Many writers have tried to study the postcolonial world, but much remains to be said and documented. It is necessary to study how cultural discourses function in a society and how they alter and redefine the vital concepts of nation, state, patriotism and family. A threadbare study of everyday life is needed to shed light on the hidden network of power and cultural discourses. As a postcolonial writer, Sara Suleri takes up the challenge and weaves a moving tale of a family and a nation. It is necessary to define her achievements and her contribution to the postcolonial theory and fiction. A Comic Elegy Unlike Meatless Days (Suleri’s first memoir that she had dedicated to her mother), Boys will be Boys is in a lighter vein. Its author said …show more content…
Boys will be Boys brings to life her childhood memories, half-forgotten stories of her family, and the historical and political events of Pakistan. The result is an astonishing melange of history-writing and household chitchat. Boys will be Boys does what historical records and documents cannot – it captures very vividly the mood of a tumultuous era. The book offers a rare picture of the kaleidoscope of Pakistan – we come across the famous Urdu poet, Iqbal and listen to the speeches of generals and rulers of Pakistan, we celebrate Eid and Muharram with Suleri, and visit universities and colleges, we walk on the beautiful roads of Lahore and stroll on the narrow streets as we taste the spicy street food. Suleri admires Urdu – a language she has left far behind. This deep fascination with Urdu finds expression in the form of beautiful Urdu poems, couplets and lines, picked up from poets like Ghalib, Faiz, Akbar Allahabadi, Momin, Mir, and Hali, which embellish each chapter with their refined elegance. Suleri’s Pakistan emerges swathed in the fragrance of captivating Urdu ghazals. In an interview Suleri had said, “In Boys will be Boys, I attempted to honour my love for Urdu in the chapter headings" …show more content…
In the highly acclaimed book, The Rhetoric of English India, she explores the theoretical aspects of the postcolonial experiences of colonial India. Thus, beginning with Edmund Burke and Warrren Hastings and the 19th-century women diarists like Fanny Parks and Harriet Tytler, Suleri moves on to study Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster and finally V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie to examine the textual strategies by which these writers have dealt with the colonialism. The book is valuable for its penetrating analysis of the intermingling of diverse cultures in modern India. Suleri show great and abiding interest in studying the stories of the colonisation of India. Boys will be Boys does exactly what The Rhetoric of English India does at theoretical level – both challenge the standard chronology of imperial
Novelist, Christina Hoff Sommers, in her narrative essay, “The War Against Boys”, the essay explains of how boys are a year and a half behind girls in education. Sommers purpose is to convey the idea that girls are not treated as boys are when it comes to the classroom. She creates a dramatic tone in order to convey to her readers that boys and girls have a different mindset. She also arguers about how some of the blame is towards Carol Gilligan as well as organizations such as the National Organization for Women for creating a situation in which Obstacles on the path to gender justice for girls and boys are resented, both as the unfairly privileged sex.
Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls.” Introduction to Literature. Ed. Isobel M. Findlay et al. 5th ed. Canada: Nelson Education, 2004. 491-502. Print.
“Boys and Girls” describes a major turning point in a girl’s life, turning down a path towards womanhood. Her childhood fears of the dark and fears of being less than a perfect worker to her father and her control of her brother slowly dissolve. Her decision to free the terrified horse highlights her pivotal journey into adulthood. And her ability to cry with sensitivity over her decision of freedom, demonstrates the acute sensitivity of a woman.
David Sheff narrates; Beautiful Boy, the chronicles his journey to help understand his son substance abuse addiction of methamphetamine. The background of the story shares the brutal and hopeful accounts of a drug addiction. It entails the boundless fears and desperation of a father's reality and experiences of his son's addiction. The irresistible and uncontrollable nature of the urge of his son's addiction leads to a path of self-destructive behavior. David documents his son's short-lived recreational drug use to an on-going spiraling addiction. He commits to helping his son through sobriety in the face of losing his son.
