Every time you pick up a novel from another country, you open the door to a new journey. You might discover new (to you!) foods and customs, pick up a few phrases in a foreign language, or gain a new perspective on something you thought you understood. If you are fluent in English — a language of modern imperial power — you potentially have access to thousands of novels, from dozens of countries, that can take you on literary adventures across the world.
This privileged access is not without risks. Just as a tourist can visit a new place to consume “exotic” experiences without any meaningful engagement with the local culture, history, and people (or without reflecting on what a privilege it is to be a tourist in the first place), so can readers “consume” a foreign novel without the curiosity and cultural humility required for authentic connection and transformation.
What might authentic connection look like in practice? Below, we share a series of reading experiences from an American classroom focused on contemporary South Asian fiction from India (The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie), Pakistan (How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid), Bangladesh (A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam), Sri Lanka (Funny Boy by Shyam Sevadurai), and Nepal (Seasons of Flight by Manjushree Thapa). Many of these reading journeys start from a place of limited awareness, as is to be expected when you pick up a foreign novel. But, with a foundation of good faith and humility, and a dose of background research, these readers found a rich network of connections — many of them highly personal — that deepened their understanding of the other, and the self.
Reading Funny Boy (1994) by Shyam Selvadurai
I grew up in a primarily white community, where I was taught by primarily white, male, conservative teachers. My view on history and the world around me was always from their perspective: China was our enemy, Muslims were terrorists, communists should be shot on sight. The first time I ever saw an Asian country from the perspective of somebody living there was my freshman year of college, when we were assigned to watch the film Pather Panchali. For the first time, I was seeing what life looked like for people outside of the United States — not filtered through the adults around me. And what I saw shocked me, not because it was horrible, but because it was so similar to my own experience. Sure, the cities looked different and people spoke a different language, but parents still cared for their children, siblings bickered, neighbors were nosy, and, possibly most shocking of all, they were happy. I think somewhere inside me I knew these things were true, but I had never seen any evidence of it before.
Sri Lanka is about 9,000 miles away from Philadelphia. Nearly 70 percent of the country is Buddhist (compared to less than 1 percent of the U.S.). On paper, this country couldn’t be more different than the one I live in. And yet, here was a boy who was going through many of the same things I had gone through. Arjie is a fictional character whose story is loosely based on that of the author Shyam Selvadurai — a queer Sri Lankan who immigrated to Canada following the 1983 riots. Growing up, I got the idea that being queer was wrong. And I felt like I was the only one in the world feeling these things. It can be suffocating, feeling so alone in the world. You learn to hate yourself, wishing that you could be what society deemed “normal.” Obviously, one novel can’t be representative of an entire culture, but it is comforting to know that there are people out there who went through similar experiences. Sometimes it can feel like it’s just you, like the world is entirely against you for reasons you can’t understand. But there are millions of others out there, all going through similar struggles, whether you’re a transgender college student in the United States or a gay Sri Lankan boy. Sometimes, it’s just nice to not feel like you’re completely alone.
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It’s important to recognize that you are not an expert on society after reading a single book, and no single author can be considered an absolute authority; disagreement is as inevitable as the proverbial death and taxes. Shyam Selvadurai himself has commented, “One thing I never do is present myself as a community spokesperson. The novels are . . . set in a very small subgroup of Sri Lankans . . . I would hope that the discerning reader would see this and not imagine I am speaking for all Sri Lankans.” This is relevant, for example, to Selvadurai’s representation of the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict. While Selvadurai is careful to include nuanced characters on both sides, the Tamil characters are the ones we follow, and the violence portrayed in the novel is committed against them. This is a historical reality, but Sinhalese readers, or those sympathetic to the Sri Lankan government, might object to the downplaying of the violent methods used by the Tamil Tigers, who popularized suicide vests and infamously used children in combat. Admittedly, Jegan, an ex-Tiger character, does criticize the Tigers’ ruthlessness: “You cannot question anything they do. Recently, they killed a social worker because he disagreed with their opinions.” In terms of visceral impact on the reader, however, this is mild indeed compared to the horrific scene where we discover that Arjie’s grandparents have been burned alive in their car by a Sinhalese mob. As readers, we need to be aware of the possibility of other viewpoints and recognize that not all Sri Lankans will appreciate Selvadurai’s depiction. Like any novel, Funny Boy tells one story and makes no claim to all of the Sri Lankan experience.
