbling and inelegant” (128-29). On the contrary, Campbell-Hall praises that “[t]he imagined space of second-generations childhood innocence provides a safe point of reference from which to examine popular conceptions of cultural hybridity” (291). He believes that using a child narrator as a literary device is able to present the fluctuation between childhood innocence and adult knowledge. Thus, Syal’s second novel Life isn’t All Ha Ha Hee Hee would be featured in the third chapter. This chapter endeavors to explore how Syal illustrates the tremendous changes faced by the three London women of South Asian descent in terms of relationships and belief systems. Concerning the double oppression of South Asian women in Britain, I shall scrutinize a more complicated and conflicting situation inhabited by female adults of this generation. Still, Syal’s three heroines are positioned between free choice and
determined fate as what have occurred to Meena. But the three are in a knotty condition because their lives are more complex than a little girl’s. Aside from
friendship, the three women have to deal with issues of migration, shifting identities, cultural hybridities, as well as fluid and fractured relationships with home and
marriage. Therefore, in order to respond to the “drawbacks” raised by Hussain, I shall analyze the three heroines to exemplify how Syal uses the second novel as a sequel to represent the difficulties confronted by South Asian women. By examining Life, this chapter is going to scrutinize how the female characters leave the roles prescribed for them and redefine themselves. Through a journey from self-awareness to
self-development, it can be observed that how the three South Asian adult women recognize their weaknesses, break through obstacles and finally recognize the strength in their selfhood. Most importantly, it is going to see how Syal sketches her ideal and belief through the South Asian British women.
The final chapter moves to make a brief conclusion on Syal’s attempt to present South Asian women through different modes of lives and conflicts experienced by her heroines. In fact, from Anita and Me to Life, it can be found that Syal has bore an optimistic attitude toward the condition of South Asian women in Britain. It is apparent that, although she at first distributes the characters with the circumstances with conflicts and dilemmas, she tends to lead them to a journey toward internal self-understanding and awakening. Meena, Tania, Sunita, and Chila, who are from different age groups and backgrounds, fully characterize the bonds and relationships shared by the South Asian women, particularly the second generations in British society. All of them are aware of their in-between position, and they also struggle with it. Nevertheless, they eventually realize the power of their in-betweenness and turn to embrace it. By recognizing their weaknesses and reversing their “doubly
determined neither by parents nor by fate. From uncertainty, self-doubt, to final resolution toward dilemmas in life, the transition of the four female characters represents for us a relatively comprehensive spectrum of the South Asian British womanhood. It reveals that they all look beyond the limitations set by the external environments, and proves to people a will to survive, which is indeed believed by Syal. Meera Syal’s ambition to pen her life into books and to employ her advantages profoundly attests to what Rushdie says “Literature is self-validating” (14). And the South Asian British womanhood she depicts, more or less, deftly responds to the question: “What does it mean to be ‘Indian’ outside India?” (Rushdie 17).
Chapter Two
Knowing and (Re)figuring the In-betweenness in Self
[T]he gap between what is said and what is thought, what is stated and what is implied, is a place in which I have always found myself. I’m really not a liar, I just learned very early on that those of us deprived of history sometimes need to turn to mythology to feel complete, to belong.
— Meena Kumar, Anita and Me
Anita and Me is based on the ambivalence that the children of immigration have
confronted with.17 In the epigraph excerpted from the opening of Anita and Me, Meera Syal clearly states the in-betweenness in Meena Kumar’s voice. The statement, “the gap between what is said and what is thought, what is stated and what is implied” clearly indicates Meena’s state of uncertainty, or, a grey area. Growing up in a white British neighborhood and being a daughter of the only South Asian family in the village, Meena is one of the children of immigration who always struggles to fit into the British community. She is longing to grow up and leave the South Asian
17 The term “children of immigration” is borrowed from Carola and Marcel M. Suárez-Orozco’s Children of Immigration, published by the Harvard University Press in 2001. They make a clear
definition of “immigrant children” and “children of immigration”: the term “immigrant children” is strictly confined to those foreign born children who have migrated but not the second generation born in the host country, “children of immigration,” on the other hand, represent either the foreign born children or those who are born in the host country. It should be noted that the term “children of immigration” in this thesis specifically denotes the children of South Asian descent being born in Britain.
