Cheryl Voskamp

Research Report: Middle Eastern American women authors and immigration

“Deterritorialization” of Identity

            I was originally spurred by Santha Rama Rau’s short story, “By Any Other Name,” to research the identity changes immigration to the United States imposes on Indian American women authors and how such is represented in their work, but my research broadened this topic to encompass Middle Eastern American women rather than a strict emphasis on Indian women.  In Middle Eastern cultures, women are subjected to the whims of their family, and every option of their lives is controlled first by their family and then the family of their husbands upon marriage.  Through my research, I found that writing seems to be a catalyst for some Middle Eastern American women as they explore the transformation of their identities under the looseness of a foreign culture far away from everyone they know and serve, and it will be important to include such texts in my future classroom to help my female students facing similar life changes. 

            My interest began to accumulate when I read of the name changes Rau and her sister had to suffer to attend an Anglo-Indian school because “pretty English names” are much easier to pronounce and remember (129).  The way Rau separated herself from the ridicule and degradation (shocking in its own way) by establishing that all of it occurred to some girl named “Cynthia” almost drove me to tears (133).  I had to know just how often such discrimination occurs outside of India if this can happen to a little girl in her own homeland, and I have to understand, for my students’ comfort, how to combat such attitudes in my future classroom.  In keeping with the idea of identity dislocation, I searched databases for information of Indian women authors who have immigrated to America.  Though my search was unsuccessful, I did find an article by Audrey C. Shalinsky that shed an extraordinary amount of light on the situation despite opening my topic to encompass a broader range of women. 

Shalinsky followed the immigration of a young girl from Afghanistan during their Civil War all the way to Wyoming and detailed the effects of “deterritorialization” on the girl’s life.   In her article, Shalinsky discusses the changes that occur for many Muslim women who lose/leave their traditional home and lands and have to rework their identities through the journey of “Nadia.”  According to Shalinsky, “identity rearticulation may be particularly difficult for those who come to the United States from traditional Muslim backgrounds and may focus on gender issues, particularly in relation to marriage and the family, two intertwining aspects of the traditional home” (102-3). These women suffer from the loss of emotional support provided by geographically close female family and friends to gain autonomy, and the transition may often be difficult.

Unlike Rau, Nadia changed her own name from Mahbuba after being teased mercilessly by schoolmates in Wyoming, but the change initiated an opportunity to step away from her traditional life and embrace the new world in which she lived.  She fought the oppression of her father and family, worked outside of the home from her teenage years, which led to ownership of her own gallery and framing store, and defied all suitors for arranged marriage until she (at a traditionally unsuitable age) found a man she wanted.  Regardless of her rebellion, she did maintain traditional practices and would not go on dates, move out of her parents’ home, or marry a man her father did not approve of, nor would she go to live or spend “alone” time with her husband (despite the fulfillment of a marriage contract) until they were legally bound in marriage.  The change in her situation is representative of many Middle Eastern and Muslim women who move to America.  Though they are far away from the extended family unit and better able to withstand the pressure inherent in such, they impose more self-restriction in the home by clinging to the traditions with which they were raised. 

Similar restrictions become evident in Bharati Mukherjee’s short story, “A Wife’s Story.”  Panna, the main character, is pursuing her education in New York while her husband works back home, and she is struggling between reconciling the old world with the new world.  When she spends time with her friend, Imre, who has “stayed very old-world, very courtly, openly protective of women,” despite living in the United States for more than two years, she feels conspicuous in her bright traditional dress (Mukherjee 57-9).  While she spends time with him, she is reminded of the even more rigid aspects of her family, and she relates the guilt she feels from watching MTV in her home or listening to the local radio station, though she cannot help but feel pride at her accomplishments where her mother was beaten for trying to learn French.

Though she feels she wants to break free of the restrictive life she has known, Panna cannot help but feel obligated to put on a show with her own people.  When her husband comes to visit, she changes “out of the cotton pants and shirt [she’s] been wearing all day and put[s] on a sari,” and she drapes herself in the heavy gold jewelry he will expect to see but that she rarely wears (Mukherjee 61).  Both of them feel out of place as the traditional gender roles switch in the face of his ignorance with local custom, but she attempts to soothe him by allowing him to guide their every move during the visit, “to pretend with him that nothing has changed” (Mukherjee 69).  Regardless, she “long[s] to be ungracious, not ingratiate” herself, and much of their time together is distinctly different than it would be if she had gone back to him (Mukherjee 64).  Through the reading, the struggle Panna deals with to find her identity between two worlds serves as a representative of many Middle Eastern women’s plight with immigration. 

In “American Dreamer,” Bharati Mukherjee examines her own experience with establishing an American identity after never imagining she would ever “disobey or disappoint [her] father by setting [her] own goals or taking charge of [her] future” and worries about the consequences of restricted multiculturalism (333).  As a child, she was under the full assumption she would remain the “pliant daughter” and wife for her entire life.  For Mukherjee, moving to Iowa was a complete culture shock in that she was surrounded by white Christians and she was only one of six international students.  Without the support network to keep her reigned in to an identity “viscerally connected with ancestral soil and genealogy,” Mukherjee went the extreme opposite direction, cut herself “off forever from the rules and ways of upper-middle-class life in Bengal” and ran headlong through a spur-of-the-moment marriage into the foreign new world (333).

Despite diving head-first into a life completely different than what she or her family ever expected to occur, it took many years for Mukherjee to complete the “transition from expatriate to immigrant” (334).  In this essay as an American citizen, Mukherjee insists the nation, and her people, need to find a way to reconcile keeping with individual cultural tradition while allowing for the idea that the values of such will change according to geographic location and customs.  As such, it is imperative that a comfortable middle ground be established in the United States for immigrants as American citizens so they do not have to feel as if they have committed “race treachery.”

It is obvious that such deterritorialization is a major factor for Middle Eastern females that immigrate to the United States, according to the works I researched, and I must take such into account where the female Middle Eastern students in my classes will be concerned.  The literature used in this report, as well as other articles, essays, and short stories of the same outlook, will be extraordinarily beneficial to include in my class library, as well as in some assignments for my classes so these students will gain emotional support from the travails of others and an idea of the goals they may set for themselves as a result of the readings.  These works will also help students of other nationalities and cultural beliefs become more accepting of these girls, and should introduce higher communal and global awareness.  I look forward to further researching Middle Eastern women’s literary work and if the writing of it does truly help them overcome the forced identity changes inherent in immigration.

Works Cited

Mukherjee, Bharati. “A Wife’s Story.”Imagining America: Stories from the Promised Land.  A Multicultural Anthology of American Fiction. Ed. Wesley Brown and Amy Ling. Rev. ed. New York: Persea Books, 2002. 57-69.

---. “American Dreamer.”The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues Across the Disciplines. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 8^th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. 332-337.

Rau, Santha Rama. “By Any Other Name.” The McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues Across the Disciplines. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 8^th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. 128-133.

Shalinsky, Audrey C. “Gender Issues in the Afghanistan Diaspora: Nadia’s Story.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 17.3 (1996). JSTOR. 6 Dec. 2007.

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