Ambitions within individuals are subject to change; However, desire plays a significant role when shaping identity and character. These factors potentially impact surrounding individuals as they develop perceptions of one another. The short story “Boys & Girls” explores the difficulties of challenging society's unwritten rules, additionally, the impact that ambition plays when individuals seek fulfilment in life. Immediately within the story, it is clear the narrator aspires to segregate from expectations that associate with femininity, leading her to initially obtain comfort and approval within a ‘man’s world’. In order to receive any praise, the heroine must compete with her brother Laird in a rivalry that favours men, therefore, making her
In Leonard Woolf’s “Pearls and Swine,” the eurocentric perspective of India creates unreasonable stereotypes which alter the reader’s pre conceptual view of India. The West positions themselves on a pedestal by creating a sense of superiority over the East, making the reader see the West as civilized and modern unlike the East who is stereotyped as undeveloped. As the three men in the smokeroom pontificate about the East with their preconceptual views, all the men unknowingly put the Western culture above the Eastern culture. After the archdeacon stated that the West should not be so imposing of their culture on the Eastern people, the stockbroker states, “Look after ’em, of course: give ’em schools, if they want education––schools, hospitals, roads, and railways…… But let ’em know you are the top dog” (Woolf 203).
Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children employs strategies which engage in an exploration of History, Nationalism and Hybridity. This essay will examine three passages from the novel which demonstrate these issues. Furthermore, it will explore why each passage is a good demonstration of these issues, how these issues apply to India in the novel, and how the novel critiques these concepts.
The Theme of Gender Roles Theme is a part of many literary works. In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls”, the theme relates to gender roles. This is reveled through the relationships between the narrator her parents, the relationship between the narrator and her brother, and the narrator’s struggle with gender identity.
The 1961 video Boys Beware, directed by Sid Davis, is an anti-gay film to be viewed in school by young boys. During this time, homosexuality was still being diagnosed as a mental illness, and this film works to try to instill fear into these children about gay men, or possibly try to prevent these boys from becoming gay. Boys Beware is a specifically sexualized and gendered script of childhood and is a significant artifact for the study of children and culture due to its erroneous, adult constructed take on childhood innocence. The video seems to give these boys agency, and then immediately take it away. The issue of the video is that it seems to be forcing innocence onto these young boys that truly aren’t innocent, in turn making them seem unaware and senseless.
In the story ‘’What Does Boys Will Be Boys Really Mean’’ the author makes interesting points about girls and women being used in disrespectful manners in media and boys wearing clothes with pimp labels on them. When I first heard the name of the story I thought the author was going to write about boys being dirty and being disrespectful and that is kind of what the story was about.
As a newborn a gender is assigned, this gender being what you will be brought up as until you decide you want to bend the rules and change the roles, once more children realize they do not need to conform to the roles they develop a sense of love, confidence, and understanding for themselves and others. In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” the theme of gender is an anchor that gives the story a deeper meaning and gives the reader insight on stereotyping and gender assignment among children. The genders are what develop the main character, her assumed gender or lack of show how she grows and acts throughout the story. Moreover, gender roles are very prominent and these stereotypes show the setting where the family lives. Lastly, the roles reveal
Sharpe, Jenny. “A Passage to India by E.M. Forster.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. James P Draper, Jennifer Brostrom, and Jennifer Gariepy. Vol. 77. Detroit: Gale, 1993. 253-57. Rpt. of “The Unspeakable Limits of Rape: Colonial Violence and Counter-Insurgency.” Genders 10 (1991): 25-46. Literature Criticism Online. Web. 4 Mar. 2011. .
In this paper feminist aspect of post colonization will be studied in “Season of Migration to the North” novel by Tayeb Salih. Postcolonial feminism can be defined as seeks to compute for the way that racism and the long-lasting economic, cultural, and political influences of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world, according to Oxford dictionary. As it mentioned earlier about the application of Feminism theory in literature, the provided definition of postcolonial feminism also is not applicable in literature analysis. Therefore, Oxford defines another applic...
Every human being, in addition to having their own personal identity, has a sense of who they are in relation to the larger community--the nation. Postcolonial studies is the attempt to strip away conventional perspective and examine what that national identity might be for a postcolonial subject. To read literature from the perspective of postcolonial studies is to seek out--to listen for, that indigenous, representative voice which can inform the world of the essence of existence as a colonial subject, or as a postcolonial citizen. Postcolonial authors use their literature and poetry to solidify, through criticism and celebration, an emerging national identity, which they have taken on the responsibility of representing. Surely, the reevaluation of national identity is an eventual and essential result of a country gaining independence from a colonial power, or a country emerging from a fledgling settler colony. However, to claim to be representative of that entire identity is a huge undertaking for an author trying to convey a postcolonial message. Each nation, province, island, state, neighborhood and individual is its own unique amalgamation of history, culture, language and tradition. Only by understanding and embracing the idea of cultural hybridity when attempting to explore the concept of national identity can any one individual, or nation, truly hope to understand or communicate the lasting effects of the colonial process.
Crane, Ralph J. Inventing India: A History of India in English Language Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1992.