Books, Fiction

Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal

Worth a Read Yes
Length 352
Quick Review Pride and Prejudice is set in modern day Pakistan in the Binat home. Kamal fills Unmarriageable with all the wonderful judgements one would expect from a Jane Austen novel.

201905287384943216433915100.jpg
Reading Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal in Houston’s Museum District | Dress

I’m not necessarily a fan of love stories, but Jane Austen tells far more than how two people fell in love. She had a sharp eye and a quick wit. Pride and Prejudice is beloved by the world for so many reasons. Soniah Kamal brings the plot and characters into the world by setting it in a world not so different from Victorian England: Pakistan. Unmarriageable is a beautiful retelling.

Alysba Binat is the second oldest Binat Sister. At 30, she is all but unmarriageable. She helps support her family as an English Lit teacher alongside her older sister Jena.

I’m not going to give the plot line because you are probably familiar with it anyways. Unmarriageable does a good job sticking to the plot while making it modern and global.

I love well Kamal does at bringing this classic story into the modern era while also making it relatable to a completely different demographic. Muslim girls in Pakistan face similar life choices as the Bennet girls did in Victorian England. As much as times have changed, for so many women and girls life has not progressed that much. Unmarriageable is able to point this out to the demographic who do have choices. Kamal also makes the point that Pakistan was colonized by the British and taught to revere British Literature while looking down on their own cultural heritage. Through this novel, Kamal is able to combine a mixed literary heritage into something beautiful transcending religion, gender, and culture.

201905257147948972741531931.jpg
Reading Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal | Dress

I love how Kamal uses Pakistani versions of the character’s names throughout Unmarriageable. It’s really interesting to see how that translates. The use of Urdu words and phrases is also a great way of blending Pakistani culture into the book while making it accessible to Western readers. Alysba teaches Pride and Prejudice to her class, so it comes up often throughout the book. It works within the novel, but I don’t particularly love this literary device. It feels a bit overdone and boring. What I do appreciate is how many books Kamal mentions of Pakistani heritage.

I never thought I could dislike Mr. Collins more than I already do. He’s an odious and boring character. Kamal out does herself with Mr. Kaleen when he says, “Alysba was lucky he was not the sort if man who’d respond to her insult of a refusal by throwing acid on her.” Oh how lucky she was. Ugh. This hurt me.

Unmarriageable is a lot more pointed than Austen’s original. Austen tells the story and lets the reader surmise. The satire, observations, critique, and sarcasm are left for the reader to take in. Kamal points out relationships, dynamics, hypocrisies, etc. There is a lack of nuance requiring much less analysis. The plot moves faster than the original work and is a much smaller book. I wouldn’t say this is better or worse; it just is. It does appeal to the modern reader more than the original would if published today.

I really enjoyed reading Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal. It is a wonderful retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It has a lot to offer readers of all ages and backgrounds. Perfect for summer vacation.

Memorable Quotes
““But reading widely can lead to an appreciation of the universalities across cultures.””
“Perhaps you truly could not make someone disbelieve what they’d been so thoroughly conditioned to believe.”
“A woman is nothing and no one without virtue. Her virtue is the jewelry of her soul.”

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Book Depository
Shop the Post
[show_shopthepost_widget id=”3597474″]

Title: Unmarriageable
Author: Soniah Kamal
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Copyright: 2019
ISBN: 978124799717

Books

An American Brat

Read Yes
Length 317
Quick Review A young girl’s transformation after leaving everything she’s ever known in Pakistan for the US. A look into immigration, religion, culture, society, and familial obligation. 

20180530_135854.jpg

Bapsi Sidhwa published An American Brat in 1993. It deals with a lot of issues, which are still pressing, if not more prevalent, over twenty years later. She writes with a sense of humor and insight into two vastly different cultures.

Feroza is the sixteen year old daughter of Zareen and Cyrus. She is part of an upper class, tight-knit family in Pakistan belonging to the Parsee ethnic group of the Zoroastrian faith speaking Gujrati. The year is 1979, and a lot is changing in Pakistan with the rise of Muslim extremists. Having raised Feroza with a strong set of morals, Zareen and Cyrus send her to spend three months with her uncle in the US. While she’s in the US, she decides to apply for university. Once she is accepted, she moves to Idaho for her freshman year at a junior college. She keeps in touch with her family, but begins to find herself while exploring American culture, traditions, and friendships. After her freshman year, she relocates to Colorado with her roommate to go to a bigger university, where she meets people with similar ethnic backgrounds. Feroza begins to find her place and way in her new life navigating social norms, religious differences, cultural influences, and trying to meet her familial expectations.

I thought it was funny Feroza’s family wanted to send her to the very liberal and different United States in order to keep her grounded in Pakistani, Parsee, and Zoroastrian traditions. I really enjoyed how the women were portrayed throughout the novel. Sidhwa has very strong female roles, which differs from how most Middle Eastern women are portrayed throughout history and in contemporary media and art. These women have strong senses of self with leading roles in their homes and social circles. They have vibrant social lives even though they are not seen out and about like in Western cultures.

The title is An American Brat. You’ll read it expecting one person to be the American Brat, but the brat is constantly changing depending on the section you’re reading. Although, the bratty behavior is usually explainable and sometimes understandable.

There is a scene portrayed towards the beginning of the novel where Feroza is getting off the plane in the US and has to go through customs. As a white girl, I have never had an issue with customs. I have, however, watched people of other ethnicities have issues going through security and customs. Reading Sidhwa’s depiction, I can’t imagine the emotionally devastating impact it would have on someone, especially someone so young, sheltered, and alone as sixteen year old Feroza is in the novel. She is harangued by security guards and customs officers accusing her of lying and trying to stay in the country illegally. She is treated as if she doesn’t speak or understand the language, which is false. Remember this was published in 1993, which was almost a decade before 9/11 and security crackdowns. I can’t imagine what it would be like now.

Feroza must deal with trying to make herself happy while also living up to familial expectations. Her family expects her to return to Pakistan and marry a Parsee Zoroastrian. If she does not, she will be kicked out of her faith and left out of many important cultural traditions. It is also important to note the impact her leaving the faith would have on a wider scale. At the time, there were only 120,000 people in the ethnic group, so there is a scramble to keep the young people in the faith. Feroza is also dealing with the fact she and her family are not Muslim living in a Muslim country and culture. They are having to deal with a cultural shift.

While in the US, Feroza starts to realize her position as a woman. Growing up, she was told freedom would come to her once she was married. Through marriage, she would gain happiness and freedom. It is a way of keeping young girls pliable while maintaining traditional values. Living in the US, she sees how all of those qualities are completely attainable without marrying. Her mother, Zareen, visits the United States and starts to question the position women have in regards to their religion.

I overall, loved this book. There are so many complex issues Sidhwa explores throughout the novel. I couldn’t recommend it more!

Memorable Quotes
“In Pakistan, politics, with its social brew of martial law and religion, influenced every aspect of day-to-day living.”
“Finding herself awash in this exhilaratingly free and new culture had made her forget the strictures imposed on her conduct as a Pakistani girl.”
“… in the short while she’d been exposed to the American culture, she’d grown shockingly brazen.”
“To acknowledge it would be to advert that she was the cause, the irritant, the inducer of the evil.”
“Nevertheless, the schizophrenia she perceived at the core of America’s relationship to its own citizens and to those in poor countries like hers continued to disturb her.”
“Feroza realized with a sense of shock that she had outgrown her family’s expectations for her.”

Title: An American Brat

Author: Bapsi Sidhwa
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Copyright: 1993
ISBN: 9781571310057