In my ASTU class, we have been studying Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which was published in 2007, and follows Changez Khan’s life before and after 9/11. The novel centers around Changez, an American immigrant from Pakistan, who works in the company Underwood Samson, in the business district of New York. The story is told in a café in Lahore, where Changez is telling his story to an American tourist. The story is told in present day and contains analepsis – where he flashbacks to his experiences in America, and cuts back into present tense from time to time.
While I was reading the novel, I made connections to my sociology class, where we watched a TEDtalk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The danger of a single story. In her TEDtalk, she discussed her difficulty finding her “cultural voice” and “warns if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical understanding” (TED). In Adichie’s TEDtalk, she addresses the fact that when she was young, she only read novels written by British authors because that is what was available. She describes the dangers of reading from a single perspective because they can be consistently confirmed harmful stereotypes and lead to misunderstanding due to its biased opinion. This relates to what we learn about Sarah Polley’s movie Stories We Tell, where it is important to consider all sides of the story when we are recalling events because our memories or other perspectives may be conflicting. In addition, I actually read her novel, Americanah,in my IB English class last year and found similarities between the main character, Ifemelu and Changez. Both of the protagonists are immigrants from third world countries and assimilate into American culture. From their origin countries, they didn’t realize that they were different until they came to America. Changez tells his story from his narrative and does not include other voices unless he is referring to past events. In a way, Hamid is also writing a single sided story, because he is so selective towards who the reader gets to hear from. While on the other hand, he is writing from an entirely new perspective towards the events of 9/11. I think he does this on purpose, to spotlight the new perspective of what it was like for immigrants at the time, and giving them a voice.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a pivotal novel because it addresses the events of 9/11 from a Pakistani perspective. From what we see in the media coverage about 9/11, there is a heavy emphasis on the victims from the American point of view, but this novel offers an alternative view where we see how the lives of who are of middle eastern descent have changed following 9/11. Again, going back to Ngozi’s TEDtalk, we can see how Hamid has written a counternarrative, offering a different perspective to the 9/11 incident. In the novel as well, from the scene of Changez meeting Erica’s family, we can see how prejudices towards people like Changez already existed, but through the event of 9/11, this stereotype has strengthened and been adopted by more of the public. Even in the media today, I think there is an over-representation of one individual, that therefore reflects negatively on the group. I think this relates to what I learned in my psychology class about the representative heuristic. The representative heuristic is the tendency to “determine the probability or frequency of an event based on assumptions or past experience” (PsychCentral). Similar to a stereotype, this is where we make assumptions about individuals based on past experiences, which may not be entirely true, and results in fallacies.
The climax of the novel revolves around 9/11, which changed the way people treated Changez and his perception of America. For me, this event happened when I was less than one years old, so I don’t personally remember any details about it happening or from the news. In school, I didn’t really learn about 9/11 so my knowledge about this event was rather general and basic before I read this novel. My understanding of 9/11 was based on what my parents told me or the tiny bits of information that I heard since I never really studied this in depth. From my point of view, it was not really discussed because it was seen as an uncomfortable topic no one really knew how to approach or talk about because they did not want to be offensive or discredit this event. I remember it as a terrorist attack that lead to tragedy, that took the lives of almost 3,000 people and changed the way the world viewed security. Not only security, but I think the perception of terrorists, and people changed as well, to always be on the side of caution. When I travelled to Hong Kong in the past, I experienced stricter flying regulations as a result of an increase in security following 9/11. When I think of 9/11, I often picture the iconic image of the plane colliding into one of the twin towers, followed by a dark cloud of smoke and a hint of fire. However, I learned in my ASTU class that there were other places that were attacked or planned to be attacked as well. Reading from the perspective of Changez, us as the reader get to see two unique perspectives from the same individual, which was quite eye-opening for me and furthered my understanding of this tragic event. For one, I read the novel from the perspective of someone is from and assimilated into the American culture. Secondly, I read about how the event of 9/11 affected the treatment immigrants from Pakistan in America. Reading the novel, the novel is quite raw and doesn’t falter to describe his experience immigrating to America and how he was treated before and after 9/11.
Citations:
https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story#t-365919
https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/representativeness-heuristic/