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A review by inkdeathinbloom
Miss New India by Bharati Mukherjee
1.0
I loathed this book. It's going to be impossible for me to list all of the things I hated about this book. Also there are SPOILERS. And trigger warning for some upsetting things.
But let's start with the character. Anjali? I completely admit to having a total lack of empathy, because I spent most of the book wanting to hit her. I think maybe this was down to bad writing/characterization- I hope this was bad writing, because Anjali had little to no personality. She spent the book: hoping someone would give her a sense of identity (literally, in thought italics "tell me who I am"); hoping that a man would find her suitable, marry her, and solve her problems so she wouldn't have to (despite the book supposedly resting on the premise that she wanted to try for a more independent life- a different life even from her parents, her small town, etc,- I'm not saying independence means a life without marriage, etc., but it does involve some f*cking personal responsibility, not procrastinating getting a job in the hopes the guy you met for five bloody minutes will fall in love with you and marry you and he's rich so everything will be fine and the big scary world will make everything dandy and you totes don't have to worry anymore); being stupid and ignorant and not ever trying to fix that (which if this book had had any sense of reality, Anjali may or may not have ended up in Bangalore, and given her shocking and crippling ridiculous levels of self-indulged, purposeful ignorance and frankly ridiculous stupidity, would have left her an unidentified corpse in a back alley somewhere in, on a generous estimate, about 5 days flat- in any city, anywhere), and getting into messes which she always, miraculously got saved from because hell if anyone knows why, she was lucky enough to have lots of wealthy, well-connected friends who for some reason thought she was special and were willing to go out on a limb for her. So she was perpetually saved, and everything was dandy. Guardian f*cking angels. Everyone else can work hard and have no one help them ever, but this ridiculous twit, who hears "deep" things, doesn't understand them, the reader hears in her voice as she tells us that she doesn't understand them, then parrots said "deep" things back at other people, and has them tell her how incredibly deep she is! How they've underestimated her! And she goes back to Gairipur, her hometown, only 8 months after having left it, and is apparently, somehow, successful. Even though in the first 3 or 4 months the book takes us through, this girl does nothing. Nothing. Jobless. Nothing impressive. But apparently she's a gorram unicorn made of glitter and rainbows because while she keeps walking herself right into crap situations, she continuously gets saved and handed things that she doesn't have to work for and frankly doesn't deserve. How is this supposed to make me sympathetic to her? Oh! (and yes, some lack of coherency here, because, this book).
May we speak for a moment about the trope, oh that lovely trope; actually, there may be more than one damaging trope. But here, the first one. One of her roommates at Bagehot house is Muslim. It's the only extended picture/time you get in this book with a Muslim character. There are a couple of more subtle issues I could maybe go into with how she's depicted, but let's go with the big one: it turns out, Husseina is a terrorist. Yep. Her husband off in London that she was married to at age 13 by her wealthy father and taken out of her boarding school in Dubai for (just for a few days- married, then returned to school) and her are part of a plot to bomb Heathrow. The Muslim... is a terrorist. This book was published in 2011. Seriously? Not ok.
Also, and I've been thinking this over carefully: there was a rape fairly early in the book. Anjali is raped by her would-be suitor, and it is this event which causes her to run away to Bangalore. Only 50 pages into the book (something like that) the reader as expectations for how this is going to be explored. Rape and violence against women=serious problem most everywhere; this is an incredibly nuanced sector to navigate, and as with anything, made additionally complicated by the culture it's within, so it should attend to those idiosyncrasies as well. Yet... rape/trauma occurs, our character runs away to Bangalore. And that's it. There is no post-trauma growth. There is... I mean, to an extent, everything is a plot device in a book, right? So I suppose even if there was post-trauma growth and Anjali developed as a character from it that could be seen as using the rape as a plot device, and then, ugh, what the hell. And instead what we get is a rape that after it happens is just left there. Oh hey, I need something to get me to go off somewhere? Ok, rape, got it. Boom. Still plot device. So then maybe it's senseless, and maybe that was the point, except... that didn't seem the point. It seemed like it was useful. And it's not like Anjali remained silent about the whole matter; she told people; this wasn't some statement on long denial and societal silences due to shaming. Nope. Instead, not two days later, she's jumping in a car with a guy she just met who offered her a ride, and hoping since he's rich, maybe he'll like her and marry her and everything will be great. I mean, what? And while I totally don't want to dictate how someone should/could get over such a thing- we're exposed to a character, something traumatic happens (and yeah, you don't get to just throw rape around) and nothing is addressed about it. It's not dealt with, it's not not dealt with in a way that is just as telling; the character never seems to internally work through it; she doesn't... just nothing. Soooo, going off of that? Pretty sure rape was used as a handy plot device. And that? Not ok.
