The past few weeks we have been discussing the book ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ by Mohsin Hamid, a novel describing the experiences of a Pakistani immigrant, Changez, in the United States pre and post 9/11. Told by a narrator to an unnamed American, Hamid gives an account intended to provoke – how do we think about events such as 9/11? What reactions are appropriate? What is America’s role on the global stage? How is this perceives by others? Are we right to assume?

One of the themes of the novel is nostalgia. This is unsurprising, as the US has kind of wrapped itself up in patriotism and longing for the ‘good old days’ in the period after 9/11. Just look at Trump’s campaign slogan: Make America Great Again. There is undeniably a culture of nostalgia in the US (and the west), especially on the political right.

The novel depicts nostalgia not just in America, Changez often experiences such a longing for Pakistan. Throughout, we see this feeling as an inhibitor to progress – for the US (portrayed through Erica, and her longing for Chris), and for Pakistan.

Personally, I feel nostalgia is really important to discuss at the moment. We spent a large portion of the previous term discussing the way in which a society remembers – what we forget, what we readdress, and what we need to readdress. While nostalgia looks in the same direction as remembering, it certainly has a very different result. The nostalgia used by many on the right speaks of times when minorities were significantly oppressed, diseases were incurable, and poverty was much more widespread. I’m not sure that’s a society we should be aiming for. When we discussed remembering, we thought of the things that were excluded from the narrative – like the internment of Japanese in the US and Canada during World War Two.

Over the break, my dad and I streamed a German language film (I know, Netflix in the UK is far more limited) called ‘Labyrinth of Lies’, which depicts a German public prosecutor finding out about the holocaust in 1958, and embarking on a mission to prosecute those involved. At the beginning of the film knowledge of what the Nazis had done was limited, and Germans were not aware of the atrocities at camps like Auschwitz (and if they did know, they did not discuss them), and it is only by meeting a Jewish man who was a survivor of the camps did this prosecutor uncover the truth. The film’s entire theme is remembering – why it’s important, and how society and individuals can accept it. The prosecutor is seen struggling with why people don’t seem to care, and coming to terms with how his own nation could commit such terrible acts. In reality, it was not until much later that Germany truly came to grips with its past – most public memorials only being created since the 1990s.

To watch a film which contemplated and highlights the issue of remembrance in such an overt manner during a time of what feels like complete and utter forgetting was startling. The nostalgia throughout the west – now embodied by the man in the most powerful position in the world – is dangerous. Hamid shows us this, as those wrapped up in nostalgia and longing for a perfect past that does not truly exist cannot progress.

‘Labyrinth of Lies’ is really good and I recommend you see it even though you have to read subtitles (but we are Global Citizens after all).

We’ve made it (nearly) to the end of the first term! In our last week of our ASTU class we visited the rare books and special collections library in the basement of Irving library. Here, Joy Kogawas records surrounding the writing of her novel, Obasan (1981), are kept – including letters, drafts, and documents about Japanese internment in Canada.

The folder I had the opportunity to explore included letters between Joy Kogawa and Premier of Ontario, William G. Davis, and the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1981. I found them really interesting. Obviously, the novel Obasan set out to make a certain impression, it was an account of ‘the other side’, and the issues Japanese Candians have had to confront. However, the letters written by Kogawa show just how determined she was in making her book matter.

These are important people she is writing to, and she doesn’t mince her words. She outright states how this would not have happened had a Bill of Rights existed during the time of internment, and that Canada has a responsibility to address the experience. Furthermore, she uses her voice to advocate for a Japanese retirement home in Toronto, again being very frank as she states old Japanese citizens are “dying in nursing homes run by white Canadians”.

These letters make realise how important Joy Kogawa has been in advocating her cause, and although Obasan is a work of fiction, it is a powerful force in society. The way she states her intent to such important people is quite inspiring, and although she gets somewhat lukewarm responses from them in responding letters, Obasan did have an impact in government – a section was read in parliament during the official apology to Japanese Canadians in 1988.

At the beginning of this semester I had no knowledge whatsoever of Canada’s internment of Japanese citizens – I knew only a little about internment in the US. It has been fascinating to look at it in a historical perspective and on the personal. Particularly, how certain individuals can have such an impact on a narrative, or how people access and view a narrative. Joy Kogawa has been such an individual here, and her letters show how purposeful this was – and just how determined she was to get her voice, and the voice of an oppressed group out there.

I hope everyone has a brill winter break.

