Ben Hession reviews Inland Sea by Brenda Saunders

November 20, 2023 / mascara / 0 Comments

Inland Sea

by Brenda Saunders

Gininderra Press

ISBN 9781761091445

Reviewed by BEN HESSION

Inland Sea is the third full collection by Brenda Saunders, a Wiradjuri writer, following a somewhat lengthy hiatus. Saunders’ last collection, The Sound of Red, was published back in 2014. Her debut volume, Looking for Bullin Bullin, had won the 2014 Scanlon Prize for Indigenous poetry. Like that collection, Inland Sea, provides a particular focus on Aboriginality, although doing so via the intimate connection with Country through which the impact of colonization is also examined. The title, itself, is an ironic play on that body of water which had eluded the expectations of the English explorer, Charles Sturt. We see in Inland Sea Saunders conducting her own explorations from an Aboriginal perspective and throughout the collection, her poems are infused with energy and precision, marking a welcome return.

Importantly, Saunders is not solely a writer, but is also a visual artist, with ekphrastic poetry being a significant feature of her work generally. The Sound of Red, for instance, had seen Saunders respond to paintings by Rothko, de Chirico and Goya among others. Ironically, with ‘Reinventing the landscape’ Country is viewed through the literal and figurative framing of a non Aboriginal painter, Fred Williams. Yet, as the concluding stanzas show, there is a kind of retrieval of an Aboriginal perspective through an intensely personal response to Williams’ portraits:

I move through rooms of golden summers, smell the sun
in scumbled oils. A patch of yellow becomes a sway
of native grasses. Across a field his stunted bushes
hold the horizon against the white heat of the sky.

If I could reach out. I would follow the fence line
finger my way through a patch of scrub. Rows of acacias
in scabby dots, the stumps of trees felled after a fire.
Feel charcoal under my nails, bush crackling as I pass.
(76-7 The Sound of Red)

Arguably, for Saunders, this is a continuation of her interpretation of five portraits of Aboriginal people by Russell Drysdale, another non-Indigenous painter, in Looking for Bullin Bullin, where also, there have been acts of retrieval, with the most overt being in ‘Mother and Child’

Subtle fingers control her son ready
to leave this three-minute sketch.
Her eyes look out to a distant time
when the tribe roamed freely
out of the white man’s gaze.
(69 Looking for Bullin Bullin)

And in ‘Sketch of a girl’, as well:

She looks up, her stance demure
Uncertain under the artist’s scrutiny.
His pen scratches bold lines,
captures her image as ‘exotic other’
framed to a white man’s needs.
(70 Looking for Bullin Bullin)

With Inland Sea, the poem ‘Figures in a Landscape’ has Saunders continue this practice of retrieval, as well as re-inscribing the Indigenous history of place as she responds to Charles
Conden’s painting, Sydney Harbour:

I am not in this picture. Invisible, I fall
easily into shadow, watch the ladies walk
float as white sails on water. Ignore
the man waving from the house.

They wander, as dark clouds mass above
peer into rock pools, where we once
collected guatuma, a fishing site
of the Gadigal we still call Banarung. (67)

In ‘At the Falls’ I and II, she goes further, detailing the impact of settler presence on Country:

This is no place of wonderment or renewal.
There is no magic, no sprites to leap from
the bower. Darker forces half-revealed
hide behind the weight of water. Whispers
of ancient rites surface on shallow ponds.
Below the falls, stories of desecration
and death flow on through tribal memory. (71)

For the most part, however, in this present collection, Saunders has eschewed the white Australian filter in re-tracing identity. What comes first in the collection – and what puts these latter ekphrastic pieces into context – are the direct responses to Country that Saunders paints with vivid detail. As we see in ‘Spinifex rings’:

These creatures hide in rasping folds
of hummock grass, hunt with night vision
for invisible gnats breeding in shadow

caught off guard by a cloudy moon.

