THIS BLESSED HOUSE

The final story summary from Interpreter of Maladies:

Summary: This Blessed House

            “Jhumpa Lahiri  provides a short story, “This Blessed House” in Interpreter of Maladies showing contrast and similarity between the two main characters. Sanjeev born and raised in Calcutta, educated in the United States, attended MIT, and an engineering professional is newly married to California born and raised Twinkle who is very much a young vibrant modern American woman who is also highly educated working on her masters at Standford. The similarities between them physically are their ethnicity, but visibly to anyone else they could not be any more different.

            They find various Christian themed paraphernalia throughout the home they just moved into in an established neighborhood located in Hartford right soon after they married. The former occupants must have been devout Christians as Twinkle’s excitement grows with each find and overtly desires to display them out in the open. Although they are of Indian ethnicity, and they are not practicing Hindus, Sanjeev is displeased and quite uncomfortable. The difference of their background is evident in the ability of Sanjeev to understand and accept Twinkles behavior and of Twinkles disregard for Sanjeev’s reasoning for the dislike of religious relics discovered.

            Sanjeev is obviously in love with Twinkle, although their courtship was brief and not fully developed. The energy and eccentricities Twinkle exudes not only aggravates Sanjeev but he is also fascinated by them. He realizes a choice he has if he wants to continue to be married to a woman who does not hold the same old fashioned values he had once regarded a traditional wife should perform such as cooking and cleaning. As he rushed into the marriage without learning to live with Twinkles quirks, purchased the home without noticing the eccentric details of Christianity throughout the home, Sanjeev must decide if he really loves her. He must decide if their differences will separate them or bring them together in this new life where they are joined and no longer one.

            The scene at their housewarming party shows Sanjeev just how much he belongs with Twinkle. Although he was worried about what his Indian colleagues would think with all the Christian relics in the home or would they are able to appreciate the extroverted way his wife is. After the validation from his friends about her beauty and how much fun they were having, it seems that is when he finally decided to quit the internal fight and give in. For giving in he would not be at a loss, yet gain the love of his life, regardless of their differences.

Female Subjects and Negotiating Identities-Analaysis

Analysis: Female Subjects and Negotiating Identities

            This essay from Bahareh Bahmanpour regarding Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies, focused on stories surrounding female characters as opposed to males. The stories contain suffering, adaptation, and negotiating their identities through “silence, resistance, negotiation, acculturation or assimilation.” (Bahmanpour, 44).  The strength women played in a cultural role was discussed in “This Blessed House”, The Treatment of Bibi Hledar”, “Mrs. Sen”, and “Sexy” provides interpretation focused on identity and provides a voice to these diasporic females in a post-colonial setting.

            Providing a background of identity, stating that they are “conceived as a process” (Bahmanpour, 45) rather than fixed as we know it, Bahmanpour provides the idea that identity is a process not just to be a representation of oneself. Since our identity can be an ongoing process, understanding boundaries could provide a focus for which Lahiri does in her works. Such as in the sixth story of “This Blessed House”. The character, Twinkle, a young wife who moved into a new house in America with her husband. She is considered a second generation Indian where she is ethnically Indian but culturally American. This story displays the hybridity where she lacks traditional Indian cultural knowledge, willingness to adapts all while display solid confidence for which her husband cannot comprehend providing fluidity traveling effortlessly from one culture to the other as see needs.

In “The Treatment of Nibi Haldar” the setting is in India with a theme of anxiety of the globalization of Indian women who is essentially homeless. Bibi is sick, received treatment without results, she longed for a normal life yet no one took her for their wife. She ends up living alone, happy, and gave birth to a son after she is mysteriously cured. Bibi negotiated between gender identity and ethnic codes established in her community she wanted to belong to, although she felt out of place. She became a mother without a wife, in this manner displayed the hybrid nature of identity.

