#CritYourFaves Post: Colonialism and Representation in Meredith Duran’s The Duke of Shadows

I have a serious tendency to just chill in my own tiny corner of the blogosphere, but this October I'm taking part in a multi-blog series hosted by Aentee over at Read at Midnight. It's called #CritYourFaves and the idea is to - you guessed it - critique a favourite read in some way. There are a lot of really interesting topics (check them out), and I'm so thankful to Aentee for running such a wonderful event, and for letting a random such as myself by a part of it. 

I've chosen to critique Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran, which I read circa 2012 and really liked. Four years, one sub-major in postcolonial studies and an imperfect - but constantly improving - awareness of representation in literature later, I'm re-reading it to see how I regard it this time 'round. 

Duke of Shadows is set - at least in first half - in British India during what known in India as The First War of Indian Independence, but which is more commonly referred to internationally as the Indian Rebellion or Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. 

Julian, Marquess of Holdensmoor, is a pariah in Indian colonial society because of his one-quarter Indian blood. He knows that the East India Company's military need to take the growing unrest seriously, but no-one will listen to him, convinced that he is only trying to stir up trouble. Emmaline has only recently arrived in India, to be reunited with the fiance her family had arranged for her, Colonel Lindley. Her parents drowned on the voyage, during a storm that wrecked their ship, but Lindley and the rest of the British elite are more interested in the scandalous nature of her rescue. She takes comfort in the one person who doesn't seem to care: the equally scandalous Julian. When the powder keg ignites and the unrest becomes a bloody conflict, Julian attempts to get Emma to safety. They are separated, and only reunited years later in London. Julian has spent years grieving for Emma, assuming she died in the conflict, but, for Emma, Julian is a reminder of a time she does not want to relive. 

You can see, even from that short blurb, the ways in which Duke of Shadows might be inherently problematic. Julian's Indian blood does not change the fact that it is a romance between two members of the British colonial elite in India, where full-blooded Indians make only minor appearances as supporting characters. Then there's the fact it it's set against the backdrop of the so-called Rebellion, in which it is conventionally acknowledged that at least 100 000 Indians died (although some estimates are much, much higher), compared with only around 2,000 British. 

Due to his Indian heritage, Julian is shown to understand the sepoys' grievances: 

"Emma, this land has been crushed by the English. Its wealth stripped, its honor trampled. You are not dealing with penny-dreadful villains here; you are dealing with embittered human beings who have been robbed of their dignity, their autonomy, their sense of self-worth. And that is what this mutiny is about." (pp. 127-8)

It's a pretty speech, but it leads me to one of my biggest gripes with Duke of Shadows: the 'rebel' soldiers are shown as ruthless and barbaric - much like the penny dreadful villains they supposedly are not - while the brutal English retaliation is glossed over. Emma relays graphic scenes of women being gutted (p. 83), having their throat slit (p. 164), their breasts sliced off (p. 164) and suiciding after her child was killed (p. 243), all at the hands of the sepoys.

By contrast, I found only one passage that referred to the British in comparatively violent terms, although even then, it's linked to the killings perpetrated first by the 'rebels' during the Siege of Cawnpore. Julian relays that: 

Half a mile away, near the building where Nana Sahib's men had had slaughtered scores of British women and children, the army was strapping mutineers to cannons. Blowing them apart in steady, rhythmic explosions (p. 173)

When Emmaline is describing the actions of the British, she does not hone in on single, visceral incidents in the same way, describing only "carnage" and fields of bodies. Whether or not this reflects her ingrained prejudices or is a result of the fact that she is not the endangered party in these scenarios, it still serves to reproduce colonialist dichotomies, in which the colonial Other is portrayed as savage and barbaric. 

To give Duran her due, she does do a good job of deconstructing the counterpoint to this: the construction of the European Self as civilised. She highlights the moral hypocrisy of the elite, and, while the atrocities the British committed are not described in detail, individual British soldiers are shown to be plenty depraved, with one trying to rape Emma (twice!). But deconstructing one pole of a bipolar discourse does little to ameliorate the damage of the remaining, intact pole, and the ways in which 'British coloniser as civilised' is deconstructed also give rise to more enduring stereotypes of the time, most particularly Emma as the delicate flower of British womanhood.

Another of these discursive binaries is the presentation of the colonial/Oriental Other as depraved, hypersexualised beings, in contrast to staid Victorian 'morality'. By virtue of his quarter Indian blood, Julian is constructed by the elite in this way, as can be seen when he talks about the desire officers' wives have to sleep with him: 

There was also an absurd set of ideas circulating about him in Anglo-Indian circles, variations on the theme of exotic Eastern eroticism, and he'd long since grown weary of it. (p. 8)

Despite this hypersexualisation, both Julian's half-Indian mother and full-Indian grandmother married British men, and this is something that I notice with the backstories of almost all British-Indian historical romance characters: they are legitimate, and, while there were many consensual relationships between Indian women and British men, very few resulted in marriage, particularly if those men were officers and of the upper classes, contrary to what historical romances would have us believe. 

I get it, we all love a Happily Ever After, but it's unrealistic here, and it perpetrates systemic violence and erasure. Indian (and colonial women in general) were seen in sexual terms, and the discursive separation between sex and marriage in Victorian times meant this pretty much automatically excluded them from being wife-material. Also, once a colony (or quasi-colony in the case of Company-ruled India) was established, one had to consider the precarious position ruling elite: all that separated them from the population they ruled was their whiteness, and the superior traits that supposedly gave them. While illegitimate offspring could be ignored, if 'miscegenation' that resulted in legitimate offspring occurred, this would undermine the distinction between the Self and the Other, and thus the justification for British rule. In a nutshell, this is everybody's problem with Julian: not that he has mixed blood, but that he has mixed blood and a title, and thus threatens the Self and Other as clear-cut, mutually exclusive binaries. 