Corellas fly low over lignum bush, swing
and dip on a spinifex stalk. Sharp eyes
spy a beetle or moth in their path (10)

Here, a crisp lyricism of action highlights the vitality of Country, raising it from abstraction and affirming its essence. With the poem, ‘inland sea’ Saunders, again, focuses on a ‘micro cosmos/ teeming with life’:

Red-finned gobies
flash a miniature flame
through tiny succulents
carnivores varied as coral
wave vivid flowers
trick insects
to their water garden (12)

With short lines and sans punctuation, Saunders allows a greater sense of flux among the depicted activities. From this perspective, the inland sea reveals itself as something brimming with promise, rather than an appellation for disappointment. What this poem demonstrates also, as does ‘Spinifex rings’ and others in this collection, is a kind of Imagist restraint, with ‘presentation rather than representation’ (Jones 31) being at the fore. It is perhaps no surprise that we find in the second part of ‘bird brain’:

lovebird

captive
he kisses
chips
at his lover
trapped
in the cold glint
of mercury (48)

The direct treatment of phenomena allows the life within Country to appear as an innate language and voice within itself. Yet, Country is not solely a physical presence, as Saunders observes from the start in ‘Echidna Chasm’, it is necessarily born from the Dreaming:

She leads us through a narrow cleft
sheer walls scraped clean
with her spiny back a gorge red hot
bounces from white light to shadow
the sky a blue slit above

Rounded sockets mark her journey
the ball of a heel a trail left behind
as she rushes through mud shaping
Bungle Bungle Country (9)

The acknowledgement of the Dreaming offers a holistic understanding of place, where the land, and the world it supports, are viewed as a single entity. This is contrasted in the collection with the European empiricism and its consequent logic. In the poem ‘Dead Centre’ Saunders quotes Sturt’s observation that the ‘scrub without a break in its monotonous surface’ should be necessarily indicative of an interior coastal shore. Thereafter, she juxtaposes Aboriginal perspectives of Sturt’s expedition with those of his own. Finally, we see Sturt defeated, his thoughts pooling in an intermittent stream of consciousness:

hope

a promised sea
shimmers the horizon

a wooden boat
rides waves
of disbelief

endeavour
tests mortality
dead centre

dominion
drives every footstep
of the valiant (15)

Elsewhere, the settler colonial perspective that quantifies Country is also shown to commodify it. One of the central themes in Inland Sea is the conflict between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal conceptualisations of land – somewhere to find harmony within it versus exploiting its resources, especially for individual or corporate profit. In the poem,‘Inland Sea’, for example, farming competes with wildlife for water (13). In ‘Scarred Landscape’ ‘ Moving like ants, giant loaders dredge the inside out of the iron ore plain’ (16). Against this, we may compare ‘Black boys’, ‘Wild Honey Tour’ and ‘Mulga stories’. Here, in this latter poem, we can see:

He speaks fondly of this ancient tree
of many cycles yielding flowers
and seeds, a steady food always
ripe for picking. Shows us bark
easily shed for a woman’s carry-all
wood that burns brightest, cools
to a white ash, good for Ceremony (59)

The poem, ‘Red Centre’, notes with a laconic sense of humour the treatment of cultural connection as a spectacle:

Mpartntwe springs lie reflex blue in a rim of rock
From the camp nearby women shuffle red earth
Dance a mulga ant story. Amaze the drop-in tourists. (17)

The sad impact of this, however, runs deep, as does the consequent irony:

Some take souvenirs, send them back, complaining
of bad luck. The Mala woman’s grief weighs down stones
in their pockets. She sighs, finds her tchurunga stolen,

stored in a city museum, for safety and prosterity. (17)

The tension is more pronounced where, in ‘Cullen Bullen’, the violence inflicted on Country, is mirrored by that suffered by local Indigenous people:

This working mine has cut a swath for miles
worked underground ‘til the last seam is spent
Up close, I find a hill sliced in two, the cliff-face
                                  left gaping red

Remember fragments passed down. Generations
              of hillside burials, ground slaked
with the blood of Ancestors after ‘the Round Up’ (73)

The poem reflects on the attempted erasure of history and connection:

The web reports on wealthy Developers
              building roads over hunting tracks
Woodland cleared to mine the black rock
              in the name of progress

Has nothing to say on our history. First People
living, thriving here, who left without a trace
Driven off Country. Lost in plain sight. (74)

In Poor fella Country connection and erasure are particularly current concerns:

Scattered clans can no longer care for Country
Without Language, the Elders have no power
Over young ones living the white man’s dream

