It is a brief introduction about H.M Naqvi's novel " home boy".

1. Home boy
written by: H.M Naqvi
Presented by : Faisal Iqbal

2. Introduction
 H.M. Naqvi was born in London in 1973 and grew up in
Karachi, Pakistan.
 He graduated from Georgetown University (1996) with
degrees in economics and English literature
 He represented Pakistan in the National Poetry Slam in Ann
Arbor, Michigan in 1995.
 In 1997 he joined the World Bank and spent the next eight
years working in the financial services industry on the East
Coast and in Karachi
 His poems were broadcast on BBC.
 He received Ora Mary Phelam Poetry Prize.
 DSC prize for south Asian literature for “home boy”
H.M NAQVI
 [Use this space to place an image that best
captures the main idea of the speech]

3. Characters
 Chuck ( Shehzad )
 He is a narrator, Karachi-born, fired from his banking job, drives a cab.
 AC (Ali Chaudhry)
 a PhD dropout, works as a substitute teacher in a "rough-and-tumble South Bronx
school", for which he receives medals and awards
 Jimbo (Jamshed Khan)
 dreadlocked, New Jersey-raised, catchphrases,
 the Duck ( Jimbo's girlfriend)
 Shaman ( Pakistani friend)

4. Home boy
 The novel centers on the lives of three New Yorkers of Pakistani origin. Narrator Chuck, (Shehzad), is a Karachi-born NYU grad
who was fired from his banking job and now drives a cab. Chuck's best mates are AC, or Ali Chaudhry, a PhD dropout and
Jimbo, Jamshed Khan. These young, secular men enjoyed cocaine, women ,parties.
 Things radically change after 9/11.
 The Feds interrogate the boys at Manhattan's notorious metropolitan detention center, handling Chuck especially roughly
and this treatment forces him to reconsider his own religious and national allegiances.
 The author tries to make his primary characters well rounded, but these attempts backfire. Take the drug-using AC, who
works as a substitute teacher in a "rough-and-tumble South Bronx school", for which he receives medals and awards.

5. Home boy
 Jimbo's father, blue-eyed Pathan explains that he has embarked on a jihad to make the world more beautiful
by gardening, and Chuck remarks, "Old Man Khan reminded me that the term [jihad] translates to 'struggle',
particularly the struggle within: to remain moral and charitable, acquire knowledge, and so on.
 ." Here Chuck's narration is didactic, and at other times it is distinctly undercooked. Home Boy avoids sincere
or incisive scrutiny of the relationship between social class and oppression by the end of the novel, Chuck has
to make a big decision.

6. Subalternization and hybridization in the novel
 This novel narrates three friends who are born in Pakistan but later migrated to United States of America. It is represented in the
novel that these three boys who are migrated to United States of America have become a culturally hybrid.
 Culturally hybrid are the outcome of migration, cultural assimilation, colonialism and globalization. When the character of chuck is
questioned and oppressed in jail, he is considered as a subaltern in a foreign culture.
 He is accused of terrorism. He is forced to realize that he is a subaltern and cannot be equal to the native Americans, no matter how
much intensely he is a cultural hybrid.
 One of the police officer in the novel realizes that chuck is being treated as subaltern when he comes to know that chuck has
studied English literature and has been working as a wall street banker.
 He realizes that chuck is being oppressed because of his religious identity and hence he let chuck go to his home.
 In the novel, the difference between east and west is taken as the religious difference.
 It is considered by the west that religion Islam promotes terrorism and hence chuck is arrested after the incident of 9/11. Although
they become culturally hybrid and submerged in the native culture of America but even then, in the later part of novel they were
questioned about their religion and considered as different people .

7. Terrorist Discourse in Naqvi’s ‘Home Boy’
 The central claim of this terrorist discourse as reflected by Naqvi in his novel is a typical Neo
Orientalist perspective: Islamists are responsible for 9/11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and for any
expected perpetration as Bush declared that their enemy is a radical network of terrorists
backed by some Muslims governments.
 US officials presented Pakistani Muslim characters,
though fully absorbed in US society, as “Other”, those who are neither Americans nor having any
rights like Americans (Naqvi 2010 ,107)
 Americans (Naqvi 2010 107). They are declared, through discourse, as terrorists, compatriots of
terrorists,
suicidal bombers, readers of Koran (a bomb making manual). Through portrayal of Chuck’s
character, of his friends AC and Jimbo, and of other Muslim characters like Mahmood, Ali, Shaman
etc.