Having all these happy British-Indian marriages also denies the fact that there was sexual violence committed against Indian women by British men, especially soldiers, though epistemic violence - the privileging of one point-of-view (that of the male colonist) and the suppression, erasure or ignorance of other, less privileged viewpoints - means that the historical record on this is slim. 

As I have mentioned, having a mixed Indian-British hero or heroine is the done thing when setting your historical romance in India. I've linked to this post before, when I wrote a rant-y review of a book with an Anglo-Indian heroine, but romance writer Suleikha Snyder has a post that succinctly and emotively tackles the half-Indian character, the psychological scars left by colonialism in South Asia, and the harm of bad representation. There's not much I can say that she hasn't already said, but she asks what stops authors from making the character 100 percent Indian, and I think this is an important point. In Duke of Shadows, as in other romances where the part-Indian character is a peer, my initial reaction is to go 'oh, no, but they couldn't be full-blooded, because then they wouldn't be a peer and that's important because xyz!'. In Julian's case, his peerage gives him entree to British colonial society, allowing him to meet Emma, while his Indian blood allows him to be more 'in touch' with the growing uprising, and to pass as Indian as necessary. But this reaction is disingenuous. Just because the plot's been set up so that mixed blood is necessary, that doesn't mean it gets a free pass, it means that we need to scrutinise the plot, characters and book as they currently exist, asking why it has been set up as it is.  That's a big call, and not my place or comfort zone, but it's worth a thought. 

Overall, my re-read of Duke of Shadows was fraught, and I was relieved when I finished it. I didn't connect to the book at all this time around, despite liking it last time. Partly, I think this was a result of having my analytical hat on at the exclusion of my reader hat (usually, they co-exist more peacefully), but it was also that heaps of things made me uncomfortable, and I couldn't get into the story as a result. The section set in India was shorter than I remembered, but even back in London, a lot of the focus is on their time in India, so it's not much of a relief. 

Although I initially intended to frame my post in terms of Duke of Shadows as a problematic fave - one of Aentee's intended talking points - I didn't end up doing so, because I couldn't find many reason for it to still be a fave. So, in the end, I didn't so much #CritMyFave as #CritSomethingIThoughtWasAFaveOnlyTurnsOutIt'sActuallyNot

Despite that, I'm incredibly glad I did re-read Duke of Shadows, because it really reinforced the value of something that someone I follow on Twitter suggested a while ago: not recommending books that you haven't read recently. 99% of problematic stuff or potentially problematic stuff about this book went over my head when I read it as an 18 year old with little awareness of my privilege, and no understanding of colonialism, Orientalism or any other number of important things. I suspect I'd have a different reaction to many of the books I remember favourably from that time, and so, to avoid harm, I won't recommend anything (both on the blog and IRL) that I haven't re-read recently, regardless of how I remember it. 

P.S. Sorry for the lack of blog posts lately, guys. My laptop carked it the day before by final assignments for uni were due. I'm sure I don't need to explain the horror! But I am now armed with a new laptop, so we can resume normal programming.

EDIT 5/11: There's been a review over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books where Carrie verbalises really well what I clumsily touched on in this post. She writes:

In reflecting on my experience with this book, I realize that I compartmentalized a horribly problematic element of the book to such an extent that I almost managed to erase it from my own head....This allows me to accomplish some useful academic things, but it’s also an expression of my own privilege. 

Review: The First Star I See Tonight by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

1 star
*SPOILER ALERT*
TW: Islamophobia, rape accusations

I feel deeply ambivalent about First Star I See Tonight, to be honest. The central romance was okay (until the end when everything went massively screwy), but there was an Orientalist subplot and some other elements that I quite disliked and was uncomfortable with. 

In some ways, the whole thing was vintage SEP, which is not surprising since it's the latest installment in her long-running Chicago Stars series. In others, it was SEP trying to fit herself to today's readers, market and society. If this had been a vintage SEP book, I might have written some things off as a product of the time, but I can't do that here, especially when she seems to have almost gone out of her way to make it 'current', including diverse characters and expounding on rape culture, Islam and other random things (even when her writing and characters didn't actually hold up to her throwaway political statements).

But, first, let me back up a bit. First Star I See Tonight features Piper Dove, a down-on-her-luck detective, who has been assigned to follow ex-NFL player Cooper Graham, now the proprietor of a hot new nightclub. He twigs pretty quickly, and eventually offers Piper an alternate arrangement: she'll work for him at the club instead, since she's noticed some things that don't seem quite right. 

SEP has always been the master of the redeemable alpha-hole hero, and Coop is walks the line well. His back-and-forth with Piper was priceless, but he wasn't too much of a jerk. He was also reflecting well on his behaviour and how that might come across to women, with a self-awareness I would personally like to romance heroes display more often. 

However, his 'save the cat' moment was a subplot that involved him using his influence to 'rescue' a Pakistani woman, Faiza, from her indentured servitude to a Middle Eastern Royal Family presumably based on that of Saudi Arabia. He does so by basically buying her, giving the prince the impression he is going to use her as a sex slave. The whole thing - from the white saviour element to the representation of the degenerate Arab prince - just left a bad taste in my mouth. Frankly, I just wish the whole subplot hadn't existed. 

To make matters worse, there was one really horrible incident of Islamophobia by the heroine, which was just so not okay:

Piper asked if she would consider taking off her headscarf until they went through [the US/Canada border crossing]. "We're an odd-looking group," she said, "Even though all our papers are in order, it would make the crossing easier." 

I'll paraphrase that in case those of you in the back didn't catch it the first time 'round: 

Please compromise your deeply held religious beliefs, so that Coop and I don't have to be inconvenienced if the border guards are racist fuckwits. 