And for a moment... let's talk about Ali, and what happened to them. Because in a book where Muslim=terrorist, rape=plot device, and character=MarySue, let's talk about what fate befell the young Ali. So, first. Peter Champion is American, and he is Anjali's teacher. And she finds out (after he has to be really, really obvious about it) that he is stunningly happy because he has taken a lover- Ali- and Anjali is subsequently devastated. Also, it takes her forever to realize that this is a relationship. Now, the book had previously had hijra's in the village (transgender women)- and albeit Anjali was repulsed by them- but there I was, thinking that might be promising. Anyway. Peter and Ali are happy together. Later, we find out that Ali has run off for "back alley surgery", and Peter thinks Ali might be dead. Ali was never named hijra, but the implication (and there is only ever implication) is that Ali is transgender, and was seeking reassignment surgery. In the end of the book, we find that Ali is alive; but crippled, in a wheelchair, almost unrecognizably aged. Now, the Americans who were queer, they were fine- Peter and Rabi are left alone. But hold a minute. LGBT issues, especially if you want to examine transgender matters, are also nuanced, and that's true just about everywhere- and again, each culture/place is going to have its own idiosyncrasies. And instead, this book just throws this character in there doesn't give them a voice (because of language, mostly- I think Ali had maybe 4 lines of dialogue? but I'm taking that as subliminal, because have you noticed I've gotten on a pulpit and decided to be mad about everything?), makes anything that happens to them happen offscreen and vaguely, and then leaves them crippled which can be read or implied as a direct result of their actions for attempting to embody their identity? dare I say... by very nature of their queerness? Um. Nope. Not ok.
And while I'm thinking of things on the "way to go for total detachment and lack of characterization" list, I mean, this is vaguely funny, but Anjali may or may not have killed someone towards the end of the book. They were robbing the house, she knocked them both out, and one of them was in a coma and may-or-may-not-make-it. Someone she knew, as a matter of fact. Did Anjali feel or think anything about this? Was there any movement about this anywhere? Nope. Because Anjali is apparently soulless and is super empty headed. But oh so very special, don't forget that, everyone loves her.
The only thing that was maybe given some space was her father's suicide, and even then- yeah, not really. I mean, she did have like 4 total thoughts about it in the book, so for this story, that's huge! But if two of those thoughts are while you're on the floor in a shitty situation doing the equivalent of "life is wretched, I'm miserable, I just shouldn't bother anymore. Just let me die! I don't want to move" in the most melodramatic (and no, not an appeal for suicide) way possible, now using her father's suicide as a reason to pile more reasons for why she's wretched and shouldn't have to deal anymore instead of growing a f*cking backbone... that's not dealing with it. She finds out she was disowned to at the same time she was told of her father's suicide (not the same time as the floor melodrama) and there was no genuine work through of that. She felt vaguely guilty. Ok, there was that. Um. That's it? Seriously? Suicide. Suicide. We get nothing on the aftereffects of suicide? It didn't seem to be as much a mental health matter as a matter of honor, but nope nothing on that. Ok. Nothing on grief? Ok. Nothing on sudden loss? Ok. No real genuine emotion whatsoever except your own self-indulgent self-pity sometimes? Oh you like feeling pretty. Mmm. Ok. Nope. Sorry. Suicide as a convenient plot device? Not ok.
There are other things. The book was only 336 pages long; you may ask, how can there be other things? Oh, but there are. But do I even want to devote more of my time to this than I already have? This was supposed to show global v traditional values. Um, Bangalore as a virtual city. Modernity? I've been pondering this question; why was this book assigned? Sure, there are some things you can pick out of the book about modernity, about the post-colonial world, about the pull of the traditional versus the pull of the modern; the rift between local and global; the role of technology. But it's also 2016; there are a lot of books that deal with these themes, I think. We've been asking ourselves these questions, and how to reconcile them for a while now. Yet this book is apparently popular as a choice. Why?