“Mrs. Sen’s” is a story for which she is the caretaker , she expounds on her past, each detail creating her identity to Eliot, an eleven-year-old boy. As a self-described first generation immigrant, she found it difficult to adapt to her new surroundings as she could not remove her own cultural background and values. She takes a massive step to drive, thus proving her independence and to soothe loneliness and alienation she felt being far from her family.  She faced her fears in order to show to release past trauma is to gradually release her fears.

            Lastly, in “Sexy”, Miranda is an American young woman from Boston in an affair with a married Indian man. She is thrilled with the fascination with Indian culture and tried to learn more about it. The man she has an affair with is not as invested in sharing his cultural identity beyond their conquest; therefore her search for the cultural other isn’t complete.

            In closing, the female characters in Lahiri’s works provide their own voice in order to display their identity in each quest to develop them.

When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

Summary: When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine

            “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” is a short story from Interpreter of Maladies from Jhumpa Lahiri. In this story, Mr. Pirzada is from Dacca, Bangladesh (once part of Pakistan), where the Pakistani army invaded and caused over three hundred thousand people died. He had been a botany professional at the university sent to America to study foliage of New England from the government of Pakistan. Back home he left a wife, seven daughters whom lived in a three-story home and a war was starting. The story is essentially about identity between the main characters, a young girl named Lilia and how she relates to Mr. Pirzada.

            Lilia, an Indian-American girl who is ten years old, living in Massachusetts in 1971. Her family is Hindu and Indian-Bengali. They befriend Mr. Pirzada who is Muslim and Pakistani-Bengali, visiting from East Pakistan and regularly invited him to their home for dinner. Lilia identifies with the Indian ethnicity for the similarities in the physical attributes between her, her family, and family friends considered Indian. Lilia also identities with being American, learning of the history, reading literature, and living life as a typical ten year old American girl (during Halloween).

            Mr. Pirzada becomes the ‘other’ during the course of his numerous visits to Lilia’s home. She analyzes the distinctions between him and her parents even though there are quite a few similarities. Her father informs her Mr. Pirzada is no longer Indian, showing her the geography on a map of the world taped over his desk to indicate the severed country and physical boundary line which separates her ‘people’ and his. It became evident to Lilia that Mr. Pirzada also realized his cultural identification when he struggled to understand an American saying and gesture ‘thank you’ after Lilia commented after receiving candy from him. She taught him about carving a pumpkin and the holiday of Halloween, all while he was worried about his family back home. The fact he is constantly around her family during dinner is symbolic to his connection with his home. It wasn’t until Mr. Pirzada went back to Dacca when Lilia realized although she could not recall the first or last time she had seen him, she missed him. She had kept a box filled with the candy he would bring to her. She would usually have one piece thinking of him, after receiving a card from him stating he was well with his family, she no longer had to worry and threw out the remaining candy.

Oral Narrative as Short Story Cycle-Rocio G. Davis

Davis: Forging Community in Edwidge Danticat’s Krik?Krak!       

            Rocio G. Davis completely dissects the way Edwidge Danticat provides short stories in order to promote collective identity in this essay. First he points out the cultural interpretation regarding a variety of short stories by ethnic writers. The dynamic of providing history as a road the essence of gynocentric relationship between mother and daughter as the vehicle for which it travels is enlightening.

            In the form of storytelling, collective short stories in ethnic novels from writers such as Danticat, promotes survival especially in women. The cultural history behind each writer can be felt as the reader is engulfed in a rich story about hardships and happiness that promotes self-affirmation for the ‘daughters’ of the stories and individual empowerment for the ‘mothers’. Danticat turns to her own roots, for example, from her own experiences with family, community, and the struggles to identify with her ethnicity in the intertwined Haitian culture and connecting her life in the United States.

            Rocio points out that the validity of the past, examination of similar paths and recognition from fellow women is the utmost importance in the reason why ‘games’ are played among women in Danticat’s stories. The hidden meanings and ability to have a voice becomes evident in the symbolism used through stories mainly about leaving Haiti and the search for a future outside of the ‘home’ each character recognizes with.

