Homeland Elegies | Ayad Akhtar #USfiction

I had to remind myself of the exact definition of elegy as I was reading Ayad Akhtar's latest novel, Homeland Elegies: A Novel. In a promotional video on the Little Brown publishing page, he mentioned this book was not only about that longing for the home country that his parent's generation felt, but an elegiac response to the death of his mother and the decline of his father.

An elegy is a poem of serious reflection written, usually, as a lament for the dead. In more modern terms it can also be a lament for a tragic event, expressing mournfulness and sorrow. Or as Samuel Taylor Coleridge says in Specimens of the Table Talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Vol 2 (1835)

Elegy is a form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It may treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself; but always and exclusively with reference to the poet. As he will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so sorrow and love became the principal themes of the elegy. Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone or absent and future.

Documenting the regrets and desires, sorrows and loves of Muslims in America over the past fifty years is the aim of Homeland Elegies, but most of the drama plays out in more recent times. Akhtar himself is our reference point, as he explores the changes in America post 9-11 and post-Trump, via the lens of his own family. His sense of being 'other' or an outsider informs his perspective. He explores the hope and eventual disillusionment of his parents generation as they struggle to be American, to belong and to be accepted.

The confusion I experienced when I started to read Homeland Elegies was a deliberate device used by Akhtar. It worked. I got very caught up in trying to work out what was real and was not, because the story reads like a memoir. Akhtar is our main character. He is a writer and playwright, who writes about the Muslim experience in America. He is a writer who needs to 'deform actual events enough to be able to see them more clearly.'

I found myself googling Akhtar and reading his wikibio to try to sort out the truth from the fiction. It wasn't easy. Again, it was the video linked above that revealed Akhtar's intent to play fast and loose with the facts, pushing the boundaries between reality and fiction. He wanted to write a story that collapsed real life into a tale. He wanted to confront our fascination with fake news; how a good story has become more important than the truth. Or more accurately, how a good story (or even a bad story) has become confused with the truth until no-one is certain where the truth lies anymore.

It was a discombobulating read.

It was also rather sad. The story revealed a family and a country in decline. It was an indictment on a country that claims to be proud of it's migrant history, accepting the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched refuse, the homeless and the tempest-tossed. But not really. Unless you happen to be uber-rich. Being non-white and non-Christian and not rich is a problem every single day for anyone who is different. Especially since 9-11. Especially since Trump.

Akhtar has written a fascinating, absorbing and heart-breaking story. 

Facts:

• Akhtar was born 28th October, 1970, Staten Island, New York
• Grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• Won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2013 for his play, Disgraced
• In 2017 he won the Steinberg Playwright Award
• Homeland Elegies is a September release with Little Brown.

Favourite Quotes:

• the treachery of an American society that abandoned the weak and monetized the unlucky.
• the incompetence - even malfeasance - so abundantly on display at the municipal level. It was startling to see in this picture of America a nation so much like the one my parents described in Pakistan, where cutting corners, taking bribes, selling perks - all this was just business as usual.
• justice is the will of the strong borne by the weak.
• We were a nation in thrall to our own stupidity.
• students' growing intolerance for difficult ideas....they slap you with moral rhetoric about why you're wrong to make them do something they don't want to do.
• College was now a consumer experience, not a pedagogical one.
• "I'm here because I was born and raised here. This is where I've lived my whole life. For better, for worse - and it's always a bit of both - I don't want to be anywhere else. I've never even thought about it. America is my home."

Book 8 of 20 Books of Summer Winter

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

Home Fire was longlisted for this year's Man Booker and I so wish it had got the nod for the shortlist. It was a stronger, more consistently interesting story than 4 3 2 1, but perhaps the judging committee felt they had ticked the refugee/migrant experience by including Exit West?

Either way it's a shame, because Kamila Shamsie's story is engaging, thought-provoking and quite a page turner. It's easy to read nature beguiles you until you find yourself in the middle of a very serious situation with very heavy consequences. Faith, family, moral dilemma's and parliamentary heavy-handedness clash head-on in this story of choice and consequence.

Shamsie based her story on Sophocles play, Antigone which is the story of a young girl who has to chose between the law (in particular her uncle Creon, the King of Thebes, laws) or her own moral compass. Shamsie was also influenced by Seamus Heaney's play about Creon as imagined through the lens of the Bush administration, The Burial at Thebes (2004).

Shamsie's epigraph referenced Heaney's play which I now see actually highlights her particular focus within this story - love versus law - the faith of her characters simply reflects modern concerns and gives Shamsie's story the contemporary touch.

Knowing the basic premise of the play, meant you also knew how the book would end. Incredibly Shamsie managed to create a lot of tension in the build up to this end. The details of the disaster and it's catastrophic results still caught me by surprise. Being an adaptation, you weren't quite sure how she would follow the original story and which bits she might adapt. Having a slightly different arrangement of main characters also created some doubt about who, what, why and how.

What makes this story work so well though, is that you can read and enjoy Home Fire all on it's own without any knowledge or thought of Antigone at all. Universal themes are universal for a reason!

If the Man Booker was still a Commonwealth only award, I believe that Home Fire would have been the stand-out winner. But that's another debate.

Coming of Age: Growing Up Muslim in Australia

Coming of Age: Growing Up Muslim in Australia edited by Amra Pajalic and Demet Divaroren has been shortlisted for this year's CBCA Eve Pownall Information Book Award.

Amra and Demet have brought together a diverse range of voices and experiences in this fascinating, challenging and sometimes surprising book.

From football stars to female kickboxers, established authors, activists, lawyers and even a Miss World Australia we see what it was like to grow up in the suburbs of Australia through Muslim eyes.

Teasing, bullying and isolation were sadly a common theme - whether for the food they had in their lunch boxes, their names, the clothes they wore or for their family routines, rituals and religion.

The challenge for me, in reading these wide-ranging bio's was just how different most of their worlds were to my white, working class/middle class childhood experience. Even though we lived in and grew up in the same country, there were times, reading this book, where we seemed poles apart.

I also found myself confronting my own childhood memories and those kids in every class, in every school who were always on the outside, being teased and bullied. During my childhood they were usually the Greek, Italian or Vietnamese children, the underprivileged or those with a disability. It's hard to look back and see the me that was too shy and too insecure of my own belonging to ever stand up to the bullies let alone defend the outsiders. I may not have joined in, but I did nothing to stop it either.

'Marginalised youth' at risk of being 'radicalised' are now regular news items in Australia. Is it possible that these stories in Coming of Age can help us to understand and identify some of these 'at risk youths'? Can we empower children to not only stand up for themselves against bullies and harassment, but to stand up for others? How can we promote tolerance, empathy and social justice?

Surely one way is through education and information?
The more knowledge we give to our children (in particular), the more they accept that difference is normal, difference is okay and that difference is interesting not threatening.
Coming of Age provides a dozen such interesting, candid and revealing stories.

I've included this post in my Australian Women Writer's challenge as half the contributors are young women.