Ok. I think that ends my rant about Miss New India. I honestly think I could have more things to say about it, but really, this has to stop.
But let's start with the character. Anjali? I completely admit to having a total lack of empathy, because I spent most of the book wanting to hit her. I think maybe this was down to bad writing/characterization- I hope this was bad writing, because Anjali had little to no personality. She spent the book: hoping someone would give her a sense of identity (literally, in thought italics "tell me who I am"); hoping that a man would find her suitable, marry her, and solve her problems so she wouldn't have to (despite the book supposedly resting on the premise that she wanted to try for a more independent life- a different life even from her parents, her small town, etc,- I'm not saying independence means a life without marriage, etc., but it does involve some f*cking personal responsibility, not procrastinating getting a job in the hopes the guy you met for five bloody minutes will fall in love with you and marry you and he's rich so everything will be fine and the big scary world will make everything dandy and you totes don't have to worry anymore); being stupid and ignorant and not ever trying to fix that (which if this book had had any sense of reality, Anjali may or may not have ended up in Bangalore, and given her shocking and crippling ridiculous levels of self-indulged, purposeful ignorance and frankly ridiculous stupidity, would have left her an unidentified corpse in a back alley somewhere in, on a generous estimate, about 5 days flat- in any city, anywhere), and getting into messes which she always, miraculously got saved from because hell if anyone knows why, she was lucky enough to have lots of wealthy, well-connected friends who for some reason thought she was special and were willing to go out on a limb for her. So she was perpetually saved, and everything was dandy. Guardian f*cking angels. Everyone else can work hard and have no one help them ever, but this ridiculous twit, who hears "deep" things, doesn't understand them, the reader hears in her voice as she tells us that she doesn't understand them, then parrots said "deep" things back at other people, and has them tell her how incredibly deep she is! How they've underestimated her! And she goes back to Gairipur, her hometown, only 8 months after having left it, and is apparently, somehow, successful. Even though in the first 3 or 4 months the book takes us through, this girl does nothing. Nothing. Jobless. Nothing impressive. But apparently she's a gorram unicorn made of glitter and rainbows because while she keeps walking herself right into crap situations, she continuously gets saved and handed things that she doesn't have to work for and frankly doesn't deserve. How is this supposed to make me sympathetic to her? Oh! (and yes, some lack of coherency here, because, this book).
May we speak for a moment about the trope, oh that lovely trope; actually, there may be more than one damaging trope. But here, the first one. One of her roommates at Bagehot house is Muslim. It's the only extended picture/time you get in this book with a Muslim character. There are a couple of more subtle issues I could maybe go into with how she's depicted, but let's go with the big one: it turns out, Husseina is a terrorist. Yep. Her husband off in London that she was married to at age 13 by her wealthy father and taken out of her boarding school in Dubai for (just for a few days- married, then returned to school) and her are part of a plot to bomb Heathrow. The Muslim... is a terrorist. This book was published in 2011. Seriously? Not ok.
Also, and I've been thinking this over carefully: there was a rape fairly early in the book. Anjali is raped by her would-be suitor, and it is this event which causes her to run away to Bangalore. Only 50 pages into the book (something like that) the reader as expectations for how this is going to be explored. Rape and violence against women=serious problem most everywhere; this is an incredibly nuanced sector to navigate, and as with anything, made additionally complicated by the culture it's within, so it should attend to those idiosyncrasies as well. Yet... rape/trauma occurs, our character runs away to Bangalore. And that's it. There is no post-trauma growth. There is... I mean, to an extent, everything is a plot device in a book, right? So I suppose even if there was post-trauma growth and Anjali developed as a character from it that could be seen as using the rape as a plot device, and then, ugh, what the hell. And instead what we get is a rape that after it happens is just left there. Oh hey, I need something to get me to go off somewhere? Ok, rape, got it. Boom. Still plot device. So then maybe it's senseless, and maybe that was the point, except... that didn't seem the point. It seemed like it was useful. And it's not like Anjali remained silent about the whole matter; she told people; this wasn't some statement on long denial and societal silences due to shaming. Nope. Instead, not two days later, she's jumping in a car with a guy she just met who offered her a ride, and hoping since he's rich, maybe he'll like her and marry her and everything will be great. I mean, what? And while I totally don't want to dictate how someone should/could get over such a thing- we're exposed to a character, something traumatic happens (and yeah, you don't get to just throw rape around) and nothing is addressed about it. It's not dealt with, it's not not dealt with in a way that is just as telling; the character never seems to internally work through it; she doesn't... just nothing. Soooo, going off of that? Pretty sure rape was used as a handy plot device. And that? Not ok.
