the changing avatars of the chick-lit heroine

The last decade has seen the emergence of the what is popularly called the "chick-lit heroine." It began with bestselling books such as Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City and Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones Diary. Since their success was assured, young women authors were given obnoxiously large advances for chick literature and these include Devil Wears Prada, Something Borrowed, Nanny Diaries and the like. The "chick lit heroine" soon become an easily identifiable and staple character of urban culture. In fact, these women were everywhere: 30-something, single, exciting career, great friends, interest in fashion (read shoes), excessive white-wine drinking ability, a loveable clumsiness, looking for mr. right, dating many mr. wrongs. 

Sadly, a lot of fairly cool chick-lit books were turned into movies that focused on the romantic trajectory often ending with finding love as opposed to offering a real insight into what these books were really doing - dismantling the space of cliched romance novels of the Harlequin variety. Instead of unrealistic escape narratives where women are being discovered and swept off their feet by counts, dukes, industrialists and other unreasonably successful, somewhat rough yet tender-hearted hunks, we had a career-minded woman who did not want to settle for the wrong guy and for whom her friends had become the new urban family. While the romance novel remained undisturbed in popularity and sales, the new comedy of manners called chick-lit had been born and it offered a counter-discourse within women's writing.

As the chick lit sales and production stabilized, as more and more of the books turned into movies and became a common feature at airports, beaches and young women's homes, the chick lit heroine began to go through some new avatars. The first shift was the emergence of similar narratives from African-American (not to be confused with urban lit dealing with the complexities of street culture deriving from hiphop lyrics and ideologies), Indian, Asian and Hispanic communities. These were still middle-class tales of city life whether yuppie black women in Atlanta in Scenes from a Sistah or an Indian woman coming of age in New York's fashion industry in For Matrimonial Purposes or the tough dating situation for Chinese-American singleton The Dim Sum of All Things who lives with her family or then  Tamara Contreras who chooses singledom in LA over family and a traditional, Mexican fiance in Hot Tamara.  Primarily the story of a white urban girl, the narratives slowly began to mirror female dilemmas in various other communities. At the same time, a post-singlehood narrative also began to emerge. There came mommy-lit that dealt with the travails of what happens after you have everything you've ever wanted. These were stories of juggling love, career and now, a baby. The frazzled but adoring mommy narrative has certainly seeped into our collective consciousness as well and it can all be traced to these books. Chick lit in whichever form is about the many choices offered to the modern woman as opposed to fixed traditional roles, and the ways in which she successfully navigates these many spaces

But lately I feel that something has ruptured the hard shield of optimism that seems to have kept this "chick" persona afloat in fiction and in real life. The recent article by Kate Bolick on marriage as a declining option for women caused a stir on the internet and led to many spin-off opinions and debates. Bolick dissects the second-wave feminist idea which elevated "independence over coupling." The article claims that women now, "keep putting marriage off." Bolick rattles off some impressive statistics: "In 1960, the median age of first marriage in the US was 23 for men and 20 for women; today it is 28 and 26. Today, a smaller proportion of American women in their early 30s are married than at any other point since the 1950s, if not earlier. We're also marrying less – with a significant degree of change taking place in just the past decade and a half. In 1997, 29% of my Generation X cohort was married; among today's Millennials (those born in the late-70s to 90s) that figure has dropped to 22%. Compare that with 1960, when more than half of those aged 18 to 29 had already tied the knot." 

Competitive career trajectories, economic independence, the ability to raise children without a husband, lack of religious pressures and an inequal sex ratio between men and women have led to this decline. The quest for love does continue, of course, and unconventional family structures have certainly are starting to emerge all around  us whether its same-sex marriages or families, single parent homes, fathers as primary care-givers or just single living. 

launching "warscapes" magazine

Warscapes, an online magazine of art, literature and politics will be launching November 8th, 2011.

Warscapes provides a lens into current conflicts across the world through fiction, poetry, reportage, reviews, art, photography, conversations and retrospectives of war literature from the past fifty years.

For the launch event, there will be a screening of Battle of Algiers followed by a talk with Saadi Yacef, writer, guerilla and filmmaker on whose memoir the movie is based. Buy tickets here...

The Warscapes inaugural issue will feature
excerpts from

Madeleine Thien's latest novel on the Cambodian war and genocide, Dogs at the Perimeter 

Joe Sacco's graphic novel from Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza

plus

An essay reflecting upon Hollywood, Pirated Videos and Child Soldiers from the Congo by Emmanuel Dongala
Four Poems by Somali poet Ali Jimale Ahmed from his volume, When Donkeys Give Birth to Calves: Totems, Wars, Horizons, Diasporas

...and reviews of books, films and performances.

www.warscapes.com

eastern promises from a western lens

scooter india

At a recent Diwali celebration here in Manhattan, I found myself in the midst of the all-too-familiar debate on India’s or Asia’s ascent versus America’s decline. Furious arguments were exchanged lauding the rise of the “East” and statistics brandished on world economic shifts. Some of us argued that no matter any economic shift (which in itself is fairly arguable), the cultural imperialism of the West still stands sound and until that changes nothing can really shift. The debate then quickly devolved to the question of Indian identity and whimpered down when someone announced that “I feel Indian because its as simple as I miss my help in the kitchen.” Ouch! The irony of this is I’m sure not lost on you. The desi swish set pontificating the benefits of living in posh Bombay or Delhi versus Gramercy Park and concluding that India is where its at. This irksome debate managed to assuage some of that nostalgic dull ache that resurfaces in me on occasions like Diwali...where I wistfully long for a Bombay that I left; that I know doesn’t exist in any place except my imagination. 