Carola and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, co-directors of the Harvard Immigration Project, have spent over two decades studying immigration. They collect all their researches and experiences to publish
Children of Immigration, which was first named The Developing Child, to provide an overview on the
lives of immigrant children in America, including both U.S. born and foreign born children. They provide the readers a penetrative insight into the problem and the living condition that immigrant children and the children of immigration confront in America. Their focus upon the conflicts that children face in the relationship with parents or with peer groups and the difficulties in the process of acculturation accords with Meena’s struggle in her childhood.
community for a life without any circumscription. In the humorous and poignant portrait of Meena’s childhood and early adolescence, Syal displays the struggle of South Asian British youth and deals with the identity (re)formation of the second generations of South Asian immigrants. As well, as the story proceeds, it will be found that the little heroine Meena goes through not only the formation of identity but also the transition from childhood into young adulthood. Inspired by her childhood experience, Anita and Me can be seen as Syal’s semi-autobiographical novel. It was first published in 1996 and shortlisted for Guardian fiction prize. It won The Betty Trask Award,18 and was later made into a film of the same title in 2002, in which Syal was casted as aunt Shaila.Anita and Me follows the story of Meena Kumar, a
nine-year-old British girl of Punjabi descent, and her life with her parents in Tollington, a fictional mining village in Midland of the early 1970s. Meena, as a normal young girl by today’s standard, is forever dreaming of an unrealistic life. She is a figure caught in-between two distinct cultures—that of the extended Indian family and the white British neighborhood. On one hand, Meena’s parents have great
expectations for her to pass the eleven-plus exams since they strongly believe that education is the only way to obtain a better future. On the other hand, they hope that Meena is able to inherit the traditional Indian culture and demonstrate proper
behaviors. Meena knows there is a binding connection with family, even with her Indian roots; yet, the contradictions between her immigrant parents and her life in the white neighborhood cause her a sense of doubly estrangement.
Basically, Anita and Me shows the reader that immigration is a process with a hard time for both immigrant parents and their children. The first-generation
18
The Betty Trask Award has been endowed with the bequest left by the late Betty Trask to the Society of Authors. Since 1983, the prizes have been eligible for first novels written by authors under the age of 35. And the prizes are especially awarded to those who reside in current or former Commonwealth nations. This award is rather unconventional in that it can be distributed to published or unpublished work. For more details about the award and the past winners, please see
immigrants, such as Meena’s parents, start their journeys to the new home with hope. Even though their ethnicity limit their opportunities, they still believe that a better future for children would make their sacrifices worthwhile (Suárez-Orozco 22-23). In the very beginning of Anita and Me, through Meena’s narration, Syal deftly portrays how “economic immigrants” (Nasta 23) left their Motherland for “luck and promised gold” (AM 31):
I do not have many memories of my very early childhood, apart from the obvious ones, of course. You know, my windswept, bewildered parents in their dusty Indian village garb standing in the open doorway of a 747, blinking back tears of gratitude and heartbreak as the fog cleared to reveal the sign they had been waiting for, dreaming of, the sign planted in tarmac and emblazoned in triumphant hues of red, blue and white, the sign that said simply, WELCOME TO BRITAIN. (9)
Although it is Meena’s imagined “alternative history” (10), it still clearly brings out most parents’ motivation in immigration: they leave their Motherland, India, for the affluent Britain because of supposed brilliant prospects.Yet, born and raised in the new country, their offspring have developed different understandings about life, about culture, even about their identities. These different perceptions gradually distance children from their immigrant parents and extend the gap between the two
generations. Hence the Kumar’s family unity is threatened by the unexpected generation gap.
