Hello readers,

For the last few weeks we have been studying Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist in ASTU 100A. The novel traces the story of Changez, a young man who was born in Pakistan and came to study and work in the U.S. The story centres around how Changez’s sense of American identity is complicated after the 9/11 attacks, when his immigrant, Pakistani identity subjects him to increasing harassment from a paranoid, nostalgic and patriotic America mired in the “us” vs. “them” discourse of the War on Terror. Ultimately, Changez comes to have a very critical gaze of the neo-imperial tendencies of the U.S., and questions his own complicity with the privileged and dominating disposition of the U.S. through his work for a large American financial firm. In the end, Changez’s falling out with the United States is so great that he decides to give up the ideal, American lifestyle he has created for himself and move back to Pakistan.

While Hamid uses the dramatic monologue form to tell Changez’s story – Changez being the sole orator – the novel can be read as a more general representation of the immigrant experience in a post-9/11 world. So, when I heard the British rapper MIA’s new song “Borders”, the music video for which came out in February and depicts refugee men attempting to cross borders through imagery such as overcrowded boats, the word “LIFE” spelled out from human bodies climbing on a chain-linked, barbwired border fence, and a ghostly boat constructed from the bodies of migrants stacked upon each other, I could not help but think of Changez’s story. Although the song is most obviously a response to the recent refugee crisis (and the failure of the Western countries to adequately respond to this human rights crisis), it can also be seen as a general critique of the political and social climate that we have built in the West that is so hostile to immigrants and so full of borders. In fact, MIA (born Mathangi Arulpragasam) herself is a former refugee, immigrating to the UK after being raised in Sri Lanka during the Sri Lankan Civil War, and this aspect of MIA’s identity shows itself proudly in much of her politically charged music.

In terms of how “Borders” comes into conversation with Hamid’s depiction of the immigrant experience, MIA’s abrupt but poignant lyrics such as “Borders (What’s up with that?)” or “Politics (What’s up with that?)” or “The new world (What’s up with that?)” or “Your power (What’s up with that?)” can be easily spliced into the moments of existential crisis that Changez faces as he becomes increasingly disillusioned with the culture of the U.S. In fact, my favourite line of “Borders”, “Your privilege (What’s up with that?)”, could fit naturally within many instances in the novel when Changez feels alienated from his affluent, entitled American peers and colleagues, such as when Changez recounts his vacation with his Princeton peers in Greece and says “I found myself wondering by what quirk of human history my companions… were in a position to conduct themselves in the world as though they were its ruling class” (21). Or another example would be when Changez is on a business trip in Manila and locks eyes with a Jeepney driver next to his limousine – a moment where he is confronted with a destabilizing sense of “Third World sensibility” – and subsequently looks at his colleague and thinks to himself “you are so foreign” (67). MIA also expresses feeling bewildered and confused over the priorities and ambitions of the West, by devoting a stanza to questioning the way we seem to value things like Kim Kardashian’s butt (“Breaking internet (What’s up with that?)”) or being wealthy (“Making money (What’s up with that?)”) over the lives of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean. 

As much as MIA’s song “Boarders” can be superimposed onto a reading of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I think it can also be read as a sort of handbook for global citizenship. What I mean by this is that all of the questions that MIA asks in her stanzas (some of which I mentioned above) are critical questions that need to be asked by anyone who has hopes of becoming a true global citizen. In fact, we have been indirectly asking these types of questions all year in the CAP Global Citizens stream. This sentiment is really brought home in her chorus, when MIA explains how we need to shift the conversation to understand that “We’re solid and we don’t need to kick them [the immigrants] ”, implying that she believes that as a global body we should all be involved in resolving the migrant crises; that we are solid, unified global citizens “North, South, East and Western”. However, I want to draw attention to how MIA explicitly says “Western” instead of the “West”. I believe she does this because she wants to make it clear that the “West” is not just a geographical point on the global map, but is inherently drenched in Western ideology, which continues to limit the West’s capacity for global citizenship by furthering the “us” and “them” type discourse which has destructively isolated its citizens from the peoples of the rest of the world.

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Hamid, Moshin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2008. Print.