I see sorrow in our people sitting on Country
Wasted in spirit, they suffer, hold a sickness
inside, as mining grinds their stories away. (23)

In an article for the Writing NSW website, Saunders, herself, says she seems to have been writing for her community all her adult life. (Writing NSW) This may not have always been obvious in her previous collection, but it is certainly clear in Inland Sea, where it finds expression replete with skill and confidence. In the same article, she adds: ‘Our cultural history has survived dispossession: ties to Country continue to sustain Aboriginal people today and, as a poet, I feel impelled to write to this power.’ (Writing NSW)

The final poem of this collection, ‘Singing the land’, echoes this statement, where there connection remains, there is a vibrant continuity and an intrinsic sense of hope:

Along the quay painted Kooris
play the didge add clapsticks
chant to sell their CDs
Amplified     the music thunders
              under my feet
wakes the yidaki spirit     first music
      sings this ancient land. (81)

As we see here, the politics of identity is not without passion. This is true throughout Inland Sea. More than retrieval, perhaps, the collection is about reclaiming and a re-affirmation of Indigeneity. In this it may be viewed as a return to first principles, and articulating the voice of Country, which, despite the referendum result, as Saunders shows, will not be silenced.
 
CITATIONS

Imagist Poetry, ed. Peter Jones, Penguin Classics, London, England, 2001
Saunders, Brenda. Looking for Bullin Bullin, Hybrid Publishers, Melbourne Victoria Australia 2012.
Saunders, Brenda. The Sound of Red, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide, 2013.
Saunders, Brenda. ‘Feature Articles/ Brenda Saunders on writing about, for and within communities’, Writing NSW, March 29, 2022, writingnsw.org.au/brenda-saunders-on-writing-about-for-and-within-communities.

BEN HESSION is a writer and critic based in Wollongong, south of Sydney, Australia. His poetry has been published in Eureka Street, the International Chinese Language Forum, Cordite Poetry Review, Mascara Literary Review, Bluepepper, Marrickville Pause, The Blue Nib, Live Encounters: Poetry and Writing and the Don Bank Live Poets anthology Can I Tell You A Secret? Ben Hession is also a music journalist and is involved with community broadcasting.

Joshua Klarica reviews Son of Sin by Omar Sakr

November 8, 2023 / mascara / 0 Comments

Son of Sin

By Omar Sakr

Affirm Press

ISBN: 9781922711038

Reviewed by JOSHUA KLARICA

On Laylat al-Qadr, Islam’s sacred Night of Power, the young protagonist of Omar Sakr’s debut novel, Son of Sin, dies. Jamal is dead, if death is to be filled with the absence of what life could have been. On the night angels descend to wipe clean the slate, Jamal finally gives himself to desire of another boy and so comes alive in the same moment he suffers a more ancient, eschatological demise. Sakr’s novel then obsesses over the subtle parallels – simultaneous yet unable to meet – between what one can be born into and born as: into a lineage of faith and adherence, as a bisexual male. One demands the refusal of the other, and here begins the stasis from which young Jamal is ruled.

A prominent Sydney-based poet, Sakr’s turn to fiction is similarly preoccupied with the themes of The Lost Arabs, his earlier collection. Jamal is queer, gauche, third-generation Turkish Lebanese and subject of the novel’s bildungsroman plot. Like his counterparts in poetry, Jamal is cornered by the intractable ties of family and a modern identity floundering on diaspora legacy. Unrest is commonplace, thickening ‘the air, a vestige of the wars that flung his people here’ (p193). Yet life in Australia is preferred to Turkey and Lebanon, and such tension is ‘the smallest price to pay’ for it (p93). So, Jamal becomes the reprobate to this history’s largesse, the unbeaten track keeping in line of sight the path clearly set out by the labours and pains of his forbears.

The novel is demarcated into two passages of Jamal’s life. First, with his family during Ramadan as his schooling comes to an end, and, afterwards, temporarily relocating to Turkey to live with his estranged father. Jamal is a zombie throughout, fixated on desire yet pulled through events as though unable to oppose them, though agency were something not yet bestowed upon him within the echelons of family. The twain embodiments of Jamal’s sexuality and faith – obligations he vacillates between – accumulate victories against the other and in doing so gradually wear down Jamal’s resolve, a sort of death spiral that none around Jamal can name. Sakr offers the trials of a queer Muslim teenager as introspection on the mechanisms that drive these adjectives and challenge their absolutes.

