Salman Rushdie:
General Introduction: His life
of multiple migration



1947 born in Bombay,
son of a Cambridgeeducated merchant of
Muslim background;
1961 Studied in England
1964 moved with his
family from Bombay to
Pakistan
Salman Rushdie:
General Introduction (2)

1975: Grimus; 1987: The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan
Journey; 1990: Haroun and the Sea of Stories

1980: Midnight's Children
1983: Shame
1989: The Satanic Verses 1989, Feb.
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"fatwa"
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1991: Imaginary Homelands
1994: East, West
1995: The Moor's Last Sigh
1999: The Ground Beneath her Feet
Questions:

Definitions and Implications: immigrant,
emigrant, expatriates, exile, contract
laborers.

What are special about immigrant literature
and writers?
Rushdie’s position as an
immigrant writer
Third-World Cosmopolitans like Derek Walcott,
Gabriel Garcia Marques and Bharati Mukherjee, V.
S. Naipaul and Michael Ondaatje, and 北島.
 They live in or write to a metropolitan center,
carrying with them a “third-world,” or
multicultural, background.
 The complexity of their positions:
1. Enabling, “The Empire Writes Back.”
2. Awkward. Is Rushdie a "'British-resident IndoPakistani writer'? Who do they write to? What
do they write about?

Rushdie: migrant identity
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What is the best thing about migrant peoples and
seceded nations? I think it is their hopefulness...
And what is the worst thing? It is the
emptiness of one's luggage....We have
floated upwards from history, from
memory, from Time. (Shame 70-71)
“[Pakistan] is a part of the world to which,
whether I like it or not, I am still joined, if only
by elastic bands.” (Shame 23)
“It maybe be argued that the past is a
country from which we have all migrated,
that its loss is part of our common
humanity. . . .” (“Imaginary Homelands”)
Rushdie:



Pakistan & migrant writer
Although I have known Pakistan for a long time,
I have never lived there for longer than six months
at a stretch...I have learned Pakistan by
slices...however I choose to write about over-there,
I am forced to reflect that in fragments of broken
mirrors...I must reconcile myself to the
inevitability of the missing bits. ... (Shame 70)
Immigrant writer: "the ability to see at once
from inside and out is a great thing, a piece of
good fortune which the indigenous writer cannot
enjoy." (IH 4)
The only people who see the whole
picuture. . . Are the ones who step out of the
frame.” (The Ground 43)
“
Other metaphors or descriptions
of immigrant writers


鷺
鷥
在
水
上
書
寫
無
人
失
敗
的
黃
昏
一
隻
孤
狼
走
進
踏
著
那
節
奏
搥
打
著
夢
中
之
鐵
關
鍵
詞
，
我
的
影
子
……
一
生
一
天
一
個
句
子
Potted plant (Neil Bissoondath)
Immigration is a one-way road; there is no
home to return to. (Stuart Hall)
是
空
的
。
帶
來
最
後
的
知
識
這
受
雇
於
太
陽
的
藝
人
我
的
影
子
很
危
險
關
鍵
詞
北
島
Salman Rushdie:
Major Themes

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India/Pakistan’s National Identity vs. British
colonization
Indian diaspora
His definition of migrant identity and the
themes of Indian diaspora in “Imaginary
Homelands”
His use of “English” language.
Colonialism and Gender/Power Struggle
General Introduction to Midnight’s Children
“Imaginary Homelands”
1. The past is a foreign country, so is the
present.
 2. Memory: Exiled writers – need to look
back and create imaginary homelands. (10)
-- deal in broken mirrors (p. 11);
“In spite of all the evidence that life is
discontinuous, a valley of rifts, and that
random chance plays a great part in our
fates, we go on believing in the continuity of
things, in causation and meaning. But we
live on a broken mirror” (Ground 31)

“Imaginary Homelands”
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
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1. The past is a foreign country, so is the present.
2. Memory:
-- p. 12:1) fragmentation turns things
symbolic; 2) a subject of universal
significance and appeal; 3) meaning is a
shaky edifice.
-- Why writes about the past? -- political
functions
p. 14 the first step towards changing it.
-- guilt p. 15
“Imaginary Homelands”
3. About Midnight’s Children and India
– 1) Saleem, an unreliable narrator;
– 2) India, its non-sectarian philosophy,
– 3) Indian talent for non-stop self-regeneration.
4. White culture: 1) The use of English p. 17 :
"to conquer English may be to complete the
process of making ourselves free".
 5. “British Indian identity.” : p. 19 1) As both
insiders and outsiders, they present alternative
reality, mingling reality and naturalism.
2) Against “ghetto mentality” ; they have two
traditions.

Midnight’s Children

Plot: Exactly at midnight on Aug. 15, 1947, two
boys are born in a Bombay hospital, where they
are switched by a nurse. Around that time, a
thousand children were born and they are the
“midnight children.”
Aziz +
Naseem
Hindu woman+
British colonialist
Muslim couple
(Mumtaz+ Ahmed)
Saleem
Shiva
Midnight’s Children: Plot (2)
Midnight Children as a national allegory
from cultural conflicts and national
movements in the colonial period
to the “birth” of the nation
as well as its 3000 midnight’s children
to the gradual fragmentation
of Saleem’s body, the children, and the
nation

Midnight’s Children: narrative
methods

The narrator and narrative methods (p. 3)
• Digressive, foreboding and summarizing.
• Talking about his own writings.
• A mixture of tones: humorous, poetic, crude
and with ribald jokes (e.g. snot)
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Mixing the personal and the
historical/political
Motifs -- e.g. hole in the nose, perforated
sheet, p. 13 -; snot nose, black mango,
Midnight’s Children:
Cultural Identity

e.g. grandfather Aziz
Indian
belief
Aziz
German
knowledge
Boatman Tai
Ghani’s house
His mother
His wife