That also came on the back of another uncomfortable - and frankly bizarre - exchange, where the author finishes recounting a conversation between Coop and Faiza like this: 

Only when he ventured into politics did Faiza grow fiery. "The word Islam means 'peace, purity, submission, and obedience," she said. "What has terrorism to do with any of those things?"  

It's just weirdly dropped in, and then normal conversation resumes. I can't see the point of it at all, and none of the reasons I can think of for so blatantly and randomly making such a statement in the middle of people apolitically living their lives (right after this, they get lunch from Burger King) are flattering. Does she think that her readers are going to associate Islam with terrorism and, if so, that this will dissuade them? Does she, in some way, feel that she needs to establish that her Muslim character is not a terrorist? I don't even know what to think about it, and after those two incidents, I skim-read the parts relating to that subplot. 

Overall, I think First Star I See Tonight is a powerful example of just because you can handle something in your writing, it doesn't necessarily mean you should. There's the use of Faiza to demonstrate Coop and Piper's compassion and to force them to work and spend time together, which belittles and erases the experiences of real maids in similar (or worse) situations. In the vast majority of cases, no-one is coming to save foreign maids, and even if they do escape or are injured so badly that someone intervenes, justice is scarce. 

But, unfortunately, it wasn't just that subplot; there's also a false rape accusation against Coop. He makes a statement acknowledging the damage false accusations do, but I still felt icky about it. I don't have the strength to go more in depth, but this review by Amanda on Goodreads explains it well (in actual fact, it explains everything, though I should probably issue another spoiler warning). (EDIT 28/11: Ditto with this review by Gabby and Rudi at Book Thingo, which draws out the weird gender dynamic and toxic masculinity of this book.)

Then there was the end. Pretty much everything I liked about this book - Piper as a resourceful woman, the way Coop avoided pulling rank over Piper, the lighthearted nature of their interactions - got obliterated. First, Piper got wishy-washy and ran away from her fears, but I could deal with that. What I couldn't deal with was when everyone drank the Koolaid and agreed with Cooper's insane idea that the only way to prove himself to Piper and remove her fears was for them to randomly get married. That is not a unilateral decision, or something woman should enter into reluctantly. 

Oh, and one more thing: the epilogue. Piper had stated throughout that she didn't want kids. In the epilogue, we find out that she "negotiated" with Cooper to have one child, provided he is the primary carer. There's nothing wrong with women not wanting children, so why do we always get these epilogues where they renounce on their decisions so we can see them play happy families? I'm so over it, especially since there are few enough heroines who don't want children in the first place. 

Writing this review has been exhausting and I don't know if I've been able to convey everything that I intended. I'm publishing it anyway because I think this is about as coherent as it's going to get; the book itself was just too much of a tangled hot mess. It had some okay moments, but it had major problems with representation, and I'm in no rush to have another similar reading experience any time soon. 

EDIT 28/11: A few weeks ago, I was shocked to see a Favourite Books of 2016 post, in which 6 of the 8 well-known romance authors asked rated this First Star I See Tonight as one of their favourite contemporary romances for the year, because all I remembered about it was its sickening racism and misogyny. Then, today, I read this all-encompassing and damning review of at Book Thingo and, since I couldn't remember what, precisely, I had written in my review, I revisited it, and I was shocked to discover that I had given it a 2.5. I think I was trying to be 'balanced' and 'fair' and was swayed by SEP's star power, so the occasional moments that didn't involve majorly problematic representation got built up into 'this book has some okay parts' in my mind. This was an unacceptable expression of my  privilege, and I apologise unreservedly for anyone who may have been harmed by it. I have changed my rating to 1 star to better reflect how I regard this book in retrospect, and to respect the fact that being wishy-washy about calling out a book for bad representation - especially from a industry stalwart such as SEP - is probably just as bad as staying silent. 

Review: Revolutionary Hearts by Pema Donyo

1 star
*SPOILER ALERT*

The plot and writing of Revolutionary Hearts were both a bit lacklustre, but I probably would have given it a 2.5 if it hadn't perpetrated some really intense symbolic violence and erasure. 

Revolutionary Hearts is set in India in 1924. Somehow, although don't ask me how, the Americans have an operative named Warren masquerading as a British general, so that they can investigate whether this guy named Raj Singh is an anarchist who might be a threat to the U.S.. I don't know, maybe that's legit, I didn't check it out. Anyhow, Warren meets Raj's Anglo-Indian sister Parineeta, who Raj sends to find out exactly how much this general suspects about his activities. Then Warren gets exposed by an actual British general (or possibly someone of another lower rank, I can't remember), so then he and Parineeta take off across the country. Parineeta is supposed to be leading Warren to Lucknow where he can meet up with his fellow operative, but then they magically meet up with Raj and his fellow freedom fighters and shit goes down. (More on that later.)

For the first half of this book, I was cruising along. Well, it was reasonably unmemorable and I had some pretty big gripes - the use of racial slurs, and things that seemed stereotypical or just plain wrong, such as a reference to butter chicken when surely it would have been dahl or similar - but I was hanging in there.

We're not given much information about the organisation Parineeta's brother is part of, the Hindustan Republican Association, except that the Americans are worried they might be anarchists. Thanks to that and my rusty Indian history it was only halfway through that the light-bulb went off over my head: the Hindustan Republican Association was what would later become the HSRA, and the train robbery that Parineeta's brother is organising is the Kakori Revolution. Once I had that realisation, I got really mad, and I just kept getting madder.