Sumedh Munghee on the other hand decided to not only live out the debate we were having, but also blog about it, and New York Times loved it so much that they decide to post it. The thing is Mr. Munghee was so driven by all these feelings of nostalgia and inspired by Friedman’s flat globe that he decided to move back from the U.S. and settle into urban India. Unfortunately, even though he surrounded himself with all things Western-like, he found that he was quickly deteriorating into a savage Indian. This horrific realization got him to pack his bags and return to the burbs of CA, but he kindly added an ode to India’s future success something he will regrettably have to bow out of since it entails being Indian in India. I’m not going to recount some of the atrocious statements in his blog post. I’ll leave that to your reading displeasure. But what ran as a common thread for me between this article and the debate was the acutely narrow accounts or ideas of economic or socio-political shifts coming from a privileged and mobile set of Indians having utterly Westernized, classist and bourgeois perspectives. Apart from having no real intellectual depth, it is appalling that the discussion never accounts for the vast section of Indian society below the upper crust. Munghee’s dehumanized maid, for instance, did not really get the memo on India’s economic boom and has anything really changed for her in the last decade?! I think not. When will we stop viewing Eastern promises through a Western lens?

feminist dead ends

I was surprised when the usually discerning and perceptive feminist blog Feministing recently brought attention to the article about how the six big differences between men and women have been debunked. Below is my paraphrased version of these supposed myths vs realities. 

Men want "sexy," women want "status": U-Michigan psychologist Terri Conley and colleagues claim that when in an actual situation of finding a mate (such as speed dating) these differences evaporated. 

Men want many sex partners, women want far fewer: Apparently this myth exists due to some mathematical errors. Calculating an average does not offer clear data. Men need to affirm masculine ideals and thus tend to inflate numbers. However, when told that they are being given a lie detector tests, they are truthful and it turns out that men and women sleep with an equal number of partners in their life. 

Men think about sex more than women do: In empirical data provided by a study in the Journal of Sex Research, psychologists asked research participants to record their thoughts throughout the day. Men thought of sex 18 times, women 10 times "but men also thought about food and sleep proportionately more than women. That suggests sex doesn't hold as vaunted a position for men as you might expect."

Women have far fewer orgasms than men do: Again, a mathematical error. While it seems like men have more orgasms, women are not far behind and are likely to have as many when in a committed and considerate relationship. Women just do not do that well in hook-ups. 

Men like casual sex more than women do: While studies show that women turn down casual offers whereas men do not, the problem here is that women being propositioned by strangers do not imagine he is any good in bed. "When women are asked to consider a hypothetical offer from someone more familiar or very attractive, they become much more receptive. Likewise, gender differences in one-night-stand interest evaporated when men and women were asked to consider sleeping with someone famous."

Women are pickier than men: Here psychologists’ claims that womens’ picky attitudes are bound to dating rules. Since men conventionally are meant to make the first moves, it allows women to be choosy.

Now that we are done with our salacious pop psychology fix for the day, lets get to why this particular article does not deserve praise from feminists at all. On the one hand, living in a real world defined by conventions and rules when it comes to mating between men and women, these supposed differences may be weighing on our minds and to know that some of this is untrue might be empowering. But really, empowering only in a witty-bar-repartee-prehookup-banter kind of way. The biggest hindrance to the debate about feminism is the entire framework of difference. By this I mean a preoccupation with the ways in which men and women differ and in what ways can we prove or disprove those differences. All the six myths above – being with a lot of partners, focus on looks, frequency of sex, embracing casual sex – all these are problems that are really about constructions and constrictions of masculinity and by extension, they affect women’s lives. 

For the article to be feminist, it would have to use a reverse strategy and we could then arrive at the more relevant questions – for example, what are women’s issues and anxieties with regards to sexual fulfillment or how are women with multiple sexual partners judged or labeled and it’s impact on a collective psyche, or what are the challenges women face when finding partners of equal standing in terms of looks or income. By addressing these questions with a women-first approach, we can really delve into something as opposed to squeezing women into the limited space given to them in discourses of masculinity.

Popular culture tends to extract the most schematic, brief and simple points from theories propounded in academic ivory towers. There is indeed a small victory in being able to enter a mainstream internet space and have in-your-face, bold ideas about women and men come to the fore in a normalized way. However, even with great advances in feminist thinking, we still remain under the sway of what I’m calling “biology fundamentalism” – quite simply that men and women have natural, biological differences and those lead to social inequalities. Biology, an honorable study in itself, is constantly used as a tool to propagate horrible prejudices whether applied to homosexuality, interracial intercourse, racial supremacies and many others. It seems that there is still a carte blanche of biology fundamentalism with regards to gender where there is a merry and relaxed attitude towards conversations about men and women being embedded in natural difference. There is no need for Judith Butler to rap us on our knuckles to remind us yet again that biology is socially constructed too and examples of that are all around us.