As Carola and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco state in Children of Immigration, “although many immigrant parents are motivated by a desire for a better future for their children, the very process of immigration tends to undermine parental authority and family cohesion” (6). Apparently, the exertion of immigration becomes a
family some advantages such as an ampler life or an auspicious future; on the other hand, it inevitably will destabilize the immigrants’ family unity. Children of
immigration, like Meena, have been educated at the school and influenced by the mainstream culture. Therefore, the media of the host culture, such as television, movies, or even the habits of their peers, all serve as new cultural models and
possible lifestyles for them to follow. Nevertheless, these “new” (or more “Western”) ways of life most likely contradicts their parents’ expectations. Accordingly, the disagreement between Meena’s identification with the host culture and her parents’ cultural belief systems causes tensions in the familial relationships. Oftentimes Meena finds herself vacillating between parental tradition and the host culture. As illustrated above, Meena in fact is in such an ambivalent condition. She stands at the fault line between her South Asian identity and her British identification. Although she longs to speak Tollington-accented English and to look as chic as other kids in her community, she cannot cover her “visibly racialized body” (Neti 99). As one of the second generations of immigrants, Meena cannot completely identify herself with South Asian culture. Instead of acquainting herself with her connection with India, she looks for role model from the white neighborhood she lives in. From the perspective of Meena, we can get the pictures of social dislocations, cultural alienations, and identity confusions that pervade the second generations of
immigrants. Attempting to explore the issues of racial awareness, this chapter aims to examine how Meera Syal, being as a second-generation South Asian British writer, directs her protagonist Meena to look for identity and belongings in either British society or South Asian community. This chapter argues that, in the process of re-identifying herself and acknowledging her connection with her South Asian ethnicity, Meena gradually modifies her notions about the South Asian culture; meanwhile, she reverses her initial uncertainty and confusion for the benefit of her
in-btweenness. In addition to realizing the power of her innate in-betweenness, Meena also makes use of it to develop a “transcultural identity” (Suárez-Orozco 113) that helps her maintain affective ties with South Asian culture and manage to survive in British mainstream culture at the same time. In the end, it reaches a conclusion that she must let go of the performance of whiteness to which she has consecrated her childhood and can finally develop a more independent identity with a “dual—even if now less fixed—perspectives of being both Indian and English” (Neti 116). She at last learns how to privilege her “duality” (Neti 115) rather than subsumes her performance into a single identification.
For such a second-generation child of immigrants like Meena, parental
expectations and conventional norms are not of primary importance. More often than not, parental expectations and prohibitions create barriers between her and her parents. She actually longs to belong, to be appreciated by peers of her same age. Meanwhile, she is gradually aware of those “appropriate behaviors” at home will only make her appear odd and alien in public. Meena’s position, stuck in between the white
neighborhood and her Punjab family, makes her feel awkward. In the village, she does not belong to any group or gang. She feels relieved when her seventh birthday party is canceled because she does not have to face the fact that she has no one to invite. As she describes her embarrassing situation, “I was stuck in between the various gangs, too young for Anita’s consideration, too old to hang around the cloud of toddlers that would settle on me like a rash every time I set foot outside my front door” (AM 25). But, back at home, she cannot find her position either, especially when her parents have secret conversations in Punjabi. Those secret discussions, Meena realizes, are mostly about her misbehaviors or about the past that only belongs to her parents and their friends. When Meena’s elders get together using their familiar language and sharing their communal memories or sorrows, she feels suffocated and
is literally chocked by the affection shared by the grownups. There is an episode in the fiction that sarcastically represents her smothering condition:
. . . Mummy and papa were talking again, soft whispers, sss sss sss, my mother’s bracelets jingled as she seemed to wipe something from her face. This was my birthday and they were leaving me out again. I squeezed my hot dog and suddenly the sausage shot into my mouth and lodged firmly in my windpipe. I was too shocked to move, my fingers curled uselessly into my fists. They were still talking, engrossed . . . . (27)
Almost choked to death, Meena is frightened and senses that life is vulnerable. Syal here purposely uses the scene of suffocation to epitomize Meena’s occasional alienation within her family. Syal humorously utilize onomatopoeic “sss sss sss” to portray Meena’s unfamiliarity with her parents’ conversation in Punjabi. The smothery feeling is specifically represented by the accident of being chocked. After the near-death experience, Meena begins to recount the interaction with her parents and within the South Asian community. In Meena’s memory, her parents rarely invite neighbors to their place except those pretend uncles and aunties; as she recalls, “in the thirteen years we lived there, during which every weekend was taken up with visiting Indian families or being invaded by them, only once had any of our neighbours been invited in further than the step of our back door” (AM 29). The “invasion” that Meena uses to describe the frequent visits paid by non-blood relatives more or less underlines her alienation in the South Asian community. For her parents, in order to bridge themselves to their homeland India, they strive to keep “authentic” Indian cultures and customs such as clothes, language-using, or meals in daily life. Moreover, they rely on those non-blood related friends to comfort their nostalgia, to create a little India as a space where they can store their communal and shared
feel safe and wanted. As Meena puts it, “I knew how intensely my parents valued these people they so readily renamed as family, faced with the loss of their own blood relations” (31). But, Meena begins to feel excluded when non-blood relatives and their shared memories intrude into her life and leave her no space. She feels blocked out and proclaims that: “[G]radually, I got bored, and then jealous of this past that excluded me” (36). Especially when the grownups get together to share the past memories and their sorrow, they circle a corner with no place for Meena. Meena says, “During these ghazals, my elders became strangers to me . . . . There was no point in my being there; when I looked at my elders, in these moments, they were all far, far away” (72). The ghazal may generally be understood as a poetic form in which people express the pain of separation and loss. It is mainly involved in singers’
sadness, love, longing and questions for life. In the little India, which Meena’s parents and their friends build up, ghazals seem to play a role of soothing their dense
melancholy and desperation derived from the turmoil of Partition. Obviously, for the elders, either the little India or the ghazal entails a “communal policing” (AM 31) to alleviate the anxiety within homelessness as well as displacement.
