Question to Self

Really cold here in Austin today.

Have been wondering, why the poems I have written in the past few weeks/months full of women who choose to leave? What am I trying to deal with (or maybe, it's all about not dealing with things) as I write about these fugitives?

Re-Writing of Cinderella Poem in Pratilipi

I was re-reading the second poem that Pratilipi has published. In some ways, it's a straight-up persona poem, taking on a voice that has not been explored enough in the literature, in my opinion. There is, of course, Gregory Maguire's Confessions of an Ugly Step-Sister, and I am glad that I got to know about its existence after I had written this poem. Otherwise, I don't think I would be inspired enough to write my own version of it. When I was writing this poem, I was thinking about two things:

1. The Limits of Solidarity. Feminists have written a lot about solidarity between and amongst women, and given the premise of the movement, it seems to be the most obvious choice. In fact, I would think, all social movements/collective actions are based upon the idea of solidarity. But then, what are the limits of solidarity? When does solidarity become problematic or even impossible? What are the limits of sisterhood?

2. Agency and Ideology. Some of the feminist criticisms I have read about Cinderella read her as a "victim" figure. And I would agree, to a large extent. But is it always so? What if a woman decides that there is real advantage in towing the line, in acting in accordance to patriarchal norms? Sticking to norms always has its own rewards. What if a woman values those rewards too much? So, in that sense, she is using her agency or subjectivity. That's not the issue, the issue is, how we are to read her choices ideologically, politically, philosophically. So what I was trying to explore in the poem was, what if Cinderella had chosen to fit herself with the requirements of the little glass shoe? So, the step-sister's voice, which is angry at Cinderella for that choice, is an extremely loaded voice. The step-sister reveals to the readers her ideological baggage, and it is through that ideological lens that she reads her sister's choices.

So, in certain ways, the poem was meant to be a critique/criticism of the idea of "sisterhood" prevalent in feminist thoughts. And this is something that interests me immensely, and I think, it's also something that has come back in different ways in the poems that I have written during this period.

Two Poems in Pratilipi/Thumbelina-Charit

Two of my poems came out in Pratilipi. You can find them here. In many ways, the poem "thumbelina-charit" is one of my most personal poems, political too. So, seeing it within a journal-space, I could not help wondering, how will my readers read it. Or, will they read it at all? In many many ways, the poem is an attempt to put in words my reflections of the gender-politics of the leftist social movements, the way they often think of "women's participation" as the ultimate goal. Consequently, the emphasis begins to fall on mere "participation" and never really on how that participation was achieved, and what that participation entailed. Now, that I re-read it, I think, there is also a fair amount of that political confusion which had been mine for the last two decades. I know, it's not the confusion/experience of the majority. And, if I have to be perfectly honest, it's that kind of confusion which is not only "obsolete" now, but is fit to be kept inside the glass-cases of a museum. But it has been very real for me, for a lot of my friends, who in a post-Naxalbari Kolkata/West Bengal/India had tried to find political direction in non-CPI/CPI(M) Marxism, while questioning a lot of the basic tenets of Marxism itself. How does that confusion look from the perspective of a woman? That has been my quest throughout the poem. But then, the poetic speaker here is not me. There are lots of personal stuff in this poem, but not enough of auto-biography. Neither, in my opinion, is it confessional. I think, trying to fit the historical/political material into the Thumbelina-story framework, had also helped me to prune out some of the more autobiographical stuff, which was there in the earlier version of the poem, had been pruned out. In so many ways, the essential visual of this thumb-size woman of the Thumbelina story, had always disturbed me. I found it to be extremely violent, and there was no way I could ignore that aspect. And the two, the basic theme and the material I was bringing to fill the gaps in the fairy-tale plot, I think, complemented each other in the end. Now, it's for the readers and the critics to decide on the rest.

In a way, I am happy, that this poem found home in an Indian journal. For lots of different reasons.

Continuing The Thread of the Last Post...

Gave the story a read. Now, I am still determined on two counts:

1. This story, this particular one, needs to focus on the little girl.

2. The whole story cannot be in first-person.There are things in there which I want the readers and the narrator to know, but not Phelna, the protagonist should not necessarily know about them. Because the story itself is based on her not knowing certain things, and believing in them, precisely because she is so young.

So, what seems to me, might work in this case, is a mixture of two voices. Phelna's first person narrative, and a third person omniscient voice which will let the reader into the details which Phelna does not necessarily know, but which are indeed important for the story itself, and will hold it together. I am hesitating here, because there is only so much one can do within a short story, so how will this alternation of voices work within the story? I can totally see this trounced in the workshops, because it would not necessarily fit into the way most American writers are trained to understand "voice" and "perspective." Besides, there is also the real concern, if that kind of cris-crossing of voices can work for the limited space of a short story? I don't know if it will, but at this point, the only thing I can do, is to try my hand at it, see where it goes, and then ask my friends, readers and workshop colleagues about it.

The other things that need to be worked upon more:

a. Phelna's perception of her absent father, and building some tension around that. Make the father's absence felt within the story-narrative as well as within Phelna's perceptions of the world.

b. Build upon the character of Phelna more by showing the reader more about her inner world/everyday world (some of the material from the first draft of the story can be used for this.)

