Brick Lane
“At once she was enraged. A mother who did nothing to save her own child! If Nazneen (her husband’s part she did not consider) had not brought the baby to the hospital at once, he would have died. The doctors said it. It was no lie. Did she kick about at home wailing and wringing her hands? Did she draw attention to her plight with long sights and ostentatiously hidden weeping? Did she call piously for God to take what he would and leave her with nothing? Did she act, in short, like her mother? A saint?”
“”When you are older, you will understand all these things. About a husband and wife.”” Nazneen did not know which one of them was wiser, the mother or the daughter. She did not know if Shahana’s questions were acute or naïve, but all the same she felt proud of the girl.”
“In her frustration, she forgot she was in the middle of chopping chilies and rubbed her eye. Immediately a sensational pain exploded in her eyeball. It was enough to make her cry out. She on the tap and twisted her head beneath it. To the curative powers of cold running water, the chili burn was immune. Nazneen gasped as the water ran up her nose. She focused on the pain, rising up to meet it head on, boring into it, challenging it to do its worst. The burn was fierce and it unleashed in her an equal ferocity. Suddenly her entire being lit up with anger. I will decide what to do. I will say what happens to me. I will be the one. A charge ran through her body and she cried out again, this time out of sheer exhilaration.”
I read Brick Lane twice. Books like this are the reason I love our book club so much. Because I can’t imagine how I would have come across this story any other way. It’s a sensitive but unsentimental glimpse into an unfolding immigrant experience. A Bangladeshi woman is given in arranged marriage to a much older man who takes her to his adopted home in London.
The complicated impact of subtle and overt racism and classism gets played out in the lives of Nazneen, her absurd and insecure husband Chanu, her beloved and ill fated sister Hasina, and other Bangladeshis in their sphere—both friends and foes. It becomes clear just how different the battles of first and second-generation immigrants are. Brick Lane traces Nazneen’s transition from proper (if terrified and unhappy) Muslim wife to her exploration and embrace of her own agency and desires. Nazneen has more backbone than anyone, especially Nazneen herself, ever knew.
And she slowly realizes that her newfound strength isn’t just for herself. It’s for standing up to injustice, fiercely protecting her children, providing for her family. Ultimately, it’s for the benefit of the whole community. She’s even able to help Chanu finally have the courage to do what he’s dreamed. Her spirit overflows and is part of moving others to dare to believe life is beautiful and worth really living. This hopeful life force threads through the story in the form of vibrant Bangladeshi colors and scents and flavors. The moments where Nazneen and others turn lentils and rice and spices into something much more than a sum of their parts made me equally grateful and inspired and hungry. Just like this story.
