The post-colonial experience is still fresh for the children of the sub-continent. We grew up hearing tales of British excesses, values, and vices. As Indians, we experienced, at least vicariously, the horrors of the Partition, a name used more often than not to refer to the blood-stained labor pains of our countries' naissance.
Sri Lanka, or Ceylon, had it no easier. Although they were not partitioned, recent events have proven that perhaps a partition might not have been too terrible, given the conflicts between the Tamils and the Sinhalese natives. For the unintiated, the Sinhalese are the native majority, who argue that the minority Tamils, migrants from Southern India, received preferential treatment during British rule. Post independence, Tamils claim that the Sinhala-majority government discriminated against them. These seeds of conflict blossomed into a raging feud between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist movement with early covert support from India, who saw them as a convenient tool to destabilise a neighbor and fellow aspirant in the global rat race. The Indians then switched to supporting the Sri Lankan government, in a bid to be seen as the regional power, and enable detente in the region.
One of the lasting legacies of the British, apart from the afore-mentioned political strife, was the English language. All parts of the sub-continent have produced peerless writers in English, from R K Narayan to Salman Rushdie in India, to Bapsi Sidhwa and Tariq Ali in Pakistan. Sri Lanka produced Michael Ondaatje and Shyam Selvadurai, among others. The term 'diaspora' has come to refer to the plethora of English writers from the Indian sub-continent, the Empire striking back, as it were (to borrow a Time magazine cover story title from a few years back).
Mary Anne Mohanraj, author of the new collection of stories "Bodies In Motion", therefore arrives with a variety of literary and historical baggage. She is a visiting professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago, and executive director of DesiLit, a South Asian literary organization. She has two previous literary collections and published stories on the alt.erotic.stories newsgroups, among other places. She founded a speculative fiction magazine, Strange Horizons, and the erotic webzine, Clean Sheets. Various other literary adventures followed, including a Ph.D. in English Literature at the University of Utah, whose dissertation was the novel-in-stories collection now published as "Bodies In Motion".
The collection charts the arcs of intent of two Sri Lankan families, from the 1930s, and the waning years of the British Raj, to modern America, with its follies and individual failings, before ending in a village by the sea in Sri Lanka, with a wizened old crone, once a young girl with a secret forbidden passion.
Lusts—individual, illicit, destructive—are channelled by most of the characters in these stories. They grapple with social pressures, compulsions of duty and selfish wants, before, for the most part, giving in to what they know cannot but hurt, wound, or doom. It is as if they all, and individually, carry the burden of their ancestors—oppressed and oppressors.
Article comments
1 - Bryan McKay
Aaman - this is one of the best literary reviews I've ever seen on this site. This book sounds absolutely fascinating. I'm minoring in Post-Colonial Studies in my undergraduate program, so it feels all the more relevant (to me, at least). I'll have to check it out. Thanks for bringing this to our attention! It's really good to see post-colonial and diaspora authors making their way into the literary mainstream in America. Sometimes compelling art is the best way to bridge cultural divides (I think I wrote a paper about something very similar last year, now that I think about it...)
2 - Aaman
Wow - thanks for the compliment. Diaspora writing is all about leaving and arriving, and the space between.
In one sense, American writing is diaspora writing too, except that you seem to have become post-post-colonialists.
Enjoy the book - and support blogcritics
3 - BobBuilder
Sounds like a good book - but very complicated - why not write a simple novel?
4 - DrPat
Some people like onions, with layers of intense flavor. Some people prefer bananas instead, Bob. Since it's an open buffet, let's agree that onions and bananas both have a place on the table.
Great review, Aaman!
5 - harold bergsma
Aaman Lamba, how wonderful it is to read a book review and be smiling at the wonderful images used and the scintillating prose. Wonderful review! I shall purchase Bodies in Motion for my "diasporic" collection.
There may be only a few of us gora-log left around who remember the Partition vividly. It was my privilidge to grow up and live in pre-partition India in such exotic places as Taxila, Sialkot, Ludhiana, Mussoorie and without knowing it, absorbing the sustenance of language and culture from 'Mother India'. Then to return as an adult to those same places to work, particularly in Pakistan; Lahore, Taxila, Dehra Ishmael Khan etc. took a personal re-arrangement both linguistic and cultural. Later, travelling in Sri Lanka I was again struck with the unhappy "seeds of conflicts... and raging feuds." The bomb blast near the Galface Hotel had just occured. Presently in Pakistan new seeds of conflict are occuring with different forces, but equally tragic.
Thanks for your review. I would be honored to have you review-- One Way to Pakistan -- my latest literary work, a story of ..." where Muslim and Christian are all too human. Using images of three abductions, he weaves a tale which is engaging and passionately written.." E. Jarchow.