The story of the HRSA, and Bhagat Singh as its face, is one of the most quintessential and dearly held stories of Indian Independence Movement, and here it was sanitised until it was devoid of all context or sense of place, except for random info-dumps on the Rowlatt Act or the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre or some other barbaric act of imperialism, used only to give the characters motivation. It's been co-opted so that it has a three-quarters white hero and half-white heroine at its centre, displacing the full-blood Indians who rightfully belong there. Men who - by the way - were later hanged for the murder of a passenger on that train, though there's no mention of this, not even in an Author's Note at the end. In this fictionalised version, the passenger was killed by the heroine. So, what, I'm just supposed to watch our heroine and her hero ride off into the sunset, and separate this from the knowledge that, IRL, five men were sentenced to death and another 14 jailed for their role in the robbery, for the murder that the author had the heroine commit? Because the level of cognitive dissonance inherent in that is INSANE, let alone the statement that makes on what's important and what isn't.

If it's meant to be a fictionalised version where people don't get punished and murdered, then fictionalise it. Don't use the names of the men who were hanged for the names of your characters - so far as I can see, all of the revolutionary characters bear the names of the real revolutionaries, including Raj Singh (who got ten years imprisonment, by the way, so the heroine lives her HEA while her brother rots away? Nice!). Change the name of the town from Kakori. I don't know, just do something so that this isn't as horrible. Because, as it stands, the author's strategy is simply to assume that nobody with any knowledge of Indian history (or opposable thumbs to type things into Google) will read this book and put two and two together.

I went back and forth about whether to post this, and what form it should take, for a long time, because this isn't my history, my country, or people. Ultimately, I have written as much and as strongly as I did because I was upset, although I have little right to be, and even less to centralise my feelings. Basically, this is a frustrated rant, and there are considered critques out there that Indian and South Asian writers (and POC in general) make all the time, talking about the hurt done by bad representation. Romance author Suleikha Snyder wrote a post just the other day, when a prominent romance author called for recommendations set in India, and none that came back were by South Asians. A lot of that deals with the erasure inflicted by making characters half-white.

I don't really know how to finish this post up, because everything potential ending I've written sounds either really didactic, like a platitude, or more ME ME ME, and I don't want to go down any of those paths. So, over and out, I guess.

Review: Under the Sugar Sun by Jennifer Hallock

4.5 stars

Shortly after arriving in the Philippines, the heroine of Under the Sugar Sun makes the observation that "the most dangerous part of colonialism was just how easy it was to get used to" (loc. 1279). Truer words were never spoken, and that's exactly why we need more romance novels like Under the Sugar Sun: because we are used to the ongoing symbolic violence that stems from colonialism. In our literary worlds, whiteness and Western settings are normal, and these things are not challenged as much as they could - or should - be.

So, even though it shouldn't be exciting to find a romance like Under the Sugar Sun, it is. The paternalism, casual racism and focus on the horrible realities of colonialism make it a difficult read at times and I do have mixed feelings about some aspects of their presentation, but I also feel like that's partly the point. And, quite apart from all this theoretical stuff, Under the Sugar Sun was also just a great romance, the kind that makes you feel squiffy in the stomach when you remember it at odd moments during the day.

It's 1902, and Georgina Potter has arrived in The Philippines, nominally to join her fiance in a teaching position on the island of Negros. However, she also has another agenda: finding out what happened to her brother, a US soldier missing, presumed dead, after the Balangiga massacre. While in Manila, she meets Javier Altajeros, a mestizo sugar baron and landowner from the village where she will be teaching. They rub each other up the wrong way; Javier thinks Georgina is an imperialist interloper, while Georgie thinks he's little more than a feudal lord, standing in the way of progress.

Once on Negros, the dynamic between them starts to change. Quite apart from having to deal with a conceited fiance and the prospect of being unable to find her brother, Georgina is adrift in a world she doesn't understand. But it's Javier's world, and helping her come to terms with it is a welcome relief for a man struggling with family responsibility, debt and a very uncertain future.

This historical background of the American-occupied Philippines was one of the most intriguing things about Under the Sugar Sun. Some readers felt that the level of historical detail detracted from the story at times, but I disagree; Georgie and Javier's story was so bound up in these circumstances that to lessen their prominence would have lessened the impact of the romance itself.

I also feel like the inclusion of violent and horrific acts on the behalf of the Americans - one in which a general orders all males over the age of 10 killed to stop insurgency, and another where the colonial authorities simply raze settlements to stop the spread of cholera - are important because they disabuse us of one of our central fictions about colonialism. We like to think that, after the initial dispossession or subjection, colonial overlords were mostly benevolent tyrants. We skim over any subsequent injustices so we can have a clear distinction between the racist then, and the patently not-racist now: Ah, yes we took their land away and poisoned their waterholes *mumble mumble* Stolen Generation *mumble mumble*...but look, it's all so far in the past now, or Oh, sure, we pillaged India and her people *mumble mumble* Jallainwala Bagh massacre *mumble mumble*...but wasn't that Ghandi guy really an inspiration to us all??

But such atrocities were still common occurrences in my great-grandparents' and grandparents' lifetimes, and they probably would have supported the 'pacification' measures described in the novel. The white characters in Under a Sugar Sun certainly do, and, while the reader is able to project most of her disgust and hatred onto Georgie's erstwhile fiance Archie, Georgie herself is not immune. It's conflicting at times, but kudos must go out to Hallock for not creating a sanitised heroine who somehow magically avoided any and all racist socialisation.

For most of the story, Georgie succeeds at walking a fine line between being a realistic woman of her time and being aware of the Americans' adverse impact. Her understanding and compassion towards her students and their families was my favourite aspect of her character, and I enjoyed watching her shed her prejudices and begin to challenge the status quo. I was disappointed that this character growth didn't continue through to the conclusion; in the last quarter of the book, Georgie became pig-headed and blind to the consequences of her actions. Javier saves the day, of course, but I was left feeling that he deserved better, or should have at least held out for some grovelling.