            The “desire to come to terms with a past that is both personal and collective: this type of fiction often explores the ethnic character and history of a community as a reflection of a personal odyssey of displacement, and search for self and community.” Danticat showed the struggle of women to preserve the bonds of their Haitian community, and through the life in the United States while maintaining the link to the mother country. The need to find familial and historical connections with the group that is identified with becomes relevant among Danticat’s characters. Danticat blends this idea with the solid structure with history, although her works are fiction, in order to preserve the familiar bonds between women essential for their survival.

Pulitano and Caribbean Studies Journal

Elvira Pulitano: Landscape, Memory and Survival in the Fiction of Edwidge Danticat      

            Elvira Pulitano brought to light the ideology behind the meaning of landscape as it relates to the memory and perhaps underlying meaning in the fictional writing by author, Edwidge Danticat. Pulitano had an idea to submit a paper for a panel featuring island and ocean representation during a convention in Philadelphia in 2006. Her idea contained the works by Danticat and her descriptive narratives covering discourse of islands and the ocean mainly Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Although Pulitano was turned down on account that Danticat wrote in English and the Francophone writing is done in French. Pulitano asserts her idea that even though Danticat used English for her works, the underlying language of the landscape described and her use of native words familiar to those from the Caribbean was ultimately the true culture representative of the islands and ocean.

            Simple representation of  various languages used to instill richness of culture in Haiti and the Dominican Republic could be found from different cultures which invaded and wreaked havoc over the borders. The Spanish word for parsley is quite symbolic among the Haitian sugar cane cutters, although they pronounced the word differently. There are references of their language also from the French, English and Africa to describe life and landscape in the works by Danticat containing the history of slaves taken from Africa travelled the Atlantic to the Caribbean by European settlers.

            The history of Hispaniola reclaimed by Danticat provided voices to the victims of the 1937 massacre. This event is not only captured in Danticat’s Farming of Bones, she also provides truth behind the underlying narrative story of fiction, depicting the pain and joy experienced by memory of actual people of that era and location permanently engrained in the landscape and waters.

            The river is quite symbolic representing both life and death in Danticat’s Krik?Krak!. In both Haitian folklore and accounts represented in such stories as Nineteen Thirty-Seven and Children of the Sea, water represents both the idea of re-birth and freedom of death. Many parts of the landscape could be dissected in order to provide the collective cultures that blend and make up the landscape for which the discourse of the Caribbean exists.

            Lastly, Pulitano points out that, “According to an ancient Haitian belief, a transnational historical community is powerfully established in the fluid, borderless space of the sea.” (Pulitano, 12) The underlying message behind the works of Danticat is that in order to create a nationalist discourse of island identity, one must recognize the past and provide a voice to those that were not able to provide.

Children of the Sea

The story of Children of the Sea in Edwidge Danticat’s Krik?Krak! begins by describing the fact that the main character finds out the limitations of what he sees while floating in sea in a boat of escaped Hatians result of the escape from a military coup of his homeland. He narrates as he is writing a letter to his lost love with whom he became separated from in the rush with his family to find safety and a better life. With the 32 passengers aboard, he provides details of their daily living as to not only document his experiences but also to express his desires of hope. He describes the sails of the boat mentioning semen as to introduce the symbolism of rape, not only of a character for which he references later on in the continuation of his narrative, but the ideal of what has become of his nation.

The other type of narration seems to be that from the girl he professes his love for. It seems she too is writing to maintain a connection of what she is familiar with to possibly escape her traumatic reality. The mention of tapes for which his voice can be heard seems to indicate he must have been on the radio or perhaps he created a vocal history recorded. The image of the butterflies is the most prevalent describing one for hope and the other as death. She describes in detail about the military tyranny and her family hiding their political allegiance. She mentions the disapproval of her father’s view of their relationship, but the sacrifice he made throwing out their possessions to protect her.