The simplicity and brevity of feminism as experienced in the mainstream arena obfuscates the complex and difficult process it took for feminist thinkers to arrive there. To take somewhat masculine preoccupations as an a priori and to view them as women-centric is first of many hurdles. What may be groundbreaking for pop culture can become a dead-end for feminism. 

most powerful africans...

Forbes put together a list of the most influential African celebrities. For those like me, who are bored of Justin Bieber, Pregnance, Brangelina and other non-erudite celebs, here is much hipper list dominated by genius musicians and talented writers. Chinua Achebe tops the list with Youssou N'Dour and Salif Keita in the top ten. Here they all are...

fashion faux pas?

It seems that the fashion industry just cannot get it right whether its the most minimal use of dark-skinned models or insane trends such as Vogue Italia's "slave" earrings or Michael Kors' foolish safari suits. Even the most talented and intellectual designers always mess it up when it comes to Africa. Alexander McQueen's primitivization of Africa or Christian Dior's utterly idiotic fetish of Pharaohs. However, it is much more disconcerting when celebrities who have probably encountered a lot of resistance to their own skin color while climbing the ladder of success refuse to say NO to most absurd manipulations of their own images. 

Just a few months ago, Beyonce allowed herself to be photographed in blackface. Somehow because she was in France, she was convinced it was edgy to be painted into an ebony colored "African queen." Some critics and bloggers said that since she is an African-American, it was hardly a big deal, completely ignoring the fact this is an insidious historical legacy and simply must not be touted as hip or normal. At the obverse end of same debate, behold Rihanna who has appeared on the cover of Vogue UK with her skin clearly whitened. Rampant racism, c'est toujours trendy?!

dudes, bros and the women they hate to love

-written in joint disdain by Bhakti & Laxmi

The Story with the Stats

I recently watched I Don't Know How She Does It, a movie where a frazzled Sarah Jessica Parker juggles career, kids, marriage and friendship. The film was about the current state of affairs that the modern mother has found herself in. Though light in its tone, I was surprised by the careful and critical depiction of the genre of books known as mommy lit. The commentaries by Christian Hendricks resonated with me; they were tough, sarcastic and undeniably feminist. While it espoused a cliche, white heteronormativity, it was refreshing because it was not about landing some guy but about doing well in career and with your kids. When I looked for reviews on rottentomatoes.com, it only rated at 17% from critics. It was not the first time I had come home from a women-centric film and found that it rated atrociously, with critics saying the harshest possible things. When it comes to dude movies, however, its a completely different story. Take a look at these revealing stats:

Knocked Up 90% - A story about a set of greasy, unfortunate looking young men who smoke pot all day and the grimiest of them all ends up with a hot babe with an amazing tv career. 

I Love You Man 83% - A story about a vulnerable (read pathetic) guy with no friends who friends out with a greasy, sleazy guy who waxes eloquent about farts.

Hangover 78% - A story about some attractive and some greasy, potbellied guys who take roofies in Vegas and do things like pull out their own teeth and trash their hotel room. Some of them still get hot babes, especially the tooth guy.

And then here are stats for the equally annoying chick films...please note that these are not romantic comedies but female-bonding films even though critics constantly rate them based on romance criteria. 

Baby Mama 63% - A hilarious, hip movie about a woman trying to have a baby and the comedy of surrogacy that ensues. Starring attractive, profilic, insanely talented women like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler

Sex and the City 1 - 49% and Sex and the City 2 - 15% - An occassionaly funny, mainly sappy movie with fabulous fashion and talented actresses propounding (though poorly) some feminist ideals. 

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 77% An extremely charming coming-of-age film about teenage friendship that shockingly rates less than Hangover!

Lets forget about the pot-bellied, pot-smoking, trash-talking dudes for a moment and see how their six-packed, ball-dunking, trash-talking bro counterparts rate: Best Man 71% or The Brothers 63%. While the bros do poorly compared to the dudes in our pathetic society that lacks the most basic critical tools to understand African-American context or culture, they still rate higher than sisterhood movies. For example, the less recent How Stella Got Her Groove Back 48% or Phat Girlz 23%. 

To understand the exceptional case of Bridesmaids, read here. 

Machismo to Mess-ismo 
What is the malady at hand? Well, the most obvious issue is the unadulterated worship of male chauvinism. While the trend towards chauvinist narratives is hardly new, it is the particular form that it has taken which poses a big problem for us women who have to deal with the outrageous trends that arise in real life thanks to the fictive lives in these movies. Once upon a time, masculine ideals were perpetrated through dashing action heroes who were sauve and skilled. They beat a villain to pulp, sipped a martini and swirled breathless girls to tango music, all in a days work! What kind of role models do these overweight, jobless, broke, vulgar, messy and crass guys espouse? It seems that socially we have taken a turn for the worse - from the raw machismo of the previous times, we are now applauding farting, unkempt hair, lack of focus or ambition and a porn collection. 