But Georgie never really grovelled, or apologised very much at all, and this brings me to the heart of my beef with her: as a white woman and American coloniser, the balance of power was always in her favour. Javier essentially just had to wait until she deigned to be with him, but she never really acknowledged this disparity, or attempted to redress it in any way. Instead, she was perfectly happy to reap the benefits of this situation. As realistic as that may have been, it made me angry.

It's the reason I abandoned my original 5 star rating, but I also acknowledge that I am probably being harsher than I would in other incidences where the characters and setting were more run-of-the-mill. Given the harsh social and economic realities the characters were living with, a level of self-absorption that I would normally find acceptable became much more difficult to forgive.

But, when I think back on the majority of the book, I remember that I did truly love Javier and Georgie as a couple. Their interactions were replete with humour and a sense of comfort gained from the others' presence, both of which carried over well to the bedroom.

Overall, Under the Sugar Sun was a exemplary reminder of all that I love in romance, and all I wish there were more of. It's grand in scope in the same way old-school romances were, but with a very modern presentation of race, class and gender. Between Javier and Georige's romance, the setting and the writing, it's a deeply affecting book and one that I'd recommend almost universally, no matter my gripes.

Having said all that, I do still have one burning question: If Javier's brother Andres didn't take a vow of poverty, did he take a vow of chastity?? Because that man needs his own romance, like, ahora.

EDIT: I've discovered that Andres will have his day!  Huzzah!

Reflection: #WNDB & Beyond a Single Story

Whether they realise it or not, most Australians are familiar with the concept of a single story. It's when foreigners ask us, unironically, about keeping kangaroos as pets. Its the entire sub-genre of Australian Outback romances. I've been polling all my romance reading friends about these, and none of them have ever read an Outback romance. Even though these books are (sometimes) made and distributed in Australia, they are primarly meant for external consumption. It's the advertisements on my cable television provider for a program in which some minor British personality goes bush to search the "real Australia". Cue images of horse-wrangling, cattle stations and crocodiles, and British Guy patronisingly explaining everything despite having a day's experience of the place. It's not that the stories of rural Australians aren't worthy or important - in fact, in our internal media these are often sidelined - but their presentation to international audiences invalidates the 85% of Australians who live in urban environments. 

And countries and regions all around the world have similar experiences. Often, we even encourage the stereotypes of the outside world to brand ourselves for tourism and business purposes, Australia's Where the bloody hell are you? ad campaign being a prime example, but this doesn't make them any less alienating or dangerous.

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talks about how we are often lead to believe that one story about a particular place or people is the only story in her influential TED talk entitled The Dangers of a Single Story. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching it, or reading the transcript.

She recounts how, on coming to America for university, she realised that people saw Africa as a place of "beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS", and related to her through this lens. It was not their fault; this is what the media and popular culture presented to them with little differentiation between nations, regions, cultures and religions. Adichie, however, was not in the same boat. She says:

...because of America's cultural and economic power, I had many stories of America. I had read Tyler and Updike and Steinbeck and Gaitskill. I did not have a single story of America.

I thought of this quote when I was reflecting on my #WNDB Challenge as it comes up to the end of the year. Despite the fact that I had sought out books featuring characters of varying ethnicities, religions and sexualities, I have realised that 14 out of the 20 books I read were set in the US, and all but two took place in either the US or UK (and when I say the UK, I really mean England with the odd Scottish setting thrown in; Wales and Northern Ireland don't get a look-in). I undertook the #WNDB Challenge to counter hegemony, but ended up perpetuating it in another form. Unless they had immigrated to the US or UK, the people of the periphery were still silenced. No doubt about it, the fault was in my selecting skills, but this also reflects what I was exposed to on Goodreads, Amazon and other blogs.

I'm always loath to buy into romance/'light' fiction vs. 'literary' fiction binaries, but I do feel like the romance world is dragging its feet in this regard. The Man Booker prize has opened itself up to writers from all over the world and novels from all over the world are feted as literary masterpieces (this is has it's own set of problems as well, don't get me wrong). In contrast, all of the 2015 RITA Winners were set in the UK or US. 2014 had more diverse settings: one Outback, one partially set in Bangkok and one set in various European locations (but with the characters based in London). In 2013, we were back to all US or UK, excepting two fictional locations.

I have no doubt there are many romance novels set outside these conventional locations out there, but they are not making it past the literary gatekeepers and so languish in the dusty corners of the Kindle Store. In 2016, I'm making it my mission to find them. The aim is to review books from countries around the world in an aim to help myself see beyond the single story, and I would be grateful for any recommendations. 

As always, there will be an element of working this out as I go along. For example, should the author have to be from the country in which the book is set? The only things I'm sure about is that I would like to read more than one book from each country. After all, it would be pretty useless to counter a single story with a single story.

Review: Fierce by Rosalind James

2 stars

I hate writing entirely negative reviews and I don't think they are very useful to the reader, so I always try to bring some relativity to it.  I whinge away and then say 'but this was a redeeming feature' or 'if you are not bothered by xyz, then you might like this book more than me', but I've tried to do this for Fierce by Rosalind James and I can't. I've sat here staring at my blank screen for twenty minutes and I can't think of a single redeeming feature, and I can't think of a single person who might enjoy it, but clearly many people did because there are a lot of positive reviews online. To each their own, but, for me, Fierce was interminable and prompted some serious WTF moments.  

