nov 11, 2014: attended an ayad akhtar lecture yesterday at the u of r. he’s won the pulitzer for his play “disgraced” which is on broadway right now. i am happy for his success. i haven’t read his books or seen his plays but here are some thoughts about his lecture and the themes that seem to permeate his work.
i understand that it’s an impossible burden to be the member of a minority and to be expected to represent that entire community accurately, comprehensively, perennially. as the token muslim in most situations, i understand how ridiculous and unjust it is to expect one person to speak for 100s, 1000s, millions or 1.6 billion! it’s impossible to be everything to everyone at all times. as an artist, i understand that it is not the artist’s job to represent anyone but themselves, to have free artistic rein, to be concerned solely with the perfection of their craft. however, if most of an artist’s work is centered on certain aspects of their identity (their muslimness, their pakistaniness or their pakistani-americanness) then they are taking on that burden of representation willingly.
since v few muslims/pakistanis/pakistani-americans are able to attain meteoric mainstream success and the media exposure that comes with it, the content of a successful artist’s craft, deeply rooted within one small exoticized group, becomes more significant. not only will their work be scrutinized by their own community, but they will also participate actively in creating the dominant narrative – the lens thru which this minority is viewed.
here are brief descriptions of akhtar’s work:
[His film] The War Within is the story of Hassan, a Pakistani engineering student in Paris who is apprehended by American intelligence services for suspected terrorist activities. After his interrogation, Hassan undergoes a radical transformation and embarks upon a terrorist mission, surreptitiously entering the United States to join a cell based in New York City.
To appreciate the relevance of playwright Ayad Akhtar’s work, you need look no further than two eerie coincidences that shadowed his debut drama, “Disgraced.” The play, which portrays the downfall of a Muslim American lawyer, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2013. The day the award was announced, two Muslims deposited pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston marathon. A second grisly coincidence came a few weeks later. On the day “Disgraced” opened in London two Muslims murdered and tried to behead a British soldier on a busy street in what one said was revenge for the British army’s killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody linked these attacks to Akhtar’s play, but they were nonetheless chilling reminders of the violence that hovers at the edges of the territory he explores. “The work I’m doing is in direct dialogue with what’s happening in the Muslim world,” he said recently over dinner in New York.
[His play] “The Invisible Hand.” It’s the story of Nick, a stock and bond trader based in Pakistan who is kidnapped by Muslim extremists. Although the play examines some of the personal ramifications of the ongoing conflict between the Muslim Middle East and secular Western beliefs, Akhtar sees it as more of a story about global finance.
[His play] The Who and the What: Dark clouds appear early, as Mahwish covertly engages in some Quran-flouting canoodling to keep her fiance on the hook. Meanwhile Zarina — still resenting [her father] Afzal for breaking up her engagement to an Irish Catholic years before — is buried in an incendiary fiction project which will both personalize the Prophet as a flawed, lusting male, and indict the Muslim practice of veiling women as cruelly oppressive and theologically skewed. (Real-life activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is evoked to point up the provocation.)
Ayad Akhtar is the author of the critically acclaimed, poignant, coming-of-age novel American Dervish. Since its debut,the book has been embraced around the world for the richness of its characters and illuminating the everyday lives of Muslim Americans, earning Akhtar a rightful place alongside today’s most compelling storytellers…The novel centers on one family’s struggle to identify both as Muslim and American, one boy’s devotion to his faith, and the sometimes tragic implications of extremism.
needless to say, akhtar is in constant dialogue with muslim-americanness. but it’s hugely disappointing that this engagement is based, almost exclusively, on stereotypes nurtured by mainstream media.
last night akhtar mentioned how his first book was a complete failure. i was interested in what kind of book that might have been and i found this information particularly enlightening. “At this time he was deep into writing a novel about a poet who worked at Goldman Sachs. Although the main character had Pakistani roots, the story line had little to do with Pakistan, or Islam — Akhtar wasn’t ready yet to explore his heritage. Instead he strove to create a generic exploration of a man’s inner life — a tale, he was certain, was destined to be the next Great American Novel. “I was convinced of that, without any irony,” he says. He completed the novel after six years and soon had to admit its failure. No publisher, no literary agent was interested. Even his friends panned it. “It was just not me,” he recalls. “I thought I was writing what I knew, but I wasn’t.”