Trash Talking
The direct outcome of these films is that men feel it is now okay to take trash-talking about women to the next level. Characters of women in most of these films have gone from adorable bimbo or nurturing angel to that of brittle bitch who stands in the way of anything the man may enjoy such as bachelor parties, porn, guys nights, pot parties and other shallow and vulgar pastimes. Attractive women that these men have miraculously snagged interrupt every possible moment of male camaraderie. The first topic among the male friends focus on how to "get" women, that is, how to get laid without getting the woman in question to fall madly in love with the greasy guy. The second focus is on pure women-bashing. All these women are desperate to get married, have kids, they are constantly in the pursuit of plotting home-making, plotting monogamy and mainly snooping and stalking even though not a single one of these characters seems remotely eligible for so much attention to be heaped on them. Though the men in dude movies are clearly losers, thus vulnerable and thus lovable, it is the bro movies which astound a little more. These hunky African-American males are all ivy-league educated, moneyed guys with all kinds of worldly experience, success and an erudite vocabulary, yet they spend their male bonding time mindlessly dissecting women in a manner that seems to hark back to the middle ages. Women-bashing is rampant here too but almost worse because the characters are supposedly so classy. 


Overall, it is so sad that these ineligible males view themselves as prized candidates whom women are waiting to entrap. They are chronically contriving to keep these women off and are perennially playing these women to keep them in check. These are such unlikely scenarios but the tragedy is that they have started to pass off as truth. Men romanticize these mindsets and  it is changing the fabric of relationships and courtships for the worse today. Some months ago, the New Yorker article on Anna Faris made a big splash by exposing sexism in Hollywood. The moguls of dude comedies claimed to follow some basic rules for date nights. I quote: "1) Men Rule: Men decide which movie a couple will see on any given weekend, and any hint that a film involves fashion, pedicures, or female troubles is "man-poison" --- 2) Men are simple. Don't confuse them: Men just don't understand the nuances of female dynamics...Male movie-goes care chiefly about the male star and his buddies --- 3) If a woman is the star, it better be a romantic comedy." Hollywood may swear by these rules but it is upto women to take date night into their own hands. Real women have never been more different than their on-screen avatars. They are stronger, more successful and less likely to settle than ever before. There is an embedded subjugating tactic within these films that I would urge women to not respond to. As for the men, I only have a simple question: Do you really want to be like these guys? I sincerely hope not. 

love and other demons

I was recently asked if any piece of art or writing I consumed particularly resonated with my state of being at the time. The first thing that came to mind was Orhan Pamuk’s exquisite love story, The Museum of Innocence. Through the protagonist, Kamal Bey’s eyes, Pamuk journeys the entire gamut of emotions that loving fosters with a writing that is both real and magical at the same time. I don’t admire this book only because I am a silly romantic but because it managed to restore my faith in love and passion. The novel has anything but a fairy tale end leaving all its characters exhumed by the passions that drive them. But when I took it up, I was beginning to feel weary by the pragmatic notions of time and tracks, things that had no particular significance to me by themselves, but the discourse of which I could not escape. It was tiring to have to constantly justify a stance which in my mind seemed the most natural or logical, that one must always pursue love for its sake and not as a conduit to things that follow in its wake. If the former happens to bring about the latter it is one thing, but to pursue it in a pragmatic manner would kill my soul I often argued. I would like to share the following two excerpts from the book. The first speaks of passion (even though the protagonist had not fallen in love yet, or didn’t think he had) but manages to be exalting, sophisticated and intensely romantic. The second one is an uplifting passage and something that always calms my sense of disappointment and impatience with any given situation. I don’t think I can ever stop believing in love even if I never actually find it and no matter all the disappointments I have been dealt. And I will always be grateful to Pamuk for the kinship he offered me through his beautiful novel. 

“I would like to say a few things about kisses, though I have some anxieties about steering clear of trivialities and coarseness. I want to tell my story in a way that does justice to its serious points regarding sex and desire: Fusun’s mouth tasted of powdered sugar, owing, I think, to the Zambo chiclets she so liked. Kissing Fusun was no longer a provocation devised to test and to express our attraction to each other, it was something we did for the pleasure of it, and as we made love we were both amazed to discover love’s true essence. It was not just our wet mouths and our tongues that were entwined but our respective memories. So whenever we kissed, I would kiss her first as she stood before me, then as she existed in my recollection. Afterward, I would open my eyes momentarily to kiss the image of her a moment ago and then one of more distant memory, until thoughts of other girls resembling her would commingle with both those memories, and I would kiss them, too, feeling all the more virile for having so many girls at once; from here it was a simple thing to kiss her next as if I was someone else, as the pleasure I took from her childish mouth, wide lips and playful tongue stirred my confusion and fed ideas heretofore not considered, and the pleasure grew to encompass all the various personae I adopted as I kissed her, and all the remembered Fusuns that were evoked when she kissed me. It was in these first long kisses, in our lovemaking’s slow accumulation of particularity and ritual, that I had the first intimations of another way of knowing, another kind of happiness that opened a gate ever so slightly, suggesting a paradise few will ever know in this life. Our kisses delivered us beyond the pleasures of flesh and sexual bliss for what we sensed beyond the moment of the springtime afternoon was as great and wide as time itself. Could I be in love with her? The profound happiness I felt made me anxious. I was confused, my soul teetering between the danger of taking this joy too seriously and the crassness of taking it too lightly.” 