The first came from the power imbalance. This happens in a lot of romance novels, of course, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it needs to done carefully so it doesn't seem coercive. Set in New York, Fierce is a romance about a Kiwi business tycoon, Hemi, and his employee, Hope. Throughout the novel, Hope is continually concerned that Hemi will fire her, and frequently laments her lack of other employment options. When she mentioned this to him, he claims he'd never fire her, but I'm not sure how Hope was meant to know that, given Hemi is manipulative, overbearing, ruthless and doesn't take well to being told 'No'. 

As an added gripe, this was often attributed to and excused by Hemi's Maori ethnicity. At one point, he fantasises about hauling Hope away, and then says: 

"I couldn't do any of it, because this wasn't the New Zealand bush, it wasn't three hundred years ago, and she wasn't mine."  

Gah with the noble savage stuff. Also - and there's a spoiler here, because I really can't be stuffed to talk in circles - this book really reinforced the fact that the American healthcare system is completely nonsensical. Hemi 'proves himself' by paying the medical expenses for Hope's sister, Karen, in a move that finally convinces Hope that she shouldn't do a runner (even though she totally should). That plot device wouldn't have worked in Australia (or New Zealand), because the conversation - in a worst case scenario - literally would have gone like this:

Hope: My sister's throwing up constantly and I think she needs to go to the GP but I can't afford the fees so do you know one who bulk-bills?
Hemi: Yeah, there's a practice of them down the road.
Hope: Cool, thanks.

*after seeing GP*
Hope: So, turns out Karen has a brain tumour *sob*
Hemi: I'm sorry to hear that, Hope.  
Hope: Yeah, it's pretty bad. The GP gave us a referral to a Neurologist, but she only works in the public system once a month and is quite popular, so we are going have to wait maybe three to six months to get in *sob*.
Hemi: If you like, I'll pay for you to go to see the Neuro in her private rooms. It's usually about $220 dollars for an initial consultation, and you'll get $75 rebate back from medicare afterwards.
Hope: I'll give you the Medicare cheque and pay you back the rest next payday. K, thanks, bye. 
Hemi: Damn you, Medicare Benefit Schedule, you just ruined by chance to coerce this woman into a relationship!

Or Hope just would have taken Karen to Emergency one time when she had a bad episode and then it wouldn't have been classed as elective surgery and they wouldn't have had to wait at all. I understand, if you are working or lower-middle class in the U.S., the healthcare system is nothing to laugh about, but it's very hard to keep patience with a book that uses this plight so mercilessly. I've come across the plot device before and it hasn't bugged me as much, but as a New Zealander who had more money than he knew what to do with, Hemi should have:

a) paid his staff a living wage.
b) made sure their health insurance was sound and kicked in ASAP (Admittedly, I'm not sure about this. Is it legislated that you have to be in a job a certain amount of time before you can access healthcare or is it just convention?).
c) helped Hope and Karen out of the goodness of his heart.

It's getting 2 stars because it got slightly less awful in the closing chapter, when Hemi magically gained some humanity. I think I'll have to go back and read her NZ-set books with Maori heroes now, to see if she pulled the same fetishising bullshit there, and it passed me by. 

Non-Fiction Review/Reflection: Western Imperialism and Cambodia's Curse by Joel Brinkley

If you are wondering why I haven't posted much in the last month, it's because I've been on holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia. It's prompted some thinking about the way I've seen Cambodia represented, and how this reflects on our society more then it does on theirs.  

Cambodia is not a country that sits high in the West's consciousness; it conjures up little more than images of Angkor Wat and a vague yet still horrifying knowledge of the Khmer Rouge years. It is also on our radar, at least in Australia, as a destination for backpackers and voluntourists. Visiting orphanages while travelling Cambodia has become highly popular, spawning a backlash from governments, NGOs and the media who are concerned about the booming industry of fake orphanages which separate children from their parents and institutionalise them for the benefit of Western visitors. UNICEF estimates that only one in every five children in Cambodian 'orphanages' is actually parentless. While in Cambodia, I came across these UNICEF-branded ads often - in restaurants, fair trade shops, even on the backs of toilet doors:

If I had not read Cambodia's Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joel Brinkley prior to entering Cambodia, the significance of many little things, such as these posters, would have passed me by. I can't rate Cambodia's Curse as a book; as a romance reader who likes feel-good reads, I have no way to judge it or even articulate my feelings that well. It's interesting and disturbing on a lot of different levels, first and foremost in the content it discusses but also in a more subtle way, in the way it reveals the ongoing legacy of centuries of colonialism and Western cultural imperialism.

For example, in the introduction Brinkley declares "Cambodia is the only place where the bulk of the nation, more than three-quarters of its people, still lives more or less as they did 1,000 years ago", citing both elements of Khmer culture, which I will discuss later, and a lack of 'modern' infrastructure as his evidence for this statement. However, I would posit that any claim that a culture or nation is static should be taken with a grain of salt. By their very definition, cultures are dynamic things, constantly undergoing processes of change, growth and reconciliation with outside beliefs and practices. The idea of non-Western cultures as timeless is a pervasive one, and although we have discursively seperated it from its roots, it still has the power to breed race hierarchies and binaries. 

At times it seemed as though Brinkley's entire thesis was built solely around this latent cultural imperialism. His key point is that Cambodia is inherently susceptible to corruption and other societal ills, which he sees as the natural progression of the age-old system of patronage described below: 

Unequal exchanges between the wealthy and powerful and the poorer and dependent are referred to as patron-client relationships. Both sides provide goods and services to the other. The patron possesses superior power and influence and uses them to assist his clients. The clients in return provide smaller services and loyalty over an extended period of time. The relationship is complementary, with both sides benefiting. The client is protected and assured a minimum level of subsistence. The patron in turn has followers, who serve to increase his power....For Khmer, as for Thais, the norm of reciprocity, the moral underpinnings of the system, are found in Buddhist notions of merit, karma and dharma. A leader is born into his advantageous position because of meritorious action in previous lives, this is his karma. This leader should then fulfill his dharma, or prescribed duty as a person of this status, by acting as a generous and righteous leader. He therefore redistributes goods and provides protection to those in his care. -  J. Ledgerwood, 'Understanding Cambodia: Social Hierarchy, Patron-Client Relationships and Power'

Brinkley contends that, when these relationships are transposed on to the present day, they breed corruption and widen the divide between rich and poor as patrons take more and more, and return less and less benefits to their clients. At first, it seems a fairly sound judgement, but when combined with the aforementioned idea of a changeless culture, it leads to conclusions that I feel are misguided and which play down the role the outside world - particularly the West - has exerted on Cambodia.  