Reading The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy
I was raised in America, not India. I have four younger siblings — no twins. I do not know what it is like to be raised by a single mother. I do not know what it feels like to realize that your cousin is adored more than you because of the color of her skin. But I do know what it feels like when a parent uses guilt and fear against you, intentionally or otherwise. And I know how stern words from a parent can stain your mind forever. Every child acts out sometimes. Roy’s protagonist Rahel is no exception. When her mother offers pleasantries to a movie theater employee, Rahel, who senses the man’s ill intentions towards her twin brother, makes a snide remark instead. Hurt by her daughter’s disobedience, the mother utters words that will haunt Rahel for the rest of the book: “When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.” As I read these words, I can hear my own parents scolding me, for drawing on the wall, for sneaking a piece of candy, for not cleaning up: You’re a sinner. You don’t deserve to be loved — no one does. We’re all sinners. We all deserve to go to hell. You deserve to go to hell. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Shame, shame, shame. Everything I did was somehow wrong. Not enough for my parents. Not enough for God. Guilt and shame. Love and pain. Children internalize everything. Just like me. Just like Rahel.
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The political tapestry of India is one I’d never examined before this class, but was intensely curious about. For this novel, the effort to remove my American sensibilities concerning the word “communist” was a conscious one. These sensibilities include our country’s own history with communism including the Red Scare, and my own experiences of meeting communists. It goes without saying the reasons for people in India to choose Communism exist in a vastly different context than that of ours, so I chose to relearn what I knew of the movement to understand the novel better. Further research shows Indian Communism includes many noble goals, like workers’ rights, ending caste discrimination, and progressive reforms for oppressed groups — much different from how we understand “communism” as Americans. Realistically, I am not an expert in the complexities of the Communist Party of India after researching for this paper, but I understand the context of the novel and how it affects the characters.
Reading Seasons of Flight (2010) by Manjushree Thapa
Thapa’s main character, Prema, is a young Nepali woman who moves to America to escape the volatile political situation of her home country. These were not problems I had to worry about in my own privileged American upbringing. For the average American, war is a distant concept. We are used to hearing about war, not experiencing it. It’s this distance that allows us to focus on the “Small Things,” as Arundhati Roy would have put it. That’s what is truly desirable about the American lifestyle, and that’s what I’ve been used to in my life. In Nepal, Prema’s relationship with her lover was defined by the political conflict: “They talked not about their feelings, but of humanitarian law and war crimes, international human rights charters.”. In stark contrast, her relationship with her American boyfriend Luis is all about exploring who they are as people. Luis says, “But it’s like there’s no Nepal, no America. Just us, you know?”. It’s as if to say that the “Big Things” are far away. Prema notes how lightheartedly Americans live their lives. After she spends some time researching the war in Guatemala instigated by the American government, she is surprised that the average American isn’t weighed down by their government’s participation in such schemes: “What puzzled Prema was how […] Americans seemed to know this had happened — yet, this knowledge did not weigh them down.”. As I’ve come to learn, this is not the universal norm. Billions of people have no choice but to be weighed down by the “Big Things.” But Americans like me do have that choice. We can choose to be burdened or unburdened when it conveniences us.
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As an international student whose country is currently involved in a war, the similarities between the protagonist and my emotions scared me — but at the same time worked as a magical potion. Someone put the whirling tornado of my feelings into clear sentences, structured them, and gave them an image. Throughout the book, I followed Prema’s life story: the influence of war on her family; the abrupt loss of contact with her sister, recruited by Maoists; the kidnapping, torture, and death of a boy from her neighborhood; her migration to America on a lottery Green card. One moment in the book was especially heartbreaking, reflecting the exact feelings ripping me from the inside, as Prema explains her sense of displacement to her lover:
‘Steve and Camilla are your friends. They are part of your world, not my world.’
‘So take me to your world!’ He said, ‘That’s what I’m saying! You’re shutting me out. When all I want is- Take me to your world!’
‘I do not have a world!’ Prema cried. ‘I left the world I had, and do not belong in the one I am in now — your world. I do not have any place to take you, Luis. I do not have a place in the world.’
While not giving the answers on how to deal with all these emotions, the book taught me not to be afraid to make mistakes while trying to find my own path, as well as gave me hope, that the war will end, and a happy end is possible, a reunion with my family is possible, finding “my place” is possible. I am not emigrating from Nepal, I didn’t win a green card, and I have never been to L.A., but does it matter? I felt heard, I felt seen, I felt empowered and connected.