“Thus, did we enter what I have called the happiest moment of my life. In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant “now”, even after living such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happy moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could get worse. If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happier moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so.

But when we reach a point when our lives take on their final meaning shape, as in a novel, we can identify our happiest moment, selecting it in retrospect as I am doing now. To explain why we have chosen this moment is to acknowledge that it far in the past, that it will never return, and that awareness, therefore, of that very moment is painful. We can bear the pain only by possessing something that belongs to that instant. These mementoes preserve the colors, textures, images, and delights as they were more faithfully, in fact, than can those who accompanies us through those moments.”

poems for palestine

by Pedram Harby

Palestine made its bid for statehood at the United Nations today. While Abbas' tight half-smile reflected his years of fatigue with the situation, the standing ovations and the rapturous applauses to Abbas' speech affirmed that an international community stand behind him even though our now officially Israeli President Obama makes an aggressive move to veto Palestine's right to recognition. On an emotional day, lets reflect on some poems from, about and for Palestine....

We fear for a dream by Mahmoud Darwish
We fear for a dream: don't believe our butterflies.
Believe our sacrifices if you like, believe the compass of a horse, our need for the north.
We have raised the beaks of our souls to you. Give us a grain of wheat, our dream. Give it, give it to us.
We have offered you the shores since the coming to the earth born of an idea or of the adultery of two waves on a rock in the sand.
Nothing. Nothing. We float on a foot of air. The air breaks up within ourselves.
We know you have abandoned us, built for us prisons and called them the paradise of oranges.
We go on dreaming. Oh, desired dream. We steal our days from those extolled by our myths.
We fear for you, we're afraid of you. We are exposed together, you shouldn't believe our wives' patience.
They will weave two dresses, then sell the bones of the loved ones to buy a glass of milk for our children.
We fear for a dream, from him, from ourselves. We go on dreaming, oh dream of ours. Don't believe our butterflies.

movies to avoid in the next few months

1. Machine Gun Preacher

Racism Alert!

Some white guy tries to save "Africa." Again! The trailer is totally insidious showing a towering man in safari suit bending over masses of young black kids as a disheveled red-head aid-worker type looks at him adoringly. Then there are the trucks blowing up, red-eyed "African" militants running amok, giant wooden crosses being mounted, a miscast Gerard Butler foolishly banging on desks asking to save children and random yet consensual "African" men looking on at him in admiration. Need I say more? Even though it is directed by the nuanced Marc Forster and even if the trailer may be misrepresenting the actual film, the whole premise is starkly racist and imperialist. Not to mention, utterly cliche.

2. Ides of March

Intellectual Hogwash Alert!

I can just imagine the casting meeting for this movie - "just find every intellectually smug actor in town, put him in a suit and have him parade around with a creased brow." There's a lot of high-stakes dialogue about election campaigns, the wrong man, the mistake, the leaked story but its still impossible to figure out what this movie is about. It seems entirely premised on the illusion that when Clooney, Gosling and Seymour Hoffman get together, something important is going to take place. Why then bother with a plot, a script or even a comprehensible premise. Sadly, this one may haunt us till the Oscars.

3. 50/50

Sexism Alert!

Here comes another dude movie glorifying oversmart, overweight characters that have overtaken Hollywood. This time their endless male-bonding is interrupted not by women, but by cancer. Nothing could be more unbearable than the fast-talking, fake vulnerability of Seth Rogen and the expressionless, cutesy, hipster histrionics of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Apart from the usual jokes about pubic hair trimmers and marijuana, these guys will try to pick up chicks using the cancer card. Plain ugh.

4. Abduction

Brain Drain Alert!

Lets call this what it is - an excuse to see Taylor Lautner flaunt his body! From what starts off as a promising psychological thriller about stolen identity, a whole patchwork of thriller and mystery plots suddenly appear and some talk of a wanted asset. Main mystery though is how John Singleton went from Boyz in the Hood to directing our favorite werewolf running around town destroying stuff. Everyone is constantly mouthing something very grave and technical but I can promise you this is going to be dumb and dumber.

5. The Double

Cold War Nostalgia Alert!

It begins with a telling shot of a flag flying over the Capitol building and soon enough, its about the return of Soviet assassins called "Cassius 7." I almost fell asleep as I typed that line. Richard Gere is terribly serious as he hunts down the killers with all kinds of gratuitous violence thrown in. Patriotism, nationalist propaganda and blatant stereotyping aside, when will Hollywood actually get the memo about the Cold War? It really is over.

storm in a tomato soup can!