To love a man as a man is the ultimate sin, and no shortage of his community fail to remind Jamal of this. His body tied to his sin, Sakr imbues Jamal with the ability of flight, often described as vacating the space he is in: Jamal disappears beside his mother as she smokes (p43); absents his body as he becomes a spirit up alongside the bats in the trees (p53); inhabits the feeling ‘inside (of) Ali’s heart,’ before ‘falling out of Jihad’s eyes,’ as his cousin’s battle (p62). By quitting the present so frequently, Jamal remains without voice to challenge while proving unable to detach from his community. Earlier in the novel, Jamal laments that ‘[t]here was no proof you could trust, except the word – that was the measure of faith, and perhaps why they kept failing’ (p26). There is no word to absolve Jamal. Community sustains the sublunary quagmire that jars Jamal’s psyche, burying him.

Sakr advances the plot chronologically but refuses to let Jamal dwell in the present. Jamal’s imaginative and histrionic nature, his circumstance, his criticism: all form a dragnet that preoccupies him. He yearns to be good but cannot wholly convince himself of what this means or looks like. Frequently, an instance of the present has its roots located far deeper within Jamal’s psyche: police violence harks back to Jamal’s first trip in a paddy wagon (p63); waving to the neighbours dredges up the confusion of Christian youth group attendance in boyhood (p78). Sakr insists we return to the origins of tragedy and tenderness as they continue to reappear. This is the world of which Jamal is convinced: everything comes from everything before it, blossoming, smothering, trampling.

Sakr’s prose is certainly fluent enough to accommodate this movement in time, however in pursuit of instantaneous depth Sakr can err toward an overreliance on this tool. Jamal routinely obsesses over what might have been and the ‘moment of possibility’ lost to him forever (p46), and such relentless undulations across time can begin to lose their punch. Take the example in which Jamal parses the wrong look that ignited the Cronulla Riots as comparable to the private instance of an irate cousin’s glare (p94). Electing to process such largescale violence through the prism of ones limited lived experience is consistent with Jamal’s impression of his centrality to misfortune, yet even by this relatively early stage of the novel such propinquity to this violence can seem somewhat shoehorned, while the motives of the riots require little interpretation.

Set circa 2005 and beyond, Jamal endures violence-induced lockdowns in Sydney’s west, the 2017 plebiscite and its bigots, toxic masculinity, Trump’s Muslim ban – all beside life’s more penetrating tragedies, the loss of loved ones, abandonment, sexual assault. Sakr constructs a teenager who is dramatic and colourful but withdrawn, so couples some of the darker moments of recent history with a difficult and burdensome teenage coming of age and coming out. Jamal does not have the fortune of subtlety in either of these quests, and Sakr doesn’t pretend he does.

In lesser hands, Jamal’s pessimism, buttressed by deleterious events, could threaten to overcook the significance of a life Sakr wants us to value. Yet while these events pile up, what rubbishes any threat of monotonality is the vitality of Sakr’s prose. In juxtaposition to Jamal, who has no ease within his language, Sakr shows how effortlessly he is able to move through it. Applying the poets whet for register, Sakr can make delicate the injustice of attacking, swarming police like water to sand (p61), and then describe someone as, simply, ‘fucking funny’ (p69); replacing page breaks with ampersands furthers the notion that this narrative is happening, and happening, both breaking the idea of chronological time and stuffing it; engaging motifs of bats, snakes, and ropes; the application of green and blue adjectives as markers of masculinity and caution – Sakr’s bag of tricks is precise and calculated, rendering the lines of Son of Sin with precision and care, leavening ruin with beauty, horror with lyric.

And yet, while queer stories like Jamal’s can often carve out a small space in which the subject achieves dignity and the welcome of complacency, make no mistake that Sakr is tempted here. Despite Jamal’s learning he has always been visible, and always held space, Sakr refuses to indulge this position as a resolution. Setting the narrative before significant social events of the recent twenty-first century seeks to remind the secular world that despite what progress may have been made, Abrahamic faiths remain bound to the word. For subsequent generations, diaspora presents an incongruity between old world virtues and contemporary practice. Jamal grapples with a family life that has ‘unconsciously replicated a way of being that no longer exist(s)’ (pg179), and always will, and so Jamal will continue to live a life on the edge, along the contiguous lines of faith: in what he is, and what he believes.

