Tasleem Thawar in Diaspora Dialogues
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I rarely read "diaspora" literature unless it is to glean through the material and critique it. I am by no means an expert on the history of immigrant, ethnic or non-mainstream literature, but one thing that strikes me about the current crop of immigrant writers is how they dwell incessantly on their immigrant status. It is almost as though they see no way out of their ethnicity. There is no attempt to reconcile their Canadianness (or Americanness) with their ethnic background. It is "either/or", and never "and."
This is really the big story behind current immigration. Previously, at some point, the Ukrainian, Polish, Irish or Hungarian immigrants somehow found their way into the mainstream. Some might have even changed their last names, certainly many took on mainstream first name. But despite perogies and decorated Easter eggs, these communities blended in at some point.
So what about the Indian, the Chinese, the Jamaican, now second or even third generation immigrant families? What happened there?
Writers (art) at some point cannot lie. And what the stories of these Canadian-born children of immigrants are telling us is that assimilation is still a big preoccupation. (You can read my review of an American writer of Indian origin, Jhumpa Lahiri, and her obsessive themes of immigrants, here under "Ethnic Stories, Divided Loyalties").
Tasleem Thawar, born and raised in Toronto, wrote her first short story, "Packaging Parathas", about an illegal immigrant who came to Toronto via Tanzania (and originally from India) to live with her grandmother. Thawar matter-of-factly writes about the protagonist’s illegal status, seeing it not as tarnishing her story, but as the reality that is part of her community’s existence. Throughout the story, the young girl is trying to figure out how she can enter university in Canada without causing suspicion.
The next short story Thawar writes is called "Her Hands." Helen Walsh of Gothic Toronto: Writing the City Macabre commissioned her to write it for their limited edition book, which also features Margaret Atwood and Ann-Marie MacDonald. I’m not sure what ghoulish influence Walsh saw in her first story, but Thawar certainly delivered.
This time, Thawar writes about an immigrant worker from Bombay and a ghost who reminds him of his mother. Once again, there are those themes of irreconcilability: an immigrant, a mother from the homeland, a ghost (a being) which is intangible.
On a more literary level, "Packaging Parathas" is a simple story, with a clever meandering between "Indians" in Canada and in East Africa (even those who grew up in Kenya and Tanzania consider themselves Indian). There are no “aha” moments, but it is a well enough crafted story that gives Walsh et al. sufficient ammunition to parade it at various literary events and publications as a good example of "ethnic" literature.