After spending much time rooting for fasting impresario Anna Hazare, urban Indians have found another food related event to controvert. A Valencian festival called La Tomatina is being hosted in Bangalore where tomato pelting will synchronize with hot DJ spins. This has enraged some conscientious Indian youth who are busy signing petitions and calling for boycotts against this fairly silly event, as they refuse to "ape the West." Not only do I find this to be a laughable lament for an urban Indian, I want to add that the inspiration for this event is the recently celebrated Bollywood flick that is largely the Indian yuppie's homage to foreign holidaying, in that case, in Spain. I am not in any way supporting the idea that one must be anything but repulsed by hip, food-wasting events in poor India. But what about all those Hindu rituals of pouring milk over deities, or throwing rice at weddings or other celebrations. I somehow don't think one can exempt those occurrences from the same argument. It also makes me fairly irritable that people are quick to denounce the Western corruption of the Indian goodness. Lets not waste food, I agree. But let's protest that with some self-awareness please!

9/11 must reads

There has been a lot written lately about books that appropriately represent 9/11 and the decade that followed. I have found some of these lists short-sighted and a little tone-deaf. It is definitely time for a counter list! The depiction of the day of 9/11 itself is of lesser concern to me and it is more important to find books that are tools to understand the world better whether geopolitically, culturally or emotionally in light of such an event. The travesties of something like 9/11 is that it immediately shifts the way history is discussed and in this particular case, it has allowed for the western world to obscure a lot of its past by hiding behind the tragedy. My list fills that gap by offering a context to understand why 9/11 happened and in what way it reflects relations between the west and the rest. 

Unthinking Eurocentrism by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam 

This is the most comprehensive and extremely analytical guide to understanding the sway of Europe upon our world today and of course, the United States which is a bastion of neo-European ideology. Through the use of film, popular culture and other media, Shohat and Stam unearth the truly astounding modes of Eurocentrism literally from "Plato-to-NATO." This book is pivotal for moving beyond mainstream rhetoric and to have clarity about why the so-called Third World is pissed off at the monolithic West. More importantly, this book addresses the failed phenomenon known as Multiculturalism. This is key since the witch hunt for terrorists continues in our own multi-culti American backyard. buy here

Epic Encounters by Melanie Mcallister

This is yet another heavyweight taking on the most controversial, contentious and impossible topic of them all - United States and its very unique relationship with the Middle East. Its disguises itself as a book about US popular culture and the way it shapes the discussion about the Middle East. But in truth, it is a tome about American foreign policy and the how that has boomeranged back into creating what we call an American culture. From the Bible to Black Power to Vietnam War to Israel to the politics of Oil, Mcallister connects all the dots fearlessly and with immense rigor. buy here

Patriot Acts, Narratives of 9/11 Injustice by Alia Malek 

The most recent contribution to the discourse of 9/11, Malek's book charts the discrimination faced by men and woman of Middle Eastern, South Asian, Arab or Muslim heritage. It is an unprecedented collection of oral histories told by a diverse set of people about the damage inflicted upon their daily lives with the coming of new security apparatuses, increased surveillance, legitimized racism and legally sanctioned rendition and abuse. Its a moving homage to the innocent victims of the War on Terror. buy here

Baghdad Blues by Sinaan Antoon

Poetry often offers the only way to authentically represent and simultaneously deconstruct places, spaces, history, events and emotions. From the very core of Baghdad comes this soulful, strong, stern and utterly tragic rendering of a completely shattered place - Iraq. A brilliant translator of Arabic poetry, an accomplished novelist and a poet of great intensity, Antoon's work is also important because it is well-timed and comes like a bullet to rip through lopsided narratives about the Arab world. buy here

Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Ahmed

A deceptively simple but lyrical book, this is a first person account of a young Princeton graduate from Pakistan whose love affair with America leaves him heartbroken and alienated. With the events of 9/11, his environment is transformed as he experiences overt racism and anti-Islamic sentiment everywhere. Though not necessarily substantial or deep, it resonates, in particular, with bourgeois westernized immigrants who are suddenly forced to be on the wrong side of privilege, prejudice and acceptance. buy here

Falling Man by Don DeLillo

A stoic, controlled account of the actual events of the day, it is the only work so far that recreates with accuracy the smell, sound and taste of a catastrophic moment. It is a truly humane American narrative and does not resort to cheap patriotism. DeLillo remains undefeated as the most exacting creator of a choral protagonist, which is the only way to depict an event of such monumental meaning. buy here

9/11 and aftermaths: mishra tells it like it is

I will let Pankaj Mishra do all the talking through this truly excellent piece on 9/11 and its violent aftermaths. It comes under the guise of a review of Jason Burke's book, "The 9/11 Wars." If you don't have time to read the entire article, below are some quotations that will give you plenty of food for thought:

"The sense of mad overkill, intellectual as well as military, grows more oppressive when you realise that, though al-Qaida murdered many people on 9/11 and undermined American self-esteem, the capacity of a few homicidal fanatics to seriously harm a large and powerful country such as the US was always limited. There is nothing surprising about their spectacular lack of success in rousing Muslim masses anywhere (as distinct from inciting a few no-hopers into suicidal terrorism). Their fantasy of a universal caliphate was always more likely to provoke fierce Muslim resistance than the globalising project of the west. Over-reaction to al-Qaida was by far the bigger danger to the west throughout the last decade; and, as it happened, groups of rootless conspirators, initially cultishly small and marginal, quickly proliferated around the world as a direct result of western military and ideological excesses after 9/11."