Following a skirmish between the police and his family, Jamal overhears his cousin, Fatima, recounting the story to friends. What starts as ‘tremulous’ and exciting eventually, by way of repetition, settles. Our stories can be sharp with life, says Sakr, though ‘each telling dull(s) the edge’ (p64). Jamal’s story is not unique of its time, yet its experience in Sakr’s hands is acerbic and candid and dedicated, like the first telling of a story. Rather than dulling, Son of Sin further prepares Australian literature for the normalising of queer religious lives within it, colouring a quietly suffering concentration of its populace, and suggesting there is a space to be held, if we allow there be.
 

Meeta Chatterjee reviews Hospital by Sanya Rushdi

October 31, 2023 / mascara / 0 Comments

Hospital

by Sanya Rushdi
translated by Arunava Sinha

ISBN 9781922725455

Giramondo

Reviewed by MEETA CHATTERJEE

Hospital was released in May this year and has been very favourably reviewed. Reviewers
have commended it as a remarkable study of self and of ‘mind outside of its mind’ (Eda
Gunaydin). Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll sum up the novel astutely when they recommend that it should be read by psychiatrists, ‘because it gives a sharp and humane perspective on the narrowness of medical approaches to mental health, queries whose interests are being served, and explores with subtlety how social and cultural considerations can influence the experience of mental illness, and come into conflict with assumptions underlying treatment, further marginalising already vulnerable patients’. Rushdi’s novel has also been praised as ‘unadorned, powerful, and raises big questions about society, the self and what passes as sanity’ (Chris Fleming). The insightful comments above set up high expectations that the book lives up to.

Sanya Rushdi’s Hospital plunges us deep inside the distressing world of the mentally ill.
The cover image of the book shows a crowd of people with undifferentiated, tense faces
descending the stairs of a building uneasily reminding one of images of herds of animals
readied to be shipped to their slaughter destinations. This analogy may seem brutal, but the
dire situation of the mentally ill is strongly established at the outset. Rushdi’s debut novella written originally in Bengali in 2019 and translated very competently by Arunava Sinha was published earlier this year by Giramondo. This work of autofiction explores the inner world of a devout Bengali Muslim woman in her thirties who is struggling to process her experiences of psychosis and her treatment for it in a Melbourne hospital. A clear narrative arc is established in the novel and the plot is neatly arranged so that the story captures the instances of hallucinations leading to a couple of psychotic episodes to a finale, perhaps a recovery.

The characters are not complexly presented. Perhaps, an intentional authorial choice to stay
focused on the theme. The protagonist/writer, Sanya, finds solace in the holy Quran, wears a
veil and feels strongly about living in accordance with Islamic faith, for example, she plans to
refuse taking interest from her bank in deference to Islamic principles. Her family seems to
be nurturing and affectionate. Her mother cooks her favourite meals, her father reads verses
of the Quran with her even if it is the middle of the night and her sister encourages her to use
art as a creative outlet to process her intense reflections on the world and herself. Strewn
through the novel are endearments in Bengali such as Sanya’s parents calling her, ‘baba’
(father) or ‘ma’ (mother). In Bengali, these endearments are markers of a tender, caring bond.
There seems to be no evidence of ruptures in family connections that could be a cause of a
break down, but that is what happens in the story.

After the instances of hallucinations, the Crisis Assessment and Treatment Team recommend
that Sanya spend some time at a community house. The community house is an enormous
building where Sanya ends up feeling overwhelmingly alienated and excluded. The mechanisms of exclusion are subtle. An instance of this is when the residents, who prepare the meals preparation for the group, add ham to a dinner of chicken parmigiana so that as a Muslim, Sanya would not be able to partake of the meal. Her stint at the community house, despite minimally imposed restrictions, turns out to be unpleasant. Her condition deteriorates further so that she is coercively taken to a hospital in Melbourne as a critical case. It is in this stultifying space that most of the story unfolds.