When analyzing Meena, Yasmin Hussain indicates that “Meena’s life is lived in two parallel worlds, which differ from each other in terms of culture, religion and her own experience: that of the surrounding indigenous British society and that of the family home” (113). As a matter of fact, Meena’s description of their “Front Garden dilemma” (AM 33) highlights the differences between the two worlds. The bare garden, without ornamental wells or gnomes but spread with her mother’s herbs and spice plants, remarkably separates Meena’s life into two spaces. Inside the garden, lays the South Asian family that offers her guidance but at the same time pressures her with the family’s expectations on her school and future achievement. It is exactly a space that surrounds Meena with conventional values. On the other side, the white
neighborhood and the peer groups open a world of recreation and Western culture that Meena always aspires to try out. Meena keeps vacillating between the two worlds in her childhood. However, the hot dog moment and her feeling of being excluded by her family little by little seem to drive Meena to get closer to the surrounding British society. Making friend with Anita Rutter and being part of Rutter’s gang, which includes Fat Sally and Sherrie, stand for Meena’s first step into the “genuine” British world.
The title character Anita, blonde, confident and boisterous, is a few years senior to Meena. She is a completely opposite figure of a well-behaved girl in the South Asian standards. Whilst Meena’s parents regard Anita as a bad company of their daughter, the fact is that Meena needs Anita and decides to befriend her because Anita represents an ideal other that she lusts for, or even yearns to become. Graeme Dunphy claims that “[i]t would be too simple to say that Anita is a bad influence on Meena, for Meena clearly wants this influence. Rather, Meena projects fantasies and frustrations onto Anita, using her to overcome her own insecurities” (642). The friendship between Meena and Anita indeed provides Meena an alternative in her seeking for belonging. In Meena’s eyes, to befriend Anita is to book herself a bold adventure for future. Hence, Meena embarks on her big adventure on the first day of summer holidays. On that day, they have their first official conversation. Anita shows Meena how butterfly eggs roll up in a leaf to hide, then she strips all the leaves off a branch and flicks it at Meena. “It stung but I did not pull my legs back. I knew this was a test,” said Meena (AM 39). As a ritual, Meena procures sweets to Anita and feels privileged to be in Anita’s company. The butterfly eggs are forced to leave the branch that they are used to stick to; similarly, Meena leaves her South Asian obligations behind and heads for an uncertain adventure.
sneaks to the fairground with Anita and intends to impress Anita with her “authentic Yard accent” (AM 122). Furthermore, coerced by Anita, Meena pockets money from Mr. Ormerod’s shop and further incriminates Baby and Pinky of the stealing. She does all she could to retain her role in “Wenches Brigade” and to strengthen her relationship with Anita (138). The stealing incident on Meena’s birthday verifies that Meena officially becomes a member of Anita’s group. In a way, it also symbolizes Meena’s transition from a girl into a “real Wench,” since Meena gains her “Wench Wings” on her birthday and earns the invitation, also a permission, to join the
leadership with Anita (156). It is not only an honor to become Anita’s joint-leader but also a compensation for her loss of position in the South Asian community because of the arrival of baby brother Sunil, who engages his parents’ full attention. For Meena, it is significant and precious to get recognition from Anita. Meena’s friendship with Anita surely balances her lack of attention at home; such a friendship also makes her feel complete and sets her free. The alliance with Anita and the gang asserts Meena’s individuality, which is totally distinct from the image of being a sweet and polite girl of South Asian descent, as represented by Pinky and Baby. Obviously, the more Meena is compelled toward the white community, the more distant she becomes with her family and her ethnicity. The peer group, therefore, dominates Meena’s life and her thinking—just like what she tellingly declares, “My life was outside the house, with Anita, my passport to acceptance” (148).