Pankaj Mishra

"The wars for which a small group of people in the west, essentially members of the military and their families, bore a disproportionate sacrifice were largely invisible to the rest. Unlike in the 1960s, the anti-war movement failed to animate political life; and there wasn't even a significant countervailing "support-the-troops" attempt at civic patriotism. "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths?" Barbara Bush, mother of George W, exasperatedly asked. "Why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" Why indeed? The wars were kept invisible by such willed ignorance as well as governments eager not to advertise their high costs."

who writes? kashmir, 9/11 and literature

http://minutestocountdown.
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Literature is often a place of war. As a space for heated political contestation, it always offers the clearest possible insights into any realm of conflict. Two stories recently highlighted the enormity of the act of writing. Kashmir was preparing to host its first literary festival titled Harud and the website made its simplistic, "apolitical" agendas pretty clear - the emphasis on local writing, the evocation of a rich literary tradition and a way to celebrate "free speech." But after widespread protests and boycotts, they were forced to cancel the scheduled event. The opposing group of writers were shocked at the absurdity of an "apolitical" event in a place racked by repression, brutality, draconian laws, human rights violations and the lack of the most basic freedoms. In a joint letter, the group states: "We fear, therefore, that holding such a festival would, willy-nilly, dovetail with the state’s concerted attempt to portray that all is normal in Kashmir. Even as the reality on the ground is one of utter abnormality and a state of acute militarization and suppression of dissent, rights and freedoms." In light of this, the festival's focus on themes like "silenced voices" and "jail diaries" appeared nothing but trite. The whole issue also reinforced the fact that festivals which by virtue of their existence want to celebrate a flowering of literature and arts are often political tools to emphasize freedom and normalcy in places torn by violence and oppression.

Elsewhere, revealing a completely different mindset, BBC ran a piece about which novel best reflects the decade in the aftermath of 9/11. A chart showed that 1433 non-fiction works, 164 fiction and 145 juvenile works have been published that somehow depict the tragedy. While the writers from Kashmir wanted a deliberate, carefully thought-out process that would encapsulate the reality of Kashmir and its horrifying, violent history, the BBC story captured the rush to represent and solidify the event within the collective consciousness. Even though the comparison between the two may seem abrupt, what struck me was the fact that here are two different places contemplating the aftermaths of something very tragic and violent, yet, one story is so light and unfettered while the other is completely burdened by the very act of representation.

The BBC article also fails to grasp that while 9/11 may have happened in New York, the long term effects of it are also being felt in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and every other site of rendition, torture and other American atrocities in the name of a global war on terror. The exclusion of those stories also speaks volumes when it comes to the breezy light-hearted tone of the 9/11 article. The issue here is, of course, the shameless commercialism and consumerism attached to any event, big or small. That is the frame from which the article emerges and it focuses only on the bestseller English-language novels about 9/11 and leaves out almost everything else. If there is a true attempt to understand the history of the 9/11 aftermaths, there will be very different questions asked and articles like this one by will only serve to make us cringe.

children's "lingerie", an oxymoron?

Scandals hold up the best possible mirror to society. Through the moral, aesthetic or ethical limits that a scandal may push, we are forced to connect to the most righteous side of ourselves. Scandals are rarely about the subject at hand but about the levels of tolerance, hypocrisy and contradictions we practice on a daily basis. Recently, a french company that is claiming to make lingerie for children aged 4 to 12 years has become a subject of a lot of uproar and bashing. Jour Apres Lunes has photographed a lot of young girls prancing around in frilly underwear, tank tops, bikini tops with make up and oversized pearls on. They are also in the heels of a controversial photo shoot in French Vogue. Whats the problem? Well, television pundits, bloggers and critics seem to find these young girls overly sexualized and their adult-like, flirtatious stances have been deemed "a pedophile's dream."
 

While it seems like the perfect opportunity to vent at the French and their loose sexual mores, it is also time to reflect on something France's most prolific philosopher once wrote. In Mythologies, Roland Barthes has a small vignette on Toys where he observes, "All the toys one commonly sees are essentially a microcosm of the adult world; they are all reduced copies of human objects, as if in the eyes of the public the child was, all told, nothing but a smaller man, a homunculus to whom must be supplied objects of his own size." He argues that toys prepare and embed the child into an adult world from the earliest possible stage. We turn our children into consumers, not creators or innovators. In every single culture in the world, nothing could be farther from the truth.

5 books we are anticipating this fall

Crossbones by Nuruddin Farah

Following Links and then Knots, Crossbones will complete the Somali novelist's third trilogy. It will continue his reflection upon the state of civil war, piracy, family, brotherhood, healing and rebirth. More than anything, it offers the only illuminating perspective on what is Somalia today. It may not answer your questions but it is sure to ask all the right questions.

1Q84 by Haruki Marukami

Marukami's three volume narrative with the title spin on George Orwell's 1984 has been a sensation since its Japanese debut in 2010. Finally, the translation hits the shelves this October. Running well over a thousand pages, don't miss this master's surreal and intriguing reflections on Japan's contemporary culture. 

Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Mattar

Because it is time to understand Libya and it's most accomplished novelist in the English language, this novel is a much anticipated event. A coming of age story about a troubled family, it promises to be lyrical and poignant. Set in Egypt but depicting an interiorized Libyan universe, it will offer us insights into a region much-maligned by the West. 

hating on online dating!

Trust the New Yorker to take on a hip, progressive subject and give it an unnaturally depressing, smug and aged spin. Nick Paumgarten recently chose to tackle the epic phenomenon of our times - online dating. As we excitedly began to read, the very beginning signaled trouble! The dull historical approach became evident with the first sentence:

"In the fall of 1964, on a visit to the World’s Fair, in Queens, Lewis Altfest, a twenty-five-year-old accountant, came upon an open-air display called the Parker Pen Pavilion, where a giant computer clicked and whirred at the job of selecting foreign pen pals for curious pavilion visitors. You filled out a questionnaire, fed it into the machine, and almost instantly received a card with the name and address of a like-minded participant in some far-flung locale—your ideal match." [ Read article here]

It was not just that Paumgarten was referencing antiquated notions like World Fairs, pen-pals, staid pavilions and machines that whirred but the fact that it seemed like this article had very little interest in the tantalizing psychological and social intensities of online daters that make this phenomenon exciting. Instead, he chose this fuddy-duddy historical route talking about programmers and pseudo-science behind it all. We were not wrong in getting all of this from the first paragraph.

straight people, get a life!

Ever gotten that sense of self-revulsion and embarrassment when you find your hands automatically clicking on a predictable and shallow advice column on dating, sex, love or relationships? I must confess that it is a rare day that goes by when I haven't clicked on some pseudo-psychology column written by seemingly eminent PhDs and supported by the most suspicious of surveys. Why are these little columns so addictive?  

At the surface level, there is the obvious - anyone involved in dating and love issues is often in puzzling, murky territory and and there is nothing wrong in resorting to some pop psychology suggestions to figure out if things are working out or wondering if you're reading every line and signal wrong. Sounds harmless enough so far. But....

It is the actual advice and the reality about straight men and women that it posits which is deeply perturbing. These days, I find that people are bored to tears about any debate that harks back to gender relations, gender representations and gender equality. The idea that kiosks filled with women posing half-naked, half-starved on magazine covers are being objectified, or the fact that the US is weak on strong female leaders, or that our obsession with celeb weddings and princess gowns keep us confined in a tight heteronormative bind are all notions that people roll their eyes at. The list of excuses is long and analytically abortive: so passe, so lame, we are so over it, this aint the fifties, I already fulfilled my gender bender college course requirement, I have a gay friend....so on and so forth. 

Nothing reflects the backward and constantly regressing mode of our heterosexual selves as these advice columns. Loosely speaking,they are divided into a few main categories - dating, understanding men and sexual tips. The sexual tips category more or less fulfills the role of erotica, the highly narrativised tips are meant to titillate and offer a little sneaky reading pleasure. While it is not exactly a progressive way of discussing sex, at least the focus on female orgasms redeems these passages a little bit. 

power of stories

After much cringing, below is something to make our hearts warm and proud. It is an old speech but still resonates with me everytime I listen to it. The immensely talented Chimamanda cautions us about the single story and its consequences so eloquently and beautifully that one cant help but fall in love with her. That is, if one hasnt already after reading her novels. 

un"fair" beyond belief

The super-smart and super-indignant, Neelika Jayawardhane gets to the heart of a problem with no end in sight - naturally darker skinned people wanting to become fair and the entire consumer industry around it. Read here and cringe. I mean, really really cringe!

pure bullshit of pregnancy tourism!

This astounding story showcases, in a single sweep, so many things that are wrong with the world; racism, poverty, ignorance, raping an indigenous people.. the list can go on. Without doubt, the idea of the pregnancy tourist seeking a racially pure seed is primitive and disgusting. But we have heard of the white American couple desiring adoption or surrogacy that leafs through a catalogue for the blond, Ivy-leagued, so-called superior sperm. So how is this any different?! What makes this phenomenon more egregious I imagine is the hark back to colonial plundering, the holocaust or other past racism of epic proportions. Circa 2011. Just want to say, I feel very sharminda.

daniel mendelsohn, why so snarky?

(image from http://malepatternboldness.blogspot.com)

Daniel Mendelsohn takes on the monumental task of critiquing Mad Men here. Almost everything he says makes perfect sense - the understanding of nostalgia as a primary shaping factor for the show, the way in which Weiner leaves many plotlines hanging, the weak treatment of homosexuality and race, the often bland acting, the fetish and over-consumerism now attached to the style of the period and the depth with which children actors really make the show extremely special.

I am so very puzzled, however, by his snarky tone.  There is no real room for it in writing about a show that seems to have gripped the critic and while we are often angry with ourselves for giving in to repulsive television, liking Mad Men could hardly fit that bill. I suspect Mendelsohn is annoyed because of the reverance with which the show has been spoken about until now, as if its a sacred space, untouchable, flawless, perfect. Maybe it is impossible to break that particular hushed sacredness without punching a little hard at it!

With or without the snark, this is still a fabulous analysis! Do read...