A beautiful metaphor embodies Sanya’s state of mind in the hospital:

I could see three trees as long as there was daylight, the leaves they had shed were gathering in ones and twos at their feet. Falling off the branches to which they had clung lovingly, they added to the pile of leaves like children gathering at an orphanage. Then a gust of wind scattered them; whatever refuge they had from one another was lost. Now all they had was themselves, along with the wind and its whims. Where will this take me, this wind, this system? (p. 49)

The extract captures the momentary solidarity with the other patients/fellow sufferers of
various mental health conditions. But the incompatibility and agony of an individual trapped
in an incomprehensible system becomes an all-consuming fear for Sanya. Sanya protests against the doctor’s mantra of, “Lithium, lithium, lithium” (p. 71), and suggests counselling as a more effective approach for her psychosis to cope with fear and unbearable sadness. The hospital professes all the right things by announcing its mission:

‘Working collaboratively to provide individualised care that promotes wellness and
recovery’. However, in actual practice, patients’ voices are drowned in assertions made by the doctors that, “In the case of science, though, evidence-based research is the new trend” (p.108).

Sanya is baffled by the duplicity and feels trapped in the system.

‘Language alone can unsnarl it (the mind), medicine cannot’ (p.107) is Sanya’s strongly held
belief despite being aware of the complexities of language. Four languages jostle in her:
Bengali (her first language), Arabic (the language of Quran) Urdu/Hindi (language of the
ghazals/bhajans that eulogise unrequited love) and English a language in which she grapples
with Vygotsky’s Thought and Language. She tries to make sense of the theory and practice of
language. One of the perceptive remarks that she makes on language reflects her doubts about
its capacity to ‘unsnarl’ the mind: ‘One might assume that everything will become easier if
you and the members of this ‘different’ society use the same language. But this is not always
true. Those who speak the same language often introduce complexities and nuances into their
discussions by the very virtue of using the same language, which speakers of the different
languages cannot’ (p. 88). Barriers to inclusion are set by different registers and discourses
that are impenetrable to the those who do not have the linguistic capital in the dominant
language.

Ultimately, Sanya resigns herself to the rituals of medication, listening to the sounds of the
food trolleys trundling down the corridors, prayers and brief periods of relief offered by the
camaraderie of other patients in the smoker’s zone. However, she is unsure of how reliable
these experiences are as one of the patients says to her, ‘…we are in an artificial environment,
it’s difficult to judge what’s true and what’s false, what is right and what is wrong…’ (p. 73).
She realises eventually that the only way she can win small freedoms and eventually get a
discharge is through compliance. It is by surrendering to the system, the regime of
medications, that she is finally released.

Hospital has the look and feel of an autoethnographic study. It reads like a collection of qualitative data, that needs to be sifted through to make sense of a research question. Snatches of conversations are inserted in the form of texts seemingly extracted out of an interview/journal entry in the form of quotations often followed by a deconstruction of the exchange, but this is not always the case. For most part, dialogue/conversations are reported within quotation marks in the novel. However, sometimes exchanges are inserted into the narrative as if from a script of a play. It is hard to tell what the writer aims to achieve with this intriguing technique. On one hand, this element, along with a conspicuously pared down language signals an cautious exploration of a research topic in a mental hospital setting. On the other hand, it seems as if Rushdi highlights the exchanges as a performance of sorts that deserves scrutiny beyond the realms of research findings to interrogate the universal struggle of mental health patients against inflexible, medical systems.

‘The translated text must allow itself to be read in all the different ways that the original can, and since the translator can never know what all these ways might be, the only choice is to adhere to the text and the text alone’, responds Arunava Sinha to a question on the responsibility of a translator. It seems that the ambivalences and the tone of the authorial voice has been rendered intact in this book. It is great to read such an extraordinarily moving novel published in translation by an Australian publisher.

Notes and References:

Chris Fleming, review of Hospital, https://giramondopublishing.com/books/sanya-rushdi-
hospital/).
Eda Gunaydin. review of Hospital, https://giramondopublishing.com/books/sanya-rushdi-
hospital/).
Rushdi, Sanya, and Arunava Sinha. “5 Questions with Sanya Rushdi and Arunava Sinha.”
LIMINAL Magazine, 27 June 2023. Sourced at: https://www.liminalmag.com/5-
questions/hospital.
Cameron Woodhead and Steven Carroll June 30, 2023. The review of Hospital is part of a
few other books with the title, ‘Everything’s fine’: Can two political rivals fall in love?