Now, it seems like I have done the background-work that needed to be done for this story, and all I need to do from tomorrow onwards, is to get back to the actual work of re-writing it. I am looking forward!

Choice of the Narrator/Protagonist

Decided to go back to one of the stories I have turned in for Beth Ann Bauman's workshop. In a nutshell, it's a story about a little girl getting into a school, or rather not getting into a school. It was one of the first stories that I had ever written, and admittedly, had more autobiographical details than a lot of the other stuff I had written more recently. It wasn't a very popular story in the preceding workshops. Most of my colleagues thought the story wasn't going anywhere, there wasn't much happening, and while I do think, part of it has to do with the American school of setting up the conflict-exploring the conflict-resolution of the conflict model, the story too had some glaring problems. Part of it is that, I was too attached to the authenticity of the material, the real-life occurrences, rather than the logic of the story. So, as a result, it kept seeming like a sweet little childhood story, an exercise, more than an actual story. Hardly any readers caught on the intensity of the violence I was trying to communicate, the inherent violence with which we begin our lives within an educational institution. So, part of the revision process meant that I throw out a lot of the autobiographical stuff, situate this little girl, the protagonist of the story in a background very different from mine in certain ways, and actually, make life much more harder for her than it had ever been for me.

But then, I landed in another problem. Most of my readers wanted the story to be narrated in a first-person voice, Beth herself thought that the main character is too young to reflect upon the crises I am dealing with, and instead of having her as the main character, I should have the mother narrate the story, who clearly has more at stake. I do agree, and I do think, that needs to be a totally different story, which, at this point is slow-cooking in the back-burner of the stove. But I do want this story to be this little girl's, and although I am not sure why, I am resisting the first-person narration, because it seems to me, it will take away a lot from the story. So, at this point, I am just trying to figure out where this story can go, and reading Richard Russo's essay In Defense of Omniscience, hoping it will provide me with some clues to my problems.

Random Reflections

Just finished reading and making some editorial-notes-to-myself kinds of work on my old essay on Belinda's petition. The basic work is there, the theoretical premise, I think, works, but the writing itself needs to be developed a lot more. Besides, I need to see where the other primary materials are going. One thing I noticed while making those editorial comments, I do tend to write EXTREMELY long sentences. Is it a fallout of my post-colonial education, I wonder?

Was reading Rana Dasgupta's Muse India interview earlier today. I haven't had a chance to read his books, they have been on my list for a long time now, but I haven't had a chance to get to them so far. At one point, Dasgupta says, on being asked to speak about his choice to set his stories/novels outside India, responds:

There is particular kind of psychological sensitivity in India to ridiculously claim that there is no poverty or violence in the country. Poverty and violence are absolutely legitimate subjects to write about. I still haven’t found a way of writing about this country. It’s a very, very complex place and it’s been written about very much. I would like to write about this country, and if I do, it will probably be non-fiction because I find that the reality of this country is itself complete. One doesn’t have to make it up. The reality is so stark and intense that just reporting on it, as it is, is kind of enough.

I agree with Dasgupta on a few counts:

a. Poverty and violence are legitimate subjects for fictional/literary discourse.

b. India is a very very complex place.

But I am not sure what to think of the other stuff. South Asia, undoubtedly, is an over-written region. India is itself an extremely over-written country. But isn't every over-written place an extremely under-written place too? I am yet to come across a novel/short story which speaks, for instance, about the lives of me and my friends in Kolkata. Similarly, I am not totally in agreement with his view that the "reality" in India is "itself complete." For, to me, no reality is ever complete. Similarly, fictional representation is not just about "making up." Neither it is about "reporting." To me, it's this complex combination of imagination, social analysis and this awareness of being rooted in history. The best I can come close to is thinking of it as a process where one tries to find out how individuals embody social history in and through their seemingly inconsequential actions and activities. And then, of course, translating all of that into language, into forms. In what Dasgupta saying, I am not finding that complex inter-relationship. Maybe I will understand what he is trying to say when I read his stories and novel.

You can read the entire interview here.

Spring 2010 Syllabus

Happy New Year!

I have been trying to finalize the readings for the Spring 2010 class I am teaching. Since, we are all supposed to teach In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, I am also using his recent New York Times article. It complements the book nicely, it's an essay rather than a book. And in my own experience, freshman students who mostly take this class, find it easier to process single essays than full-length books. Most of my students refer to any full-length book as a "novel", and most of the times I have to devote a class-period to explain to them the difference between "fiction" and "non-fiction." I know I am old and cranky, and like all old people like to fall back upon nostalgia, but still, when I was eighteen, I did know the difference between a novel and a full-length non-fiction book! But my students don't, and in order to be realistic, I prefer to teach more articles in class, rather than full-length books, precisely because I want them to process the stuff I am teaching, and use them for their own essays, and not just merely gloss over them.

I will keep the Susan Reizman blog post I had used for my Fall class and will add Amanda Marcotte's essay from Pandagon.net to the list, because I think, it does provide an interesting feminist critique of Pollan's view, but from a slightly different perspective from that of Susan Reizman. And this will help me to demonstrate to my students that a controversy need not always have just two sides. In fact, it can have many!

Now, that I have figured this out, I need to go back and read the essay I wrote on Belinda's Petition, and figure out where it needs extension/re-vision and re-writing.