Brinkley introduces the reader to his thesis about patronage with another sweeping statement: "far more than almost any other state, modern Cambodia is a product of customs and practices set in stone a millenium ago" (loc. 420). To him, the Khmer tradition of patronage has made the Cambodian people passive and apathetic, unable or unwilling to help themselves. This is a puzzling conclusion. If the Cambodian people shy away from upsetting the status quo, surely one cannot underestimate the way foreign powers and their ideologies have continually buffeted the nation around throughout the 20th century. 

Shortly after the end of the French colonial occupation, Cambodia came to the attention of the West as an adjunct to the Vietnam War, when it was suspected that the Viet Cong were moving supplies over the border. The USA and her allies dropped 2,756,941 tons of bombs on Cambodia during the Vietnam War - more than all the combined Allies dropped in World War II - and supported an erractic would-be dictator. In consequence, Cambodians fled to the forests and joined the emerging Khmer Rouge, as the deposed king urged them to do. The Chinese also provided military and financial support against the American-backed regime. 

When the Khmer Rouge began to seize control of rural areas and refugees began to bring horrible stories over the borders, the US was convinced, in that black-and-white way of Cold War thinking, that it was offshoots of the Vietnamese communists who were responsible. However, even if the refugees had been believed, there is nothing to say that intervention would have been more forthcoming; 1976 was an election year in the US, and, after the Fall of Saigon, the Western nations wouldn't have touched South East Asia with a barge pole. The Iran Hostage Crisis commandeered the world's attention, and when Vietnam could no longer countenance the masses of people fleeing, they invaded and deposed the Khmer Rouge, installing a government largely constituted of former Khmer Rouge commanders who had seen the way the wind was blowing and defected. Given the choice between awarding Cambodia's seat in the General Assembly to Vietnamese puppets or the Khmer Rouge, the UN - guided by the US - chose the Khmer Rouge, relegitimising them and helping them retain de facto control over large swaths of the country. 

When civil war broke out, the US, Vietnam, China and the USSR all armed different factions in the power struggle. After blithely ignoring the Khmer Rouge years and subsequent decades of unrest, the UN finally sat up and took notice in the 1990s, buoyed by a new faith in people-power after the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Bloc. They formed a special body, UNTAC, and threw $1.6 billion at the 'problem' that was Cambodia in the most ambitious state-building program since post-WWII Germany. Then, after only eighteen months and while a coalition government was still being formed, UNTAC was downsized and then dismantled, the UN chastened by its failure to prevent genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia.

Do not get me wrong, Brinkley covers all of what I have laid out above, and there are many more instances of foreign intervention in Cambodian affairs littered throughout his book, but he constantly comes back to this idea that Khmer culture itself is responsible for the situation in which the nation finds itself. It's a conclusion that, to me, doesn't hold up under examination.  

Ultimately fatalistic about the country's chances of betterment, Brinkley quotes many aid workers and foreign officials who lament that progress is not being made. They all say it is the fault of the government, and bemoan the Cambodian people for not being suitably outraged to affect change. An ex-US ambassador, also quoted by Brinkley, used 
to warn colleauges to "be careful, because Cambodia is the most dangerous place you will ever visit. You will fall in love with it, and eventually it will break your heart". Looking back over quotes such as these in the writing of this piece, I was put in mind of a verse by Kipling, the poster child of imperialism, that was included in an English textbook I taught out of in India:

Take up the White Man's burden 

The savage wars of peace-

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen folly

Bring all your hopes to nought. 

                        — The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling

The analogy might seem a bit extreme at first, but if you take out the first line and the reference to heathens - the two elements at which people are most likely to recoil - the sentiment is remarkably similar to that of Brinkley and his interviewees. And I am not alone in my assessment of the book; one reviewer on Goodreads says that he seems "replused by everything he is reporting", utilising "colonial overtones". Even Joel Whitney, writing for the New York Times says: 

...given Washington's role today in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, it might have been braver if he [Brinkley] had chosen to hold Americans, and not just Cambodians, accountable for the suffering he so movingly describes.

And therein is the essensce of my problem with Cambodia's Curse. It's not necessarily that Brinkley puts forward a thesis with which I disagree, but the way this contributes to hegemonic discourses about 'the West and the rest' that continue to dominate foreign relations between nations and determine their place in the global community. 

