A Review of Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

[stephenhongsohn.livejournal.com]

A Review of Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies

 

If one were to take the sea-faring tales of Herman Melville, constellate them along an oceanic axes linking India and Mauritius and China, the result might be Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, which takes place for the most part on a boat (called the Ibis) commissioned in the export of opium and populated ultimately with coolies, prisoners, stowaways, and shipmates. Sea of Poppies was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008.  Ghosh is also author of The Hungry Tide, The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Circle of Reason, among other novels.  He is of course an interesting figure to consider within an Asian Americanist frame, especially because this novel, in particular, does place the United States in a larger economic trajectory in the early 19th century with South Asia, East Asia, and Africa, not simply a transatlantic route, but a truly global one.  How does one situate this text then?  It is not quite a postcolonial text, nor does it traffic within one national frame and the fact that so much takes place literally on the ocean with characters of different national and ethnic origin all make the question of the “melting pot” or in this case, the “melting boat,” a very salient one. 

 

While the novel takes its leisurely time for the principle characters to meet, once the connections are made clearer, the dynamism of the novel is quite apparent.  Ghosh is a masterful storyteller and Sea of Poppies is the perfect work that demonstrates the globalizing forces of literary representation.  Indeed, the cast of the novel includes an ethnically French, but Indian raised stowaway, named Paulette, a metif shipmen named Zachary Reid, the dastardly British entrepeneur, Benjamin Burnham, a Indian village woman, Deeti, among many others who will eventually come to populate the story.  Ghosh texturizes the narrative through dialect, rendering English in a variety of different ways.  The individual trials that each character faces will yet bring them together to the Ibis. 

 

Ghosh has taken great pains to reconfigure an entirely different historical period,that of the early 19th century.  He therefore employs the temporally-specific vocabulary to rend the experience through a very particular lens.  While the effect is not simply realist in its evocation, it nevertheless casts the entire novel through a certain filtered lens that reminds one of Benito Cereno.  Indeed, there are many schemes and plots afoot within the novel, many disguises that characters must undertake, and many twists that the narrative undergoes.  At the same time, the multifocal nature of the text never allows the reader much time to be situated from one viewpoint or perspective and this kaleidoscopic perspective enriches the cultural configuration of the high-seas ship.  Of course, Ghosh does realize he has an audience to entertain and in this respect, there is a certain roguishness to the tale as well, where rough-hewn characters and ribald figures texturize the plot. 

 

For the most part, the main characters are easy to sympathize with as they make great pains to retain some fabric of a mission or quest despite the most difficult of circumstances.  For instance, Deeti’s saga is one of much hardship and pain as she is at first betrothed to an opium addict, then raped against her will and impregnated by her brother-in-law.  After her husband succumbs to his opium addiction, Deeti will take great pains to free herself from the shackles of this extended family and in the process must rely on an inner strength that is typical of many of the characters.  Another notable sequence involves a bankrupt landed gentleman, Raja Neel Rattan Halder, who is shamelessly hoodwinked and unfairly imprisoned, later sent as a convict on the Ibis, along with a fellow prisoner, of Chinese descent.  The very unlikely friendship that arises between the two is forged in part by the very unappealing, but nevertheless touching act that Neel undertakes.   He both bathes and washes this fellow prisoner who has fallen into significant withdrawal from opium addiction.  This interethnic affiliation is one of many unlikely alliances that form throughout the novel and makes it certainly one of a number of pleasant surprises in the way that Ghosh configures his character system. 

 

The conclusion leaves much to be desired, but with good reason.  Sea of Poppies is apparently part of an ambitious Ibis trilogy that will continue the adventures of these various characters.  One therefore waits with high anticipation for the next installment. 

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Poppies-Novel-Amitav-Ghosh/dp/0374174229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242664397&sr=8-1

Review of Katherine Min's Secondhand World

[obongo.livejournal.com]

In honor of APA Heritage/History Month I thought I'd kick it off with a book review of a novel I just finished by Katherine Min, Secondhand World.



Click here for a Ms. review by Helen Zia and here for Katherine Min's website.

This is Min's first novel, and it's an impressive first attempt because she juggles many themes both common and unique to the already large body of Asian American literature. There are the typical tropes of immigrant hardship and assimilation. There are the war wounds (this time it's the Korean war) that trickle down and through this Korean American family living in upstate New York in the early 1970s. In some ways, this family is the tragic corollary to Gish Jen's more comic (and comedic) coming-of-age novel, Mona in the Promised Land. Both novels feature immigrant parents with Americanized teenage daughters living in white enclaves during the 1970s in the height of the civil rights era, where they are "the only one"--the only Asian Americans, the only one who really "looks" racially different from their peers.

But whereas in Mona, the title heroine assimilates with her Jewish American peers and becomes part of the cultural and historic moment, for the protagonist of Secondhand World, Isa Myung Hee Sohn (named by her more free-spirited Korean mother after Isadora Duncan but given a traditional Korean name by her more tradition-bound father), history and the larger world seem farther away and her peers are not also "minorities" but are, instead, middle-class WASPs who taunt her on the schoolbus, using racial and racist epithets across the ethnic slur spectrum: gook, chink, jap. But more painful than these childhood torments are the various tragedies that propel the novel--for it opens with Isa in a burn ward, disclosing to readers that she has been orphaned after her home burned down. How these events came about forms the basis of the plot (and mood and characterization) of Min's novel.

I don't want to give too much away--as I said before, there are some themes typical to Asian American literature, like the struggle to assimilate, to reconcile the ethnic past, to negotiate generational differences between Americanized rebellious children and their more traditional (and often conservative) Asian-ethnic parents. But there are also some differences, key ones, in Min's text that made me think she was doing something a bit different then just the typical American immigrant tale gone awry. One detail that is definitely different is the introduction of Herold "Hero," Isa's boyfriend, who also happens to be an albino. Yet perhaps it's the overall sense of sadness--of tragedy--that overlays the novel that makes it feel different than other typical immigrant hardship tales. Or perhaps it is because this novel seems to embody the Korean word "han"--a word that has no exact translation in English but that expresses a deep and abiding melancholy and sadness--one that is rooted in the core of one's being, that informs one's worldview and actions but nevertheless keeps one moving forward, because it's not a despairing melancholy but a knowing melancholy.

At any rate, the voice rings true--and it's a very easy read. Although I do think that there were some places that needed either truncation/editing (the bus scenes, in particular, while probably true/authentic to many of us who were tormented by racist slurs is just a bit too cliche) and although the "difficult immigrant father" trope permeated the first 7/8 of the novel (with the last 1/8 revealing a past and a rationale for her father's stoicism) there were other things that Min captured so well about being a teenage daughter mis-understood by her parents, struggling to figure out how she can adapt to her world--which is what all teenage girls struggle with at some point. So Isa's story reads as both universal and unique at the same time.