MEETA CHATERJEE is a retired academic from the University of Wollongong. She is an
independent scholar, writer, and poet and is the co-editor of Of Indian Origin: Writings from
Australia. She lives in Canberra. Her area of interest is diasporic writing.

Misbah Wolf reviews Untethered by Ayesha Inoon

October 29, 2023 / mascara / 0 Comments

Untethered

By Ayesha Inoon

ISBN: 9781867267065

HarperCollins

Reviewed by MISBAH WOLF
 
 
In the act of reading, an ostensibly solitary and intimate experience unfolds as a journey not just within the pages of one book but as an exploration of the myriad conversations that books engage in with each other. Books, whether intentionally or not, are in perpetual dialogue. This review of Untethered, penned by Sri-Lankan writer Ayesha Inoon, is composed in reflection of this notion, emphasizing how literature shapes, challenges, and informs our understanding of the world.

At the time of beginning to read Untethered, I was coincidentally reading the 1970s feminist science fiction novel The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin, and I began to see a conversation occurring between them. By juxtaposing Untethered with The Dispossessed, we unearth a rich tapestry of themes, exploring how contemporary post-colonial fiction intersects with feminist science fiction from the 1970s.

Untethered and The Dispossessed may initially seem worlds apart in genre and narrative, but they share a profound kinship in their exploration of clashing ideologies and the quest for knowledge unburdened by constraints. Le Guin’s work portrays two contrasting planets, one driven by anarchic feminist ideals and the other by patriarchal capitalism. This cosmic juxtaposition finds an unexpected resonance in Untethered, where Zia, a Muslim Sri Lankan woman, confronts the realities of religious and cultural clashes after she emigrates to Australia with her family. She moves from one set of intricate ideologies that value obedience, faith, inter-family loyalty and connection, caste and wealth systems to a world that values independence, the nuclear family, wealth, and white privilege—cross-overs from one planet—I mean one country—are inevitable.

As a reader with a culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) Muslim background and a personal history of defiance against authoritarian religious figures, I find myself simultaneously sympathizing with and feeling at odds with Zia’s character. I share a profound impatience for Zia’s liberation from the patriarchal confines of her religio-cultural background. I also see the wealth entitlement she inhabits in Sri Lanka, which is mostly taken for granted until she gets to Australia. I know deep in my heart that Zia and I could not be friends; I would seem like a working-class betrayer of faith. My impatience extends to Zia’s tolerance of her husband’s violence, which is juxtaposed with her husband Rashid’s own experience of oppression in a racist Australian culture that fails to recognize his qualifications. Rashid reminds me of my own father, who, despite holding a Masters in Business and Teaching, struggled to find work and was subsequently attacked in a factory, resulting in the loss of an eye. This occurred in the 1980s, almost 34 years before Rashid’s experience of discrimination. The ties that bind me to this story cross over from fiction to fact.

Zia’s journey in Untethered unfolds as a classic Hero’s journey, with Zia assuming the role of the Fool in the Tarot Deck. She ventures into an unfamiliar land, seeking to shed the safe yet restrictive bonds of her family in pursuit of a better life in Australia. This experience mirrors the Stranger’s journey in The Dispossessed, where one risks everything to impart knowledge to an ostensibly advanced society, only to uncover latent forms of oppression within this new planet of opportunity. Zia, having the new vast spaces of Canberra to explore is limited to catching erratic public transport until she gets her driver’s licence. For a large part of the novel, she is still trapped within the house, scrounging away with food to make meals that will bring comfort for her isolated husband, who is also undergoing his own forms of oppression.

Although Zia eventually finds support that encourages her independence, her husband also grapples with systemic oppression that favors highly qualified white individuals over equally qualified immigrants of color. Can you imagine if Rashid, Zia’s husband, was called Ray and hailed from England, Sweden, or New Zealand? Ray would likely transition seamlessly into a job commensurate with his skills and education. This aspect of the novel compels readers to confront the uncomfortable reality of racial discrimination in Australia, what ‘passing’ as Aussie looks and sounds like, and how tokenistic acts of ‘discrimination awareness’ are just that, when this society still continually validates and supports rich white privilege.