And for a moment... let's talk about Ali, and what happened to them. Because in a book where Muslim=terrorist, rape=plot device, and character=MarySue, let's talk about what fate befell the young Ali. So, first. Peter Champion is American, and he is Anjali's teacher. And she finds out (after he has to be really, really obvious about it) that he is stunningly happy because he has taken a lover- Ali- and Anjali is subsequently devastated. Also, it takes her forever to realize that this is a relationship. Now, the book had previously had hijra's in the village (transgender women)- and albeit Anjali was repulsed by them- but there I was, thinking that might be promising. Anyway. Peter and Ali are happy together. Later, we find out that Ali has run off for "back alley surgery", and Peter thinks Ali might be dead. Ali was never named hijra, but the implication (and there is only ever implication) is that Ali is transgender, and was seeking reassignment surgery. In the end of the book, we find that Ali is alive; but crippled, in a wheelchair, almost unrecognizably aged. Now, the Americans who were queer, they were fine- Peter and Rabi are left alone. But hold a minute. LGBT issues, especially if you want to examine transgender matters, are also nuanced, and that's true just about everywhere- and again, each culture/place is going to have its own idiosyncrasies. And instead, this book just throws this character in there doesn't give them a voice (because of language, mostly- I think Ali had maybe 4 lines of dialogue? but I'm taking that as subliminal, because have you noticed I've gotten on a pulpit and decided to be mad about everything?), makes anything that happens to them happen offscreen and vaguely, and then leaves them crippled which can be read or implied as a direct result of their actions for attempting to embody their identity? dare I say... by very nature of their queerness? Um. Nope. Not ok.
And while I'm thinking of things on the "way to go for total detachment and lack of characterization" list, I mean, this is vaguely funny, but Anjali may or may not have killed someone towards the end of the book. They were robbing the house, she knocked them both out, and one of them was in a coma and may-or-may-not-make-it. Someone she knew, as a matter of fact. Did Anjali feel or think anything about this? Was there any movement about this anywhere? Nope. Because Anjali is apparently soulless and is super empty headed. But oh so very special, don't forget that, everyone loves her.
The only thing that was maybe given some space was her father's suicide, and even then- yeah, not really. I mean, she did have like 4 total thoughts about it in the book, so for this story, that's huge! But if two of those thoughts are while you're on the floor in a shitty situation doing the equivalent of "life is wretched, I'm miserable, I just shouldn't bother anymore. Just let me die! I don't want to move" in the most melodramatic (and no, not an appeal for suicide) way possible, now using her father's suicide as a reason to pile more reasons for why she's wretched and shouldn't have to deal anymore instead of growing a f*cking backbone... that's not dealing with it. She finds out she was disowned to at the same time she was told of her father's suicide (not the same time as the floor melodrama) and there was no genuine work through of that. She felt vaguely guilty. Ok, there was that. Um. That's it? Seriously? Suicide. Suicide. We get nothing on the aftereffects of suicide? It didn't seem to be as much a mental health matter as a matter of honor, but nope nothing on that. Ok. Nothing on grief? Ok. Nothing on sudden loss? Ok. No real genuine emotion whatsoever except your own self-indulgent self-pity sometimes? Oh you like feeling pretty. Mmm. Ok. Nope. Sorry. Suicide as a convenient plot device? Not ok.
There are other things. The book was only 336 pages long; you may ask, how can there be other things? Oh, but there are. But do I even want to devote more of my time to this than I already have? This was supposed to show global v traditional values. Um, Bangalore as a virtual city. Modernity? I've been pondering this question; why was this book assigned? Sure, there are some things you can pick out of the book about modernity, about the post-colonial world, about the pull of the traditional versus the pull of the modern; the rift between local and global; the role of technology. But it's also 2016; there are a lot of books that deal with these themes, I think. We've been asking ourselves these questions, and how to reconcile them for a while now. Yet this book is apparently popular as a choice. Why?
Ok. I think that ends my rant about Miss New India. I honestly think I could have more things to say about it, but really, this has to stop.