So we have now finished Running In The Family and have moved onto discussing Marita Sturken’s essay Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering, which covers the concept of cultural memory. I’d been really struggling with what to blog about – academic writing hasn’t quite got my mind working in the way other topics have. But when we discussed the idea of cultures that remember and forget, it confronts an issue I have been contemplating as a Brit.

I have never had to face reconciling my culture – I have never lived elsewhere before or have parents of different backgrounds. I am English, through and through. I was born in England to English parents with English ancestors, I live in a quaint village where we play cricket, drink tea and chat down the pub, I say things like ‘cheers’ and ‘mate’. I am, at my very core, a Brit.

However, more recently there are aspects of British culture that I am struggling with. Sturken discusses how what a nation forgets is as important as what it remembers, and that nations can have a culture of forgetting and a culture of remembering. In the UK, I feel that we are now at a changing point between the two.

Through all my years at school we learnt about the empire, but we were only taught about how awesome it was, about how much we benefitted and how much we gave to other societies – Britain was amazing. We didn’t learn about the other side involved, and until relatively recently I wasn’t aware that the empire wasn’t entirely the amazing thing I had been taught it was. Now, British curriculums are adapting in schools to include teaching the other side of the story – how it wasn’t exactly a sunny experience for all involved. Personally, I think this is a good thing. We should be aware of our nation’s missteps – otherwise how are we to learn from them? This also links to the identity of a ‘global citizen’ – someone who takes into account the lesser known stories, and focuses on their importance.

However, there is a lot of backlash to this in the UK. One organisation adamantly campaigning against this is the right-wing newspaper The Daily Mail. They’ve accused the British education system of being run by ‘lefty loonies’ intent on ‘cultural Marxism’, with a goal on indoctrinating the nation’s youth with an anti-Britain ideology (link, link). They are one for hyperbole. Some people in the UK, including our new foreign secretary Boris Johnson, have even described how leaving the EU can bring the resurgence of the British Empire (link) (link). I don’t really see how they plan on achieving this, but best of luck to them.

Depressingly, this hyper-nationalism is not a fringe belief in the UK at the moment. Much of the argument to leave the EU was based on ‘Making Britain Great Again’ (to put it in Trump terms), with Nigel Farage declaring June 23rd as our own ‘Independence Day’ (even though the Britain is what most countries actually celebrate their independence from, this tweet sums it up well). Recently Theresa May, our new Prime Minister, declared that “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.” (link). We’ve sort of forgotten that other places exist, and are (dare I say) equally important.

One example, of an object with ‘cultural meaning’ that has been subject to controversy is the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel College in Oxford. Cecil Rhodes was key figure of British imperialism, and served as the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. There was a campaign to have it removed, or to simply have a plaque next to it explaining the history behind Rhodes, and the suffering that many experienced because of him (he was key in implementing racial segregation). However, this was met with strong disagreement –  arguing that students were trying to ‘rewrite history’. Their argument was not that they were trying to rewrite history, but that figures with significant negative history should not be celebrated, as the impression of a statue gives. Ultimately, the students did not succeed in removing the statue, but the university has agreed to put up a plaque recognising his actions. Here, we’ve achieved some remembrance, which I think is a positive.

I hope that my country doesn’t continue down this path of blatant ‘strategic forgetting’, as Sturken mentions. I hope we learn more about the other side of the story, and that what we did in the past wasn’t always awesome. This is going to be tough in the current political climate we have in Britain, but I think it’s worth it.

We’ve now moved on to our second book of the semester, Michael Ondaatje’s Running In The Family, a novel that, at first glance, is about the author’s return to Sri Lanka having lived in Canada for a long period of time. While the book is technically a memoir – it tells a personal story through Ondaatje’s family – it doesn’t quite fit the genre.

When I think of what a memoir is I think biographical, truth, usually about someone or something of importance and retelling. Honestly, they don’t usually interest me. However, this book does not conform to what we expect of a memoir. As we have discussed in class and in the Matthew Bolton essay, we can describe Running In The Family as a “historiographic metafiction” – it finds its basis in truth, using it as a launch pad to explore topics (particularly identity) through imagination and self-reflection.

The one memoir I can remember having read is Wild Swans by Jung Chang, a powerful (it’s one of my favourite books) recount of her grandmother’s mother’s and her own experience in China throughout the 20^th century. This book was detailed in providing dates, photos, family trees, maps and articles. The primary concern in Wild Swans was telling the truth of what life was like for these women in China, and broadcasting that to a wider audience. So reading Running In The Family with this expectation in mind was difficult.