Meena endeavors to ascertain her belonging through her friendship with Anita. Yet, the more Meena gets familiar with the white neighborhood, the more she is disappointed. When she has further contact with the people she admires, she gets apprehensive of racialized tensions and hostility within the neighborhood, which makes her aware that she is still unable to find a sense of belonging within the white society. Concerning Meena’s awareness and transition, Hussain admits that
cultivating friendship with Anita indeed keeps Meena in contact with the white culture, but she also asserts that Meena will finally finds that her individuality is misguided because of her idolization of Anita. As Hussain notes,
In befriending Anita, Meena becomes engaged in a wide variety of new social contexts, which provide conflicting demands and expectations. Meena begins to experience a conflict of parental ideas, personal interests, peer attitudes and the reality of her social environment. (113-14)
Her fantasy world now becomes reality that forces her to recognize the conflicting situation she is in. She observes that insidious racism lurking in people’s attitude is emblematic of the fissures between the neighborhood and her. Simultaneously, racist speeches or behaviors in the living place inspire her to side with her ethnic group.
Directly or not, racial discrimination or prejudice always comes across to Meena either in the neighborhood or at the school. In a history class, one of Meena’s
classmates answers that the village they live is called “Black Country” mainly because there are so many “darkies” (AM 22). Meena feels humiliated and hence kicks the boy. The teacher punishes Meena rather than blames the boy for his inappropriate speech. It is noteworthy that Meena recalls what has happened in the history class in a very indifferent way. Meena at first is irritated because of the boy’s comment on her skin color. At the time, she has not noticed that the implication of the boy’s remark is actually discrimination against her ethnicity. What really invokes her attention is a racial sideswipe on the way to the gurdwara, a Sikh temple. Meena remembers that it is the incident that her mother cannot stop the car from sliding down from the hill. When Meena asks an old lady to reverse her car a bit further, the old lady mutters: “Bloody stupid wog. Stupid woggy wog. Stupid” (97). While intending to tell her father about the incident, she recalls the moment:
papa countless times, but not once had he ever shared his upset with me. He must have known it would have made me feel as I felt right now, hurt, angry, confused, and horribly powerless because this kind of hatred could not be explained. (98)
It may be Meena’s first time to sense that she in fact is forever an outsider to the neighborhood where she had regarded herself as an insider (Wilson 112).
Meanwhile, Meena constantly senses that there is no reciprocal respect in her friendship with Anita. Regarding Anita as the only one who is able to understand her loneliness and conflict, Meena worships everything of Anita. Nevertheless, from time to time, she has to face being snubbed and disrespected in the relationship. What bothers Meena the most is the frosty attitude of Deirdre, Anita’s mother. Meena believes that Deirdre does not welcome her from the way Deirdre inspects her.
Deirdre, intentionally or not, names their fluffy dog Nigger, which discomforts Meena somehow. Meena is confused about why Anita and her family cannot treat her
wholeheartedly. In their companionship, there seems to be an everlasting gap, which is so hard to bridge across and such a connection can crumble easily as well. As expected, they almost split after the outburst of Sam Lowbridge’s racist speech at the Spring Fete. Sam is a bad boy around the yard, and he is the one whom Meena adores as well. During the Spring Fete, Sam stands against the construction of motorway and spits out: “This is our patch. Not Some wogs’ handout” (AM 193). Insulted and
betrayed, Meena suddenly realizes she has never belonged to the white neighborhood. Those who she has been so intimate with are now turned into someone
unrecognizable. In particular, Anita disappoints Meena when Anita worships Sam rather than despises him for his radical statement. Meena ultimately realizes that Anita has never been considerate of Meena’s condition. Anita sees Meena as one of her followers instead of her equal. The inequality within their relations makes the