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As a reader I found myself feeling a connection to both Prema and Luis. I could first relate to Prema as a woman discovering herself in her sexuality, and going on this tumultuous journey. She is unsure on how she feels about love: “She had doubts, too, on other matters. Love still confused her. Or relationships confused her. Or sex did.”. For a young woman of any background, this is a common experience, especially when adding pressures on women concerning family and motherhood. Though she is haunted by lost love and not forming lasting relationships, she is still engaging in raw human interactions that break the binaries and cause collisions of identities. While I connected to Prema’s journey of self-discovery, I found a connection to Luis in terms of ethnic identity. The United States of America houses various people of different identities and ethnicities who interact with each other constantly — but that does not mean these interactions are seamless. This awkward crossroads of identities is often the first point of learning. Luis is half-Hispanic, which brings with it a different set of contexts. What does one do as a Hispanic American (Guatemalan in the case of Luis, Puerto Rican in mine) in a relationship/situationship with a person from another country such as Nepal? At the end of the day, aren’t we all just humans?
Reading A Golden Age (2007) by Tamima Anam
A Golden Age is a novel that requires humility. Before reading, I expected Bangladeshi culture to be depicted as monolithic, as the novel follows one woman, Rehana, in the midst of the Bangladesh Liberation War. However, Anam challenges this type of thinking by showing the diverse lives and beliefs of the protagonist’s friends and neighbors. One set of characters that prompted me to recognize the incompleteness of my knowledge about Bangladesh and Bengali culture were the Senguptas, Rehana’s Hindu tenants. What I knew from previous research was that Bangladesh (or East Pakistan, as it was called prior to 1971) was created as part of an Islamic state in the aftermath of the Partition. Because of this, I assumed that the characters presented in the novel would at least be culturally Muslim, if not practicing the religion. However, the Senguptas are introduced near the beginning of the novel as clearly not being culturally or religiously Muslim. Despite them not fitting into the default image of a Bangladeshi person, they are still depicted as fitting in with their peers. During a get-together in March 1971, Mr. Sengupta initiates a conversation with Sohail (Rehana’s son) and the other neighbors about the prime ministerial elections: “‘Drastic action?’ ‘He should declare independence.’ ‘But he’s won the election — surely now his demands will be met?’ Mr. Sengupta said.”. This conversation is significant because it highlights the fact that the Hindu Senguptas are part of East Pakistani/Bangladeshi society just like their Muslim neighbors. They can freely engage in political discourse without being judged as outsiders because they are as much part of the community and have been there as long as their Muslim peers. This directly contradicts the assumption that many readers might have about East Pakistan/Bangladesh.
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I was raised in an army family in war-hardened Pakistan. There were times when my father was deployed to Waziristan against the Taliban during the 2009-2013 war on terror, and there was always this sense that we might lose him. I remember the day he told us he would be going; it was just terrifying for the whole family. We cried and prayed all night for his safety. There was always this uncertainty where we did not know what was going to happen, as we could not talk to him for days. Every day on news channels we would see a list of officers and soldiers who were martyred during the Waziristan war and all we hoped for was that we would not see him. I can relate this personal experience to how Aman’s protagonist Rehana makes sacrifices to support her son Sohail, who joins the Mukti Bahini during Bangladesh’s fight for independence. Rehana’s conversation with her daughter Maya resonates with my own family’s fear of losing a loved one:
‘I know what war is, Maya.’
‘Aren’t you even a little excited? A whole nation, coming together.’
‘Excited? I’m not excited, I’m sick. I’m sick with worry. This is my child.’
Rehana left the table and moved towards the kitchen, muttering something about sweets. She could hear her daughter sighing and Sohail whispering something, trying to make peace. It began to occur to Rehana that any doubts Sohail once had about becoming a soldier had completely disappeared. As with everything else, he had taken it on with a kind of brutal devotion. He was a guerrilla. A man for his country. He would die if he had to. Rehana wondered if she should begin to prepare herself, imagine a life without her son, carve out a hole where he used to be, familiarize herself with the shock of his absence.
