asianamlitfans | Amulya Malladi's The Sound of Language

I came across a copy of Amulya Malladi's fifth novel, The Sound of Language (Random House, 2008), at the public library. I'd not heard of Malladi at all before, and I was intrigued by the blurb for the book. The novel is about an Afghan refugee named Raihana who settles in Denmark with distant relatives and struggles to learn the Danish language and to fit in the different culture.

As you can see in the cover image, the designers played with the different orthography of particular vowel sounds in Danish with the title: The Søund of Långuåge. I don't really know how those vowels sound, but since the novel is concerned with Raihana's encounter with Danish and her concerted efforts to learn its nuances, syntax, and grammar, I see it as a kind of visual play with the topic of language sounds. Raihana describes the language as like the buzzing of bees.

Beekeeping, as suggested by the honeycomb-like pattern on the cover, is the other major topic of the novel. Raihana takes on an apprenticeship with a recently-widowed older Danish man named Gunnar. Though he grudgingly accepts her as a student and assistant (who also cleans his house), he eventually learns to see her more fully as a human being and as someone he cares for and trusts.

I find this novel fascinating to compare to the much more well-known novels by Khaled Hosseini about Afghanistan and Afghan refugees/immigrants in the West. The differences are telling, though. Malladi's novel, for one, is much more concerned with the future and with moving on from the horrible past under civil war and Taliban rule. It is also set in Denmark rather than in Afghanistan or the United States--the two locations most expected for an American reading public (to peer into the exotic and dangerous other world while identifying with the American location and perspective).

And here, it is important to mention that Malladi is not herself Afghan. She was born in India, immigrated to the United States where she lived for many years, and then re-settled in Denmark with her Danish husband and their children. Her interest in the story of The Sound of Language thus combined her own experiences with being an outsider in Danish society with observations of refugee lives in that country. Interestingly, the Danish government seems to do more for refugees and expect more of them as well (refugees are on social welfare from the state but are then required to take Danish languages classes with the purpose of integrating into the work force).

In the novel, there is tension between the Afghan refugee/immigration population and native Danes. While some Danes are accepting of these outsiders, others want to kick them all out. Most of the Danes in the novel express at least some reservations about having non-white peoples in their country. The major plot of the story focuses on Raihana's excitement and worries about learning Danish and beekeeping. Malladi shows how both the Afghan and the Danish communities think that Raihana's burgeoning friendship with Gunnar is wrong for various reasons. There is a lot of gossip on both sides that strives to drive the two apart. The latter half of the novel introduces a trio of young skinheads to explore the more extremist reactions to the influx of non-white refugees and immigrants.

In the acknowledgements and author's note at the back of the book, Malladi writes, "This is my first book that isn't about Indians and/or India. It's about an Afghan refugee and a Danish beekeeper and their unusual friendship. Since I'm not a Dane, an Afghan, or a beekeeper, I needed the help of many people to research and write this book." I definitely find this move away from autoethnographic writing (writing about one's own culture) to be interesting. It's also different to think about a diasporic Asian American writing that explores geographies other than in Asia.

The public library also had a copy of her second novel, The Mango Season. I read the first chapter at the library but decided to check out The Sound of Language instead because it is a different kind of story than the usual Indian American story. The Mango Season started off focusing on a young Indian immigrant woman in the United States as she heads to the airport for a long overdue visit to her parents and family in India. She faces typical concerns of having to break the news to her family that she is dating seriously a white American and that she has no plans to return to India. That novel also used recipes for mango chutneys, like other novels that produce and fix Indian diasporic identity in the foods of India. The prevalence of such metaphorical uses of food is explored thoughtfully in Anita Mannur's Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture, which I see discusses one of Malladi's other novels Serving Crazy with Curry (I've only read a couple chapters from Mannur's book and will have to finish it!).