that might explain the heavy-handed use of stereotypes in his present work. i understand that akhtar adds much more complexity and nuance to the situations and characters he creates but he’s decided to remain within certain parameters of what constitutes the accepted outside view of the american muslim experience. he made the point last night that as a stereotyped minority, we cannot continue to define ourselves in opposition to anti-muslim propaganda. i couldn’t agree more. i long to break out of that box, that suffocating framework. however, embracing anti-muslim propaganda, albeit with liberal doses of psycho-analysis and some social commentary, is hardly the best way to be free to define ourselves outside of the racist colonial frame of reference where we are expected to exist.
akhtar read from his book “american dervish”. i enjoyed the first section he read which described how spirituality once awakened can elevate day-to-day, pedestrian life to incredible levels of vividness, akin to a mystical experience. the second piece he read from the book was a conversation between a mother and son. he read the pakistani immigrant matriarch’s lines with a pakistani accent. i wanted to tell him he sounded like my kids, whose rendition of a south asian accent is completely in line with hank azaria’s apu (on the simpsons). it made it impossible for me to focus on what the woman was actually saying. her cartoonishness became overwhelming. however, what she said was important. she told her son that jewish men, unlike muslim men, know how to respect women and this was why she was raising him like a jew. this last line was certainly expected to have a comedic effect and it elicited laughter from the audience but within the context of the brutal, misogynistic muslim man oppressing his wife, it had more resonance than the casual witticism it’s supposed to embody.
here’s more from akhtar’s broadway play “disgraced”:
“Islam comes from the desert,” [the Muslim protagonist] says. “From a group of tough-minded, tough-living people who saw life as something hard and relentless. Something to be suffered.” And he speaks admiringly of the other desert-based tradition. “Jews reacted to the situation differently,” he continues. “They turned it over, and over, and over. I mean look at the Talmud. They’re looking at things from a hundred different angles, trying to negotiate with it, make it easier, more livable… It’s not what Muslims do. Muslims don’t think about it. They submit.” But as he’s further agitated, and further drunk, he also admits that he cannot escape his strict Muslim upbringing. “Even if you’re one of those lapsed Muslims sipping your after-dinner scotch alongside your beautiful white American wife and watching the news and seeing folks in the Middle East dying for values you were taught were purer, and stricter, and truer,” he says, “you can’t help but feel just a little a bit of pride.” As he did, he confesses, on September 11. Horrified, he says, but a little bit proud. […] But as much as Ayad’s terrific play is a scarily heightened portrait of the challenges of being an upwardly mobile Muslim-American in our current world, it also raises powerful questions for anyone who could be accused of having a dual loyalty.
from “the who and the what”:
“She has more power over you than she really wants,” Afzal says to Eli, accusing him of failing to treat his wife as a Muslim husband should. … And then, in a line that Mr. White [Afzal] delivers with a chilling casualness, he adds, “And she won’t be happy until you break her, son. She needs you to take it on, man.”
i wonder what the reaction to akhtar’s work would have been if he hadn’t been a muslim. i have a suspicion that we would understand his oeuvre quite differently. although i feel strongly that akhtar benefits from his native informant status, he made it quite clear last night that he doesn’t have double consciousness. he’s just american.
The funny thing is, I don’t feel like I’m writing about Muslim American life,” Akhtar explains. “I feel like I’m writing about American life.”
Akhtar acknowledges that Muslims face an especially precarious place in American society in the aftermath of Sept. 11. In the shadow of surveillance, profiling and doubt, many Muslim artists have been inspired to explore identity in their work. But Akhtar says his characters are also facing a more universal dilemma.
“The process of becoming American has to do with rupture and renewal — rupture from the Old World, renewal of the self in a new world. That self-creative capacity is what it means to be American in many ways, and I think that part of that rupture is the capacity to make fun of yourself and the capacity to criticize yourself.”
i am all for self-criticism. i am all for flawed characters with depth and complexity. i am just looking for something more than the muslim terrorist/wife beater/religious fanatic. perhaps akhtar could turn to his own life and the society he moves in for inspiration. he was born in NYC and raised in milwaukee, both his parents are physicians, he is a graduate of brown and columbia universities, he studied acting in italy with jerzy grotowski, he lives in NYC where he has taught acting along with andre gregory (my dinner with andre). his own life experience as a pakistani-american muslim might be harder to sell to the mainstream but it might sparkle with the kind of originality and truth that would make him an important, authentic voice in american culture. i’ll continue to wait for that play.