In Stereotype by Chakravorty Mrinalini

Author:Chakravorty, Mrinalini.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT008020, Literary Criticism/Asian/Indic, LIT006000, Literary Criticism/Semiotics & Theory
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC
Published: 2014-09-01T16:00:00+00:00

FAMILY CULTURE

Brick Lane narrates the hopes, humiliations, and tragedies of Nazneen and Chanu Ahmed, Bangladeshi immigrants to London’s East End, and Shahana and Bibi, their two British-born daughters. Set largely in the public housing council flats of the Tower Hamlets, one of the slums of metropolitan London, the novel lays bare the wrenching desires of a family caught in the frays of culture and class. Chanu, who migrated to London after completing a degree in English literature at Dhaka University, becomes increasingly disenchanted with the limited prospects available to him in England. Defeated in his professional aspirations, Chanu enters into an arranged marriage with Nazneen, a much younger woman from a village in Bangladesh. Nazneen, unsatisfied with her kind but pathetic husband, embarks on a series of minute domestic protests—eating furtively in the middle of the night, returning unwashed socks to their drawers, and cooking food with pain-inducing levels of spice. The novel punctuates Nazneen’s narrative with letters from her sister Hasina, whose life in Dhaka serves as a jarring counterpoint to the idyllic memories of childhood that provide fantasy escapes for Nazneen. Shortly after Nazneen’s arrival in London, the couple celebrates the birth of their son, Raqib, who, despite the force of Nazneen’s love, dies in infancy before the birth of their two daughters.

As the narrative unfolds, intricate webs of social relations begin to emerge within the close-knit but often contentious immigrant community. The narrative, closely allied with Nazneen’s perspective, follows a cast of characters who comprise the small circle of Nazneen’s new life, many of whom serve as stereotypic archetypes of community members within the immigrant enclave. Mrs. Islam, a sharp-tongued elderly woman, hides her money-lending business behind a saccharin shell and the pretence of ailing health. Razia, a feisty renegade who smokes cigarettes and speaks irreverently, is a recently widowed mother of a teenage drug addict. It is Razia who introduces Nazneen to the trade of home sewing, through which she comes to meet Karim, the young man who supplies garments for Nazneen to sew. Struggling with issues of identity and religion, Karim is a founding member of an Islamist group, the Bengal Tigers, who are mobilizing in opposition to the Lion Hearts, a collective of local fascist youths. A war of pamphlets escalates between the Lion Hearts and the Bengal Tigers as Nazneen begins an affair with Karim. Meanwhile Chanu, the failed immigrant, has devised a plan to return with the family to Bangladesh. With poignant exuberance, Chanu convinces himself that success is within reach in the form of a soap factory in Dhaka. The girls and Nazneen, however, remain skeptical of Chanu’s plan and are reluctant to relocate to a country from which they are alienated and one that the girls have never seen. When Karim asks Nazneen to divorce Chanu and marry him, Nazneen refuses his proposal and opts instead for a life on her own with her British-born daughters. In the novel’s final scene, Shahana, Bibi, and Razia arrange an outing for Nazneen

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