At a rooftop barbecue on the Upper East Side this weekend, I happened into a conversation about postcolonial literature. An Indian-American friend of mine was reading “The God of Small Things,” and found himself quite moved. As a Keralite who spent a part of his childhood there, he felt a deep connection with Roy’s characters. I can certainly relate to the feelings of nostalgia that Indian writers can evoke among we hyphenated Americans. That visceral familiarity with the worldview of Indians certainly explains the magnetic pull that postcolonial Indian English fiction has on me. There is something in postcolonial prose that is profoundly emotive and beautiful, a sensitivity that at once captures the weight of an ageless civilization, the natural beauty of the subcontinent, the brutality of poverty, and a hint of optimism for the future. Perhaps this analysis reveals just as much about the inclinations of this reader than the qualities of the literature, but in any case it explains, for me, why I am often more inclined to choose Rushdie and the two Vikrams over Proust.
But my love for fellow desi writers isn’t unequivocal. Jhumpa Lahiri’s piece in the Times dining section this morning about her experiences cooking at Cape Cod struck me as boring, self-indulgent, and pretentious, despite her clear flair for beautifully vivid descriptions of domesticity – spices, recipes, crockery.
“Part of me loves to navigate the culinary wilderness of rental homes: the stale McCormick spices, the speckled enamel stockpots in which countless visitors have boiled their corn.”
A nice image, certainly, but the piece otherwise meanders fitlessly from one incomplete – though beautifully worded – description to the next. My issue is this piece is just so damn generic. Good writing about food has a way of elevating what can mundane to art, weaving the nostalgia and sensuality of food into the narrative. The Times generally hits this head on with columns from Melissa Clark, Pete Wells, and the “Food. Eat. Memory” series in which guest writers wax about a meaningful memory involving food.
Here, Lahiri seems to have swapped out the exotic Indian background (back off Edward Said-ists) and the poignant immigrant identity for New York chic: The chic mom writer who lives in Brooklyn, uses trendy All-Clad cookware, vacations at the Cape, and fetishizes Americana like Pyrex and Formica. Not that there’s anything wrong any of these things – I’d hardly refuse any of them. But it’s a disappointingly generic tableau of objects and markers, as though she’s trying desperately to be liked, to fit in with the New York art community. Her only mention of anything vaguely Indian is a brief reference to Tandoori spice rub.
This is not to say that Indian writers should feel compelled to invoke their exoticism in every piece – although clearly, I am nearly always moved by stories that do. The issue is that Lahiri seems stuck in a rut where her identify is the subject of her writing. As a reader of the Dining Section, I am eager to read refreshing, clever, and meaningful writing about food. Unless she can make her identity interesting enough – and linked to food – I don’t want to hear about her Park Slope condo or her sister’s Corolla. Identity is a powerful source of inspiration for all writers, but many are able to focus on a specific idea, a memory, an event, and tell a story that isn’t quite so self-conscious. If Jhumpa wants to prove that her writing isn’t limited to musings on her Indian-ness, she needs to either articulate a new identity that’s equally interesting, or tell a convincing story.
2 years ago