The difference of visual type is effective in letting the reader keep up with who is narrating and picking up the pieces as it flows from one conversation to the next. The boy talks about the pregnant teen ager, Celianne, who had been raped by the soldiers and discovered she was with child. It seems there is an implied allegation he is a political member of the Youth Federation movement and therefore needed to escape or face being killed or tortured by the military. He speaks of land knowing what you can see however, the water, blended together like being lost not knowing where it begins or ends.

The female talks about her new home among the banyan trees, which she was told by her mother held holy spirits. She describes finding comfort where the trees branches reach the earth, not knowing where it begins or ends, as the mountains she can see. She knows the male is out in the sea, without being able to see the waters. She once again describes if a black butterfly land on her hand, it brings bad news. So whenever she sees them she throws rocks in an attempt to divert any possible bad news about the man she loves besides her father.

The current events narrated by the young man become more horrid with stories about the young pregnant girl who gives birth. The hope that the birth will provide hope yet it does not make a sound. The young girl has to make a decision and throws the baby overboard and jumps in after it, drowning. She became a victim of the brutality that struck her homeland even though she tried to escape. He mentions his hope is also ending, the fear of not making it to safety or being united with his love. As he writes in his notebook to record his thoughts in hopes the messages will reach her, he tells a man on the boat he is writing his will. This is when his hope is lost. Although he ends by talking about eternal life at sea, it is evident his visions of mermaid symbolizes his death, yet the girl is looking for a butterfly for good news. She eventually heard the news on the radio about another boat sunken in the sea, it is then she is able to see butterflies, yet they are black butterflies. It is then she realize her love is lost yet as he accepts death, he views it as joining his family, a rebirth.

Nineteen Thirty-Seven, Danticat

Nineteen Thirty-Seven

            In the book Krik ? Krak! By Edwidge Danticat, a short story narrated by daughter Josephine, who visits with her mother, Manmen, who is imprisoned in Haiti because she was accused of being a witch. In the beginning of the story, Josephine’s mother swam across a river of blood from Haiti to the Dominican Republic which is referenced as the Massacre River, just shortly before giving birth to her. This time coincides with the death of Manmen’s mother and her body brutally butchered in the Dominican Republic and thrown in the river which divides it from Haiti. In this story, Josephine begins to relate to the suffrage of women to include her mother, with hopes for a future but never forgetting the past which allows insight into her own make up.

“My Madonna cried…” is how the story begins. Josephine first meets an old woman who shows interest in the Madonna. The Madonna remains the center of this mother-daughter relationship and the silence of communication between the two. Whenever Josephine visits her mother, she could not speak but would faithfully bring the Madonna statue. The sorrow symbolized as a perfect tear from wax that would drip from the eyes melted from the heat. This spoke volumes without words to amplify the loss Josephine felt or the slow death her mother felt was upon her.

Josephine recalls rituals her mother performed with her at the river each year prior to her imprisonment. Josephine would expect to see the river to be crimson with blood, but when she saw it, it was the clearest water she had ever seen. The water could be seen as both an obstacle and a vessel for the escape from pain and death. The flight for which can be envisioned from the descriptive details of flames, not unlike the accusation that the women accused of being witches could strip their skins and rise in the night as birds of fire. Josephine’s first words to her mother were to ask if she could fly. Deep down it seems Josephine’s believed her mother could use her powers to escape, it would have to be through the river, where that had been hope once before.

Josephine is met by a character Jacqueline, who was a performer of similar rituals as her mother had done. It is Jacqueline who takes Josephine to see her mother’s body burned. They traveled to the prison where Manmen was quartered, and were told by the inmates of the gruesome demise. Clutching the pillow made of her mother’s hair, Josephine then recalls the tales from her mother, the story about how the life of her mother lost yet the birth of her daughter as a symbol of hope. Then Jacqueline tells her, “life is never lost, another one always comes up to replace the last.” The year was nineteen hundred and thirty-seven; her mother took flight in Josephine’s mind, envisioning her leap from the Dominican soil into the water arriving on the Haitian side. Where the clear river water seemed to glow red, and her body covered in blood, looked as though it were covered in flames. The sorrowful moment disrupted by a glimmer of hope that the flights would be joyful.