It was a very interesting evening with a wide ranging and thought provoking discussion about the author, book, literary styles, current Middle East tragedies, childhood trauma. The hot toddies and chicken dumplings were also perfect on a cold winter’s night.
From Erin:
Thank you Laura for introducing us to this genre of fiction – it felt “new” and beyond my grasp (until the discussion), although we have read and discussed other books that were more character driven than plot driven. Your presentation has led me to continue to consider whether the novel is more plotless or narrator less, due to her subservient nature and difficulty accessing her sense of self or voice. It seems to me to be a study of the impact of culture on the individual psyche, perhaps the tendency for humans to engage in actions to prioritize maintaining a sense of belonging to a clan or group, without seeming consideration to, or maybe even a “caring”, about the impact of ostracism and “othering” at the minimally intrusive end of action /non-action, vs. outright attempts to annihilate a group or macro-aggression at the other extreme. Perhaps the novel is a study in microaggressions and the cumulative impact of being “othered” and the plot is somewhat irrelevant, as it is unfortunately a far too common experience in a world that many consider “global”; we talk of being part of a “global community” while at the same time, many continue to maintain a parochial sensibility. It was also interesting to review the Stanley Milgram experiments, and the influence of power (real or perceived) on an individual’s willingness to engage in harmful behaviours towards another. Most interesting, was the conversation about how different search engines uncover different results or “truths”, and the basis of language in understanding history and access to information or “truth”, i.e. Arab vs. English Wikipedia.
As I ramble, on this thought provoking work, I continue to scramble and writhe in the muddle we are in as a human race, and how we collectively can begin to rise above focusing on our differences, developing greater compassion for both ourselves and others and strive to live in harmony, We no longer need to band together to fend off survival threats from predators in the wild, as we humans present the greatest danger to our individual and collective survival not only as a race, but as a species.
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