The mental strain and worry Rehana feels for Sohail’s safety as he fights with the Mukti Bahini resonate with my own feelings during times when my father was deployed in dangerous operations. My father came back after about one year. The feelings we had were beyond what we could put into words. For me, it was like he had a second life now. He looked completely different, with a beard and battle scars. He surprised us the day he came back, and we just jumped on him and hugged him. I could not stop staring at him and thinking to myself that he finally made it — a huge relief, just like what Rehana experiences being reunited with her son:
‘Ammi,’ her son said, as soon as she entered. The Urdu word was the secret language of long ago; it meant he was a boy, her boy, again. ‘My son,’ she said, ‘my poor Sohail.’ She was so relieved to be in his presence. Everything, the war, the Major, Silvi, all seemed so distant, so much smaller than this moment. She pushed him away and searched his face. She saw the bright, earnest gaze, the serious forehead. ‘Ammi,’ he said again. Through the grate of hardness, she could still hear the sound of her son, who was never meant to be a soldier. It was him. She was always checking to make sure he was still there.
This passage takes place after a prolonged period of separation and worry, highlighting Rehana’s immense relief and joy upon being reunited with Sohail. The use of “Ammi,” a term of endearment in Urdu, signifies their deep bond and the return to a sense of normalcy and familial love despite the horrors of war. Similarly, I remember screaming “Abu,” which is “Dad” in English.
Reading Midnight’s Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie
In Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie references an endless number of details regarding Indian ethnic groups, religions, languages, foods, and much more. “South Asian culture” is not a monolith: it encompasses many different groups of people, which the novel attempts to explore. Even a single sentence of Rushdie’s rich narrative might include multiple references that require additional research from a reader unfamiliar with the cultural context. For example, early in the novel, Rushdie describes an arson incident involving a bicycle warehouse: “father Kemal stood alongside fire-engines, as relief flooded through them, because it was the Arjuna Indiabike godown that was burning — the Arjuna brand-name, taken from a hero of Hindu mythology, had failed to disguise the fact that the company was Muslim-owned.”. Without learning why Arjuna, the hero of the Mahabharata and the Kurukshetra war, is considered significant, a reader might fail to understand the importance of the brand name and the Hinduist values it references. Likewise, without understanding the history of Hindu-Muslim tensions in India, a reader might miss the irony of the name and the scene as a whole. It is important to research further so that one may interact with the text in an informed manner.
Reading How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013) by Mohsin Hamid
The theme of parental sacrifice serves as a starting point for Hamid’s narrative. Chapter one is titled “Move to The City,” indicating a transition from a rural area to an urban one to seek better economic opportunities that are not available in the village:
As you and your parents and siblings dismount, you embody one of the great changes of your time. […] It is an explosive transformation, the supportive, stifling, stabilizing bonds of extended relationships weakening and giving way, leaving in their wake insecurity, anxiety, productivity, and potential. Moving to the city is the first step to getting filthy rich in rising Asia. And you have now taken it. Congratulations.
The second chapter, “Get an Education” follows suit, and together they illustrate the parents’ decision to send the protagonist to school despite their limited means, emphasizing education as a pathway to social mobility. The narrative underscores the parents’ belief that their sacrifices will yield dividends in the form of their son’s upward socio-economic trajectory, as “getting an education is a running leap towards becoming filthy rich in rising Asia.” Research from the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies emphasizes the critical role of education in enhancing social mobility. The center’s findings indicate that higher educational attainment can significantly improve individuals’ socio-economic outcomes, particularly in regions where economic disparities are pronounced. This is especially relevant in South Asia, where education can serve as a lever for upward mobility, helping individuals from low-income backgrounds to achieve better socio-economic status through improved educational opportunities. This is also true for my case where my parents sacrificed a large portion of their pension for me and my brother to study aboard, hoping to learn and lead a better life.
Coda: Five Principles for Reading Like a Guest, Not Like a Tourist
The above experiences of reading South Asian fiction in an American classroom are as diverse as the source narratives themselves. Each reader created their own unique version of the text, informed by their past experiences and present knowledge. What these diverse experiences demonstrate is that how we approach foreign novels — with curiosity or judgment, humility or arrogance — matters a lot in shaping our unique reader experiences. Here are five principles designed to help anyone cracking open a foreign novel get the most out of their experience, and practice reading like a guest, not like a tourist:
- Good faith: remember that we are all human; approach the text with an open mind and pause to reflect on your reactions to the unfamiliar.
- Humility: recognize that no single book is representative of a whole culture; that the members of the represented culture might resist this particular representation; and that reading one book will not make you an expert on any culture.
- Context: be aware of the larger historical and social contexts in which the book, the author, and yourself as a reader are situated.
- Learning: pause to research unfamiliar topics, references, and language so you can understand the text more fully.
- Connection: reflect on the connections between the “other” and yourself: what are you learning about yourself and your own culture in this encounter?