The novel introduces a cast of characters, such as the driving instructor and the independent single-mum friend Jenny, who serve as archetypes along Zia’s heroic journey. These characters, though seemingly alien to her, embody facets of her own identity and aspirations. One represents independence and love, while the single mother symbolizes the freedom to prioritize oneself over marriage. This intricate character development enriches Zia’s narrative.

Furthermore, Zia’s character exhibits resonances with Jane Austen’s heroines, particularly evident in her admiration for Austen’s works. Austen’s novels consistently challenge societal expectations of marriage and advocate for female agency and independence. Zia’s reverence for Austen adds layers to her character, highlighting her desire for autonomy.

Zia’s early life in Colombo, marked by a clash between her literary passion and her parents’ traditional expectations of marriage, underscores the tension between individual aspirations and societal norms. Despite her inner disappointment, Zia complies with her family’s wishes, participating in traditional wedding preparations and embracing her role as a devoted wife. This conflict between personal desire and familial obligation serves as a central theme in the novel.

The novel navigates the complexities of familial relationships and societal expectations, highlighting the interdependence within Zia’s family as the bedrock of stability and identity. Yet, this interdependence also reinforces traditional gender roles, emphasizing the importance of procreation and adherence to religious and cultural norms. Amid these familial dynamics, the novel weaves a backdrop of political instability and religious conflict targeting Muslims in Sri Lanka. This context intensifies the family’s need to preserve their religio-cultural identity while living as a minority within Sri Lankan culture. It also fuels their fear of being targeted as Muslims. This motif drives Zia, her husband, and daughter to seek a new life abroad.

The extended family dynamic further illuminates the theme of otherness, as Zia’s mother-in-law quickly admonishes the darkness of Zia’s skin. Unfortunately, Zia was not “blessed” with her mother’s lighter complexion, instead inheriting her father’s darker skin tone. This difference serves as a poignant reminder of the deeper seeds of racism and the enduring caste system that associates lighter skin with higher status in many countries other than ‘European’. This insidious system, as I emphasize, persists across oceans.

In summary, Untethered is a masterfully crafted novel that deftly interweaves themes of cultural identity, feminism, discrimination, and the pursuit of independence. Through the lens of Zia’s journey, readers are confronted with the complexities of societal expectations, the strength of family bonds, and the enduring impact of discrimination. My personal connection to the narrative underscores the novel’s ability to evoke empathy and challenge readers’ assumptions, making it a poignant addition to contemporary post-colonial CALD Australian literature. And in Zia’s own story-making and telling, as she shares her cultural identity with her daughter, we witness her claim her power as a writer and a guardian of her heritage, enriching the narrative tapestry of Untethered with the echoes of her own voice, woven into the fabric of her family’s story.

The novel compels readers to reflect on their own experiences and the stories that shape them, ultimately urging us to confront uncomfortable truths about discrimination and otherness within this great unceded First nations land. And in Zia’s own story-making and telling, as she shares her cultural identity with her daughter, we witness her claim her power as a writer and a guardian of her heritage, enriching the narrative tapestry of Untethered with her coming home to her love of story-telling.

So, how much further can Zia rebel? What would be the last great act of emancipation from all-consuming ideologies of patriarchal power and belief? I’ll leave that decision up to Zia to make, and if she wants to have a conversation about the kind of faiths we might need to hold onto, and the ones that if we let go of, may mean re-writing entire narratives of belief, then I’d love to have one with her.
 
 
MISBAH WOLF, a multi-dimensional artist holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of QLD and post-graduate qualifications in Research Methods, resides on Wurundjeri land.She has served as a poetry reviewer for Hecate Women’s Journal and was a guest editor for Mascara Literary Review in 2014. Wolf is the author of Rooftops in Karachi (Vagabond Press 2018) and Carapace (Vagabond Press 2022), has been active in poetry for over 15 years, participating in festivals like Queensland Poetry Festival and the Sydney Writers Festival. She also contributed to the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2019 as a costume and art developer for theater. Wolf was awarded a Creative Victoria Grant in 2022. She performed her work, including a feature at La Mama Poetica and the Emerging Writers Festival and participated in a radio podcast in 2023. Explore her journey at www.misbahwolf.com, where she continues to engage in various artistic projects.