A Review of Nafisa Haji’s The Writing on My Forehead (William Morrow, 2009).

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 A Review of Nafisa Haji’s The Writing on My Forehead (William Morrow, 2009).

 

I begin this review by thinking about the importance of traumatic events not only for Asian American literature, but also for the mobilization of cultural production.  With 9/11 in particular, Asian American Studies and Asian Americanist critique has had to think about its tenuous connection to the near East, that other Orient of the Saidian fame.  In this regard, the already complicated borderland of South Asia has been of much critical interest, especially as evidenced by the recent special issue of the Journal of Asian American Studies devoted to the comparative investigation between Asian Americans and Arab Americans.  Likewise, the literary terrain has been affected and the spate of post-9/11 works has been numerous where South Asian American and Arab American writers have been dialoguing with the ever-mutable contours of racial formation.  I am thinking here of a long list, many of the writers and works already reviewed on this blog including Saher Alam’s The Groom to Have Been, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Timothy Liu’s For Dust Thou Art, and other works yet to be discussed here such as Kazim Ali’s forthcoming novel, The Disappearance of Seth.  It is in this vein that we see Nafisa Haji’s The Writing on My Forehead, certainly a bildungsroman devoted to the exploration of a young South Asian American’s coming-of-age, prior to and after the events of 9/11.  I would not necessarily say that the terrorist attacks exist as the central event around which the narrative is constructed, but it is pivotal and does provide a turning point that is crucial not only to the plot, but also to character development.  Haji’s novel is deceptively readable, like many of the works already reviewed on this blog community, but make no mistake, the content and the developmental narrative are all extremely complex.  Especially notable is Haji’s construction of alternative conceptions of kinship, one that I think is the clear strength of the work in its vision of a new American family.

The novel centers on the life of Saira Qader, of Indo-Pakistani descent, whose intricate family history requires her to navigate a number of potential minefields.  Saira is the youngest of an immediate family of four, which includes an older sister, Ameena, who will take a much more acceptable path in her life, marrying at a young age and becoming a devout Muslim.  The early chapters are devoted to stories that Saira must learn about her own family, including the importance of her Muslim background in relation to the Partition of India in 1947.  Another important early event involves her travel to Karachi for a wedding.  Saira discovers that a long-dead grandfather is in fact alive and the fact of his affair with a British woman and later divorce from Saira’s grandmother (her mother’s mother) leads to another set of “half” relatives that her mother has not acknowledged at all.  The readers are understood to see that Saira is learning about her life beyond herself and is gaining an understanding of cultural norms and mores, much of which are circumscribed around the control of the woman’s bind and body and the maintenance of certain kinship models.  For Saira then, a relative who chooses not to follow a conventional Muslim life is a model that she will adhere strongly to as she carves out her own rocky path toward independence, one that will pit her against her more traditional parents.  Once the events of 9/11 occur, the shift in the novel and the heft of the narrative changes considerably.  We begin to understand especially how Saira’s decision to become a war journalist is part and parcel of a larger political investment that is central to her life. 

 

As part of the growing body of work that has been engaged in the concerns of post-9/11 Asian America, Haji’s The Writing on My Forehead is a constructive and imaginative addition. 

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-My-Forehead-Novel/dp/0061493856