Michael Ondaatje was not concerned with telling the truth of his family and their life across Canada and Sri Lanka – this was not his primary concern. As Bolton argued, anyone with an expectation of truth and a representation of Sri Lanka and a responsibility to Ondaatje’s culture are not going to have this fulfilled. Instead, this book is more of an identity finding mission, rather than a fact finding one. But to be disappointed with the lack of truth in this ‘memoir is unfair, as Ondaatje never promised it to be a recount of his family’s life.

Reading Running In The Family has shifted my sense of what a memoir can be. I actually have a more positive view of them. Ondaatje achieves a much more personal goal in his book, as he reconciles his identity in relation to his father and how he feels about their lack of relationship. To me, this is much more interesting that the recount of one person’s story – there is something much more rewarding about it.

But, having said this, I’m starting to think is any memoir actually capable of providing what we expect of it? We expect the truth and a story retold from personal knowledge. Do any memoirs achieve this? One of the first topics we discussed in relation to Running In The Family was this idea of retracing memory, how it is formed and how we tell it. If memoirs are formed from memory, are they really ‘the truth’ as we expect it? Whenever we go back over memories and rework them and form them into stories to tell we change, edit, add a little bit of detail, leave certain parts out. Surely memoirs are guilty of this too? Perhaps not to the extent that Ondaatje inserts himself into his book, but supposedly still to some extent.

It all really depends of what we expect from a memoir. But overall, I’ve had my sense of what a memoir is shifted.

The first piece of literature we have read in our CAP global citizen ASTU class is Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood, by Marjane Satrapi. The book is a graphic narrative depicting Satrapi’s childhood experiences of the Iranian revolution. One of the issues that is raised throughout is that of religion, and more specifically the veil, as Satrapi’s child protagonist of Marji is forced to wear it after the Islamic Revolution. The veil is an issue that is often discussed in the Western world, particularly whether it is a symbol of oppression, but a new perspective is introduced in Persepolis of a child’s reaction to it.

Many in the West see the veil as a symbol of oppression, and a regressive ideology – it tells women they do not have the freedom to dress as they like, going against the values that many consider important. However, it is important to look at the veil in another way, if it is a woman’s choice. A key value in many societies is a woman’s right to choose – be it her career, her life or what she may wear. If a woman feels that wearing the veil is an important and integral part of her religion than she should have the right to do so – and how could this be seen as oppressive?

Though, many still see it – in any light – as a symbol of oppression, as written in an opinion piece for The Guardian titled “As a Muslim woman, I see the veil as a rejection of progressive values”. Here, the author argues that whatever the case the veil is an “affront to female dignity, autonomy and potential.”.

This sense of choice is what should be considered. In Persepolis, Marji (as all women in Iran) did not have the option not to wear the veil, and was instead forced to as a young girl. We see the reactions of children to this on the very first page – where they are playing around with them, rather than respecting them as the regime probably intended. This issue of choice is shown in her narration, “We didn’t really like to wear the veil, especially since we didn’t understand why we had to.”. Additionally, Satrapi mentions the lack of understanding, showing especially that this was not a choice. I had never considered how a child might feel being forced to wear such an overtly religious garment, assuming that there was always a sense that they understood.

We discussed in class the Marji’s personal relationship with religion & God versus the public relationship shown in the society through the rules they had to follow. While Marji was a religious child – she wished to be a prophet and had nightly conversations with God – she was still unclear as to why this ‘rule’ in her religion was necessary. The veil is symbolic of this juxtaposition of public and private – as the veil reveals ones supposed religious beliefs, but they may have different personal ones.

Despite having been forced to wear the veil as a child, Satrapi has since argued against propositions of bans on the garment in Western societies. In 2003 she wrote an article for the Guardian when France proposed banning the veil in schools. She argued against the idea that this was a progressive idea, and that banning the veil was just as regressive as forcing a woman to wear one, as it is her choose – “It is surely a basic human right that someone can choose what she wears without interference from the state.”.

Even though we consider a woman’s right to choose as an important value in the West, it can still be difficult to marry this right with that of a woman covering her face with something traditionally seen as oppressive. Recently in the UK people have been arrested for forcibly ripping veils from the heads of muslim women, effectively removing their right to choose what they wear – as Satrapi argued in her piece – and politicians continue to advocate banning the veil.

The veil will likely continue to be a polarizing issue in the West, but viewing it from the perspective of a child, as shown in Persepolis, has informed me further about my views on the subject.

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