HL1001 Intro to Lit Week 2 Readings
Three short stories which share themes of exploitation through capitalism and globalisation in developing nations. All three authors are emigrants and penned their stories in English.
Jamaica Kincaid – from A Small Place
Jhumpa Lahiri – Interpreter of Maladies
Ha Jin – After Cowboy Chicken Came To Town
The reading is an excerpt from A Small Place, a rant about the vapid and exploitative nature of tourism. She delivers the rant to a tourist in her homeland Antigua.
Antigua, as described in the work, is ‘more beautiful than any of the other islands you have seen’, giving it a reputation as a tourist hotspot.
The story was written in 1988, by a 39 year old Kincaid. Kincaid was born in Antigua. At the age of 17, she was sent to New York by her mother to work. However, she rebelled against her mother, refusing to send any money back, and eventually began a career as a writer.
The reader is immediately drawn into the work. There is an honesty and desperation behind each line.
Kincaid imagines the reader as a typical tourist to Antigua. The first section describes the Tourist’s arrival and travel through the city in a frank manner. As the Tourist passes through immigration, for instance, she takes the opportunity to make a point about prejudice and the economic gap between Antiguans and the Tourist. “Since you are a tourist… white… and not an Antiguan black returning to Antigua… Your bags are not searched.” She remarks about the failing economy and healthcare system.
The second section examines the motivations behind tourism. Kincaid remarks that ‘A tourist is an ugly human being’. She makes the claim that the Tourist is simply bored of the banality of their existence, fueling their need for an exotic getaway. As they arrive at their destination, Antigua, the Tourist marvels at the rural way of life of Antiguans, thinking ‘their ancestors were not clever in the way yours were… ruthless in the way yours were, for then would it not be you who could be in harmony with nature and backwards in that charming way’. Unknowing to them, the locals mock them as well.
Kincaid constantly juxtaposes the Tourist’s experience of Antiguan life with that of the locals’. The Tourist sees themselves ‘lying on the beach, enjoying the amazing sun… taking a walk on the beach… meeting new people… eating some delicious, locally grown food’. But they ‘must not wonder what exactly happened to the contents of your lavatory when you flushed it’. And it would amaze them to know ‘the number of black slaves this ocean has swallowed up’. The irony presented is that the Tourist to Antigua does not experience any aspect of local life. Their stay is artificial, catered to North American tastes, to the point where ‘most of what you are eating came off a plane from Miami’.
The Tourist enjoys a cushy stay at an exotic tropical location, closing one eye to a dearth of social and economical issues faced by Antiguans (Kincaid also critiques the Antiguan government’s failings at many points in the work). Their enjoyable stay is juxtaposed by the misfortune and poverty of Antiguans. The ignorance and apathy by tourists for Antigua necessitates Kincaid’s chosen form for the short story, that is, a rant.
Interpreter of Maladies is another short story about Indian-American tourists visiting India, by Indian American writer Jhumpa Lahiri in 1999 at the age of 32. Lahiri moved to the US at an early age and went on to study English in college. Of the three stories, Interpreter of Maladies is the most poorly written one. It is a drag, the drama only reveals itself late in the story, it is confusing to read at times, and the point of the story is not made clear to the reader.
Our protagonist is a Mr Kapasi, a multilingual interpreter at a clinic doubling as a driver. His clientele, Mr and Mrs Das, are affluent, English-speaking Indian Americans who stick out like a sore thumb in India for their dress and mannerisms.
We retrace the theme of tourists ignoring the natives’ plight as in A Small Place. At one point, Mr Das beckons Kapasi to stop the cab so he can take a picture of ‘a barefoot man, his head wrapped in a dirty turban, seated on top of a cart of grain sacks… Both the man and the bullocks were emaciated’. The purpose for his taking this picture is not explicitly spelled out, but one recalls Kincaid’s Tourist marveling at primitive locals in poverty.
Interpreter of Maladies should be a good study by aspiring writers on what not to do. Lengthy exposition ensures that the reading of the story was a chore. The story meanders, and introduces characters which are not defined quickly, in the former half. The conflict begins late, too late.
After Cowboy Chicken Came to Town is an anti-globalisation, anti-capitalism piece by Chinese writer Ha Jin. Ha Jin was born in Communist China, joining the PLA during the Cultural Revolution. Later he studied English at university. Ha was in America during the Tiannanmen Square Revolution, which made him decide to stay there.
The plot follows the plotting of the workers at the province’s first Cowboy Chicken outlet. The workers are well-compensated compared to state jobs, but drama ensues when the popularity of the outlet pushes out local businesses. The story peaks when the workers become jealous of their bourgeois manager’s salary and formulate a plan to strike, only to find that they have been fired.
The most interesting part of the story is the protagonist (the story is told in the first person), a thirty year old man with a crippled leg who has never had a girlfriend. He narrates the story in a bitter, agitated tone, being vindictive, jealous and judgemental towards his fellow workers and countrymen. Dostoevsky’s Underground Man immediately springs to mind, but unlike the Underground Man, our Cowboy Chicken protagonist has no self-awareness or empathy. He calls his friend a ‘slut’ for sleeping with her boyfriend!
Unlike the other stories, Ha takes a dialectical approach, leading to great conflict and great drama. On one side, the bourgeois capitalists, personified by Peter, a hardworking but calculating Chinese, and Mr Shapiro the American Jew de facto boss. On the other, we have the proletariat – the workers. There is constant conflict between these factions, spurring the story on. Additionally, the writing is humourous. All of the characters, protagonist included, are short-sighted and lazy, seeming to act without thinking. There’s a story arc where Mr Shapiro has a disastrous idea to host a buffet, costing them hundreds of yuan. Afraid of losing face (ironic as he’s the American), he lets it go on for another day to disastrous and funny results. I immediately assumed it was an Iraq War, but the story was written before that.
At its heart, similar to Kincaid’s A Small Place, Cowboy Chicken’s main plot exposes and hence attacks the exploitative nature of capitalism. The company set up chicken and potato farms in the country for its Chinese chain, ‘then shipped its profits back to the U.S.”. On a more personal level, Mr Shapiro and Peter, the bourgeois, keep the proletariat workers at bay by paying them a seemingly impressive amount while becoming rich themselves! But the proletariat always have a trump card – revolution. The male employees defuse a potentially disastrous situation for the outlet through the threat of violence, and at the end of the story, when they are fired, the protagonist declares that they were ‘far from terminated – the struggle was still going on’.