Shades of Grey and Brown

Fifty Shades of Grey recently hit the library bookshelves. I've had some interesting conversations with housewives and overheard interesting conversations among the ladies in the office. They're more or less unabashed, although I didn't spot anyone talking about it with or around too many men. It basically reminds me of the scene in Madmen when the ladies pass around a copy of Lady Chatterley. I don't think it's anything all that new and I don't think I'll be reading it, either.

But something good has come out of this for me, nonetheless. While trying to explain why I would not be reading it to a fellow lover of literature, I said that, right now, there are other ways that I'm more interested in developing my imagination.

And then it hit me. Ever since I was in the middle of my B.A., I have been conflicted about what I should be reading. I wasn't even sure what I wanted to read. There were a lot of people telling me what I, as a student of literature, should read. On the grounds of studying literature and yet studying post-colonial literature, which is anti-literature, in the classical sense, as much as movements in modernism are, and yet feeling as though there was something missing, all I knew was the my love for reading was in shambles and if it were to die, a part of me I loved would die with it. But the question I needed to ask myself was: What part of my imagination do I need/want to develop?

When I was in middle school, a well-meaning school librarian suggested I read a fiction book by a Muslim author with Muslim characters in a Muslim country. I don't even remember what book. Flustered, I told her I didn't want to. Between Harry Potter books, I was more interested in the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I was interested in anything written by Avi or Rodman Philbrick. I remember liking a series of fairy tales re-written as novels from the point of view of a different character. Growing up sheltered, I wanted to know about the culture beyond my house, a culture I desperately wanted to take part in or at least relate to.

Even then, I knew I wasn't interested in mainstream culture-- I was self-aware enough to know I was different and geeky and be able to appreciate that about myself. But I remember being afraid of being shaped wrongly by the book she suggested. I was afraid it would change me in a way I had no control over. I was afraid it would hit uncomfortably close to home. I was also afraid it would miss and make me feel too different, an unreachable other. Even as I started reading global, post-colonial literature in college, I was a apprehensive about reading anything by Indian, Bengali, or Muslim writers.

As I became more exposed to writing closer to my experience, started reading and enjoying a few books, even becoming overwhelmed by volume of literature I could still read about it, it became less important for me to be able to completely relate to a work by a Muslim or from a Muslim country. It made me realize that there were a lot of people like me, but not exactly like me and that this is a good thing. Even though there's still a part of me that's afraid that if I read one more book about being from the Indian subcontinent, being an immigrant, being Muslim, on top of which, being feminist, I'm going to alienate myself, now I think that it's something I need to develop more of an imagination for.

In a way, this focus it does limit me. I don't read very much mainstream literature and I'm not that interested in much of the literary canon and because of these reasons, it's not enough for me to meet someone who loves to read to feel an immediate connection with them-- like it was in middle school. But I do still connect with people who love literary fiction of most varieties. I also recently discovered my love for sci-fi. The biggest difference is that I now relate most to people developing shades of grey within their imagination of Muslim, immigrant, female, religious, subcontinental experiences because as someone of these experiences and an American on top of that, to do otherwise would require me to believe these descriptors are limits upon myself and believe they should be for other people, too.