NON-FICTION We began with a colleague’s overview of the history of South Asian migration to the United States and specifically to the Pacific Northwest, including the 1907 Bellingham riots against Sikhs and the changes in immigration sparked by the 1965 Immigration Act. We hoped that this information would both orient our audience to the general historical context that would have made the Ganguli family’s immigration experience possible in The Namesake, and spark our audience’s interest in the way that South Asian immigrant experiences have unfolded differently when considered within particular historical junctures. We followed with another colleague’s explanation of why we were approaching a discussion of The Namesake through the perspectives of people involved with different local South Asian community organizations. One of the richest functions of literary texts, he argued, is that they offer an occasion for conversation about issues and questions raised therein; thus our panel discussion would seek to open up dialogue on compelling issues as a way of engaging the novel and its cinematic adaptation (released only months before). Each community organization then provided a brief summary of its mission and goals, followed by a discussion of issues in the text that might be read and discussed in light of concerns typically addressed by that organization. Thus on behalf of Chaya, another volunteer and I brought to light how Ashima’s dependent visa status upon arriving in the United States might have influenced the intense loneliness and alienation that she initially experienced. We pointed out how women on dependent visas who come to the United States for the sake of their husband’s job are faced with particular limitations that impact their choices and experiences with motherhood, wifehood,
Northwest, committed to supporting LGBTQ and differently-oriented South Asians. They, too, linked their insights to specific parts of the novel or film in order to open up the story for conversation and critique. In this way we not only invited readers to think about The Namesake in terms of the historical context that shaped it and other South Asian immigration narratives that differ from the Ganguli’s story, but also to imagine South Asian experiences as diverse, dynamic, complex, and shaped by a variety of social and cultural concerns. Or that another way for community organizations working together to spark dialogue on issues in a novel is to say, simply, that the experience of reading is not the same for everybody. The emotional responses, critiques, questions, antagonisms, or even apathy generated by a particular text are not uniform for each reader. Talking about those differences and what they mean is a valuable exercise. Conflicting Stakes: Community Dialogue Meets Literary Criticism This kind of work is not without its challenges. There was a distinct gap between the highly academic register of some panelists’ remarks, and the more accessible language of others. While these differences did not exclusively fall along an academic/nonacademic divide, members of the audience with whom I debriefed afterward confided that the academese was very alienating for South Asians who had decided to attend the panel discussion because they felt some affinity or familiarity with the topic, only to find it being discussed in terms that were difficult for them
“The term “South Asian” itself, sometimes a useful marker for signifying alliances and solidarities, is fraught by generational, religious, gendered, language-based, and class-based differences, among others..” friendship, employment, and many other arenas. As literary scholars, my fellow Chaya panelist and I both moored our discussion of these issues to close readings of specific passages in the novel in order to model a reading practice in which one opens up a given narrative to its attendant social issues. The other panelists represented Tasveer, an organization focused on independent South Asian cinema, and Trikone
to access. Additionally, there were challenges in addressing a mixed South Asian/non-South Asian audience. For example, during my portion of the first panel, I tried to highlight the diversity of India by listing the many languages spoken and religions practiced in the subcontinent. During our planning sessions, my colleagues and I had agreed that such a move would help resist the inclination to read
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