But to give credit where credit is due, Brinkley's book has a truly astounding collection of statistics, and I've included some below as a final aside to give some context on the situation in Cambodia, to which I have unspecifically referred throughout this piece: 

• In 2009, Cambodia's average per capita income was between 500-600 USD, while a third of all Cambodians lived on less than 1 US dollar a day (Cambodian Human Rights and Development Assosciation, cited loc. 4949) 
• 42% of all children suffer from stunting, while the national average life expectancy is only 61. (Cambodian Human Rights and Development Assosciation, cited loc. 4949) 
• Only 20% of all rural Cambodians have access to toilets or clean water (Cambodian Human Rights and Development Assosciation, cited loc. 4949) 
• Again of 2009, 1 of every 185 pregnant women died in childbirth (UN, cited loc. 4080), and 1 child in 10 died before the age of five (unreferenced source, cited loc. 3011)
• Around 1.5 million Cambodians are food insecure, unable to get enough food to supply 2000 calories a day (World Food Program in Cambodia, cited loc. 3355).  However, as of 2009, the nation produced an rice surplus of 2.5 million tons, which the government sold to Vietnam, Thailand and others (unreferenced source, cited loc. 3348).
• In 2004, it is estimated government officials stole up to $500 million, around half of the state's annual budget and the same amount as that collected from tax and other internal revenue streams (the other half of the budget coming from foreign government and NGO donations) (unnamed US Embassy report, cited loc. 2980)
• During the UN state-building intervention in Cambodia from 1992-3, each UN employee was given a daily living allowance of $145 USD in addition to his or her salary, equivalent to a year's income for most Cambodians (unreferenced source, cited loc. 1308). In the same one year period, the number of sex workers in Cambodia tripled (Crochet 1997; not cited in Brinkley)
• From studies conducted in the early 2000s, it is estimated that around 47% of all Cambodians have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or symptoms of other psychotic conditions (M. Sothara, cited loc. 2295).  
• As of 2004, it was estimated that one-quarter of all Cambodian men regularly beat their wives and children. At the end of the decade, it had risen to one-third (unnamed Cambodian government report, cited loc. 2310). It is suggested this is a result of the nation's widespread PTSD, which is now being passed on to a new generation who have grown up with dysfunctional and possibly abusive parents defined by the trauma they suffered under the Khmer Rouge (Reicherter, ctied loc. 2306). 

Reflection: Don't Judge a Culture by its Cover

My awareness of the ways book covers can reflect and reinforce stereotypes of gender - which I touched on in the last post - has come largely from those who seek to point out the way race or 'foreign' locales are represented on book covers.  The cover of a book tells somebody what to expect in reading it, but what happens when the cover doesn't reflect the content, but rather a preconceived stereotype of the setting, characters or content?

Here are two specific examples where entire cultures have been essentialised down to a single image or trope.   First, we have the classic I'm-a-book-about-an-Arabic/Islamic-woman-therefore-I-must-be-oppressed-and-have-no-individual-identity:

Source: arabglot.com

There are some excellent discections of the 'Veiled Woman' cover, including 'Translating for Bigots', 'Don't Judge Books By Their Cover - Especially Arabic Works in Translation', 'Why So Many 'Saving Muslim Women' Book Covers?' and 'Book Covers Promote Orientalist Portrayal of Muslim Women'.  All of them touch on the book covers as a vehicle for Orientalism, which: 

"...considers the way that the Middle East and Asia are represented in Western novels, biographies, and artworks.  Commonly, these depict places lost in times past, inclined towards despotic rule, and prone to odd cultural rituals that can be both pleasurable and symptomatic of weakness....The Orient was a powerfully pictured but vague location that the Westerner believed he could control and enjoy, penetrate and posess, and  hide in....The implicit goal, which repeats across time in politics, media and the popular imagination, was to reaffirm cultural difference and render things 'Oriental' marginal to the West and subordinate to Western international relations."   

-- Extract of 'Post-colonialism' by Christine Sylvester in The Globalization of World Politics, edited by Bayliss et al.

The ways small cultural artifiacts, such as book covers, can reinforce hierarchies of power between countries, communities and individuals in the international arena can be demonstrated using the I'm-a-book-set-in-Africa-so-I-must-feature-a-sunset-over-the-savannah:

Source: 'The Dangers of a Single Book Cover:The Acacia Tree Meme and "African Literature"'

The 'Acacia Tree' covers exemplify Sylvester's first example; that Africa exists within a timeless bubble of primitiveness (none of the examples feature any buildings other than small, mud huts).  As with the Arabic example, this image is developed prior to knowledge of the book's content and the views of the author (both often trying to subvert stereotypes, not reinforce them).  With regards to Africa, this is sometimes called 'Black Orientalism' or 'Afro-Orientalism', but it can also just be classified as Orientalism because of its commonalities with the ways Asia and the Arab world is stereotyped.  No matter what the region, these stereotypes have real-world effects.

In this case, they establish Africa as a homogenous place and thereby illegitimate the experience of being Xhosa or Yoruba, Shona or Kikuyu, from urban Africa or a particular region of the continent.  As a prime example, I just googled Kikuyu to make sure I was spelling it right, and except for one Wikipedia page listing all the pages that Kikuyu might refer to (5 out 7 were related directly to the ethnic group), all of the other options on the first page of my Google results refered to a species of grass.  The Kikuyu make up 22% of Kenya's population - the largest of any single ethnic group - and yet the Western world is more concerned with a native Kenyan grass that was named after them.  

Ebola illustrated the real world implications of such ignorance beautifully.  Although Europe was closer to the Western African outbreak than Southern Africa, tourism in the South took a seroius downturn.

Secondly, the Africa-as-timeless trope denies the reality of the continent's colonial history and the impact this continues to exert today.  Surely, if a Western country doesn't recognise the Rwandan genocide as a partial byproduct by colonial hierarchies that turned Hutu and Tutsi from fluid ethnic groups to castes, then making a decision about whether to intervene becomes simpler.  Ditto the coming African Debt Crisis and many other international affairs issues.  The flip side of this, I suppose, is that the depiction of Africa as primitive and backward allows for neo-colonialism; the West (and other powers, such as China, which has developed massive oil, crop and other interests in African nations) can intervene without international condemnation.  

So, while it might seem that covers featuring acacia trees or veiled women are fairly unimportant in the scheme of things,they are one small cog in a very big machine that determines the way we think about the world.