Brick Lane

“[The South Asian Diaspora] is defined by its ability to recreate a culture in diverse locations” (Agnew, 2005 p 4) Brick Lane in London, otherwise called ‘Banglatown,’ is a representation of this re-creation of culture both in the city and in Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane. Brick Lane explores Nazneen’s experience as a Bangladeshi immigrant in London. She went sent there to marry Channu through an arranged marriage and they eventually have two children.  She corresponds with her sister Hasina, whom still lives in Bangladesh, through letters where she writes of her experiences in her new country and her longing for home. From this the reader is privy to an insiders view on her representation and interpretation of what it is like to experience living in a diasporic community.

At the beginning of the novel Nazneen longs for home and frequently day dreams of her childhood. Vijay Agnew explains:

Diaspora can, thus, denote a transnational sense of self and community and create an understanding of ethnicity and ethnic bonds that transcends the borders and boundaries of nation states. Yet, the individual living in the diaspora experiences a dynamic tension everyday between living ‘here’ and remembering ‘there’; between memories of place and origin and entanglements with places of residence, and between the metaphorical and the physical home”

                                                                                                             Agnew (2005 p 4)

Because she is holding onto the past this creates tension but as the novel evolves she begins to gain independence and confidence to assimilate into English society.

Avtar Brah (1996) believes “’Home’ is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination” but on the other hand “‘home’ is also the lived experience of a locality” (p 192). Nazneen learns to call England her home after many years of her ‘lived experiences’.  She meets a woman named Razia who whos influence helps influence Nazneen’s independence. She gets her a job working from home as a seamstress; work is not something her husband, Channu, believes is acceptable for a Bangladeshi woman. From meeting Karim, her employer who brings her clothing to sew at home, she breaks away from tradition and they begin a love affair. He is a devout Muslim and an activist in a group called the Bengal Tigers. 

In Brtiain, where ‘hybridity is not allowed,’ racism has provided the impetus for some diasporic individuals to maintain ties with their homelands and has encouraged them to express their quintessential selves that are rooted in their ethnicities.        
                                                                                                       Jussawalla (1997 p 30)

His wardrobe changes throughout the novel just as his values seem to.   He changes from a t-shirt and jeans to traditional clothing and a beard.

This transformation is to reinforce his beliefs, not only to himself, but to others who have developed a hatred towards Muslims because of the 9/11 attacks in New York.  His Muslim values seem to become increasingly stronger because of this and he feels the need to embody the ethnicity he is trying to defend.

Chanu, Nazneen’s husband, also unknowingly contributes to her independence and drives her into assimilation because of his unwillingness to do so himself.  He struggles with work and is always going after a new promotion. He feels that it’s a “tragedy…when you expect to be so-called integrated. But you will never get the same treatment. Never” (Ali, 2008 p 202). “He says that if he painted his skin pink and white then there would be no problem” (Ali, 2008 p 53).  Chanu doesn’t feel accepted into the host society and in his case “the question of home, therefore, is intrinsically linked with the way in which processes of inclusion or exclusion operate [and] are subjectively experienced under given circumstances. It is centrally about our political and personal struggles over the social regulation of ‘belonging’” (Brah, 1996 p 192). He is not accepted by the host society and therefore has a more difficult time assimilating into English society.

Nazneen and Channu’s children, Bibi and Shahanna, experience “the tensions between the old and new homes [that] create the problem of divided allegiances that the two generations experience differently” (Radhakrishnan, 2003 p 123). Most of these issues surround Shahanna and Chanu; Shahanna has reached an age where she isn’t as impressionable and has established beliefs of her own. She corrects her father’s English and wants her lip pierced. In an argument with her father she says “I didn’t ask to be born here” (Ali, 2008 p 299). Agnew (2005) believes “identities are socially constructed, contingent on time, place and social context, and therefore fluid and unstable” (p12) Shahanna’s identity was socially constructed in England because she was born there; she has chosen to integrate into society and reject her families origin.  This fluid identity in diaspora causes tensions between the older immigrant generation and the later generations born in diaspora (Radhakrishnan, 2003). In the end of the novel when Shahanna finds out Chanu plans to move their family back to Bangladesh she refuses to go and runs away. She takes this bold step as a last resort to show her parents that England is her home.

Because Nazneen realizes, alongside Shahanna, that England is her home too, she tells Chanu the children and her are going to stay in England. She feels it is their home now and Shahanna would never be happy in Bangladesh. When she tells him they aren’t going she says, “I can’t go with you” (Ali 2008 p 402) and he replies with, “I can’t stay” (Ali 2008 p 402).  The use of “can’t” in this context show how strongly they both feel about where their home really is after their long journey.

By the end of the novel Nazneen has demonstrated that she really can do anything in England. She realizes the opportunities here that she maybe never would have had at home. In corresponding with her sister she realizes how lucky she now is to be in a country where she can turn on the hob instead of making a fire for the oven, has a flushing toilet and two sinks (Ali 2008 p 58) Most of all she has accepted her identity as a Bengali women living in England and no longer spends her days longing for home.

 Works Cited 

Agnew, Vijay, ed, 2005. Diaspora, Memory + Identity: A search for home. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated.

Ali, Monica, 2008. Brick Lane. New York: Scribner.

Brah, A., 1996. Cartographies of Diaspora. London: Routledge.

Jussawalla, Feroza. 1997. South Asian Diaspora Writers in Britain: ‘Home’ vs. ‘Hybridity’. In Ideas of Home: Literature of Asian Migration, ed. Geoffrey Kain,. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Radhakrishnan, R., 2003. “Ethnicity in an Age of Diaspora.” Theorizing Diaspora. Ed. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur. Oxford: Blackwell, p119-131