2. Sara Suleri's Meatless Days -- Novel or Autobiography? Suleri herself
does not term Meatless Days as an autobiography, but her publisher
markets it as one. Daniel Wolfe wrote in The Book Review that "the
writing is beautifully constructed and yet a little cold; Sara Suleri
expertly paces out the boundaries of her subject without giving the
reader the pleasure of getting inside." Suleri would respond to it that the
novel is not about getting inside but is about showing what happened,
without explanation, with "no introductions" (Interview, December 1990).
To be sure, she acknowledges that genre of autobiography, by its very
definition, engenders a form of self-censorship because it is one's own
choice what to include and what to leave out of the text. However, she
adds, "Forgetting is just about as important as what you remember." At
the same time, she does not believe in authorial control, saying that "a
narrative should shape itself." When she writes, "a lot of it is being
dictated by what is down there on the page; what I remembered and
forgot was beyond my control." Perhaps for this reason Suleri's prose is
peppered with the phrase "of course," as in the opening sentence cited
above: "Leaving Pakistan, was, of course, tantamount to giving up the
company of women." Suleri does not need to make many if any
revisions to her work; her first draft usually is her last.
3. The Selective Autobiographer in Meatless Days
Sarah Suleri's Meatless Days tackles an ambitious number of topics, ranging
from gender matters in Pakistan to the history and politics of the country, all
within the framework of the author's personal vignettes of her own life. The
book's scope is daunting, but Suleri lets us know throughout that she is not
telling us the whole story. Unlike many travel writers who try to conceal their
selectivity, Suleri is not afraid to alert the reader to the fact that many important
events in her life have been intentionally left out of the book. For example, she
informs us in parenthesis that she will not write about her sister's death: "For in
this story, Ifat will not die before our eyes”(103-4). Her circuitous (s r-ky -t s).
writing style, her habit of following the tangents of her own thought
associations rather than a clear narrative logic, make it evident that this is not
a self-contained or conclusive story, but one that will leave many unanswered
questions and hidden secrets. In the following passage, Suleri describes her
own reluctance at times to reach into her past to retrieve information that might
be germane to the topic at hand.
4. By admitting to this conscious aversion to bring back certain memories, Suleri is
distinctly outlining the terms of her writing, a writing that will produce a story
both enormously selective, and necessarily incomplete. But to travel back thus
far is too enfeebling, too bone-wearying a business for my imagination. It is
similar to my new reluctance to visit old Muslim tombs and contemplate again
what I know I'll find, that inlay of marble on the walls with their curious flat-faced
flowers, so dainty and scornful of their own decoration. And then the dead
center of the grave can sit so heavily sometimes, surrounded as it is with tiny
writing, words like capillaries to tighten in the head, as you read round and
round with them all ninety-nine of Allah's appellations. O light, O clarity, O
radiance, you read, until suddenly sequence becomes a vertiginous thing, and
your brain is momentarily short of blood or breath. I used to enjoy the
spaciousness of those places, the shoes-off of it, which put coolness at my feet.
Now, I am not sure I would stop to consult those images, even by accident, in a
passing book. [76] In this passage, Suleri explicitly defines the limitations of her
willingness to probe her own past. Suleri often makes use of extended, detailed
metaphors to explain abstract concepts, metaphors that often require a great
deal of mental acrobatics to comprehend fully. In this passage, she compares
bringing back old memories to walking among Muslim tombs and reading the
minute engravings upon them.
5. The allusion to the writing on the Muslim tombs draws attention to the status of
Suleri's own writing, especially when she claims that she would "not stop to
consult those images, even by accident, in a passing book." this meant to be
ironic that how does the act of reading the inscriptions on the tombs, described
as "vertiginous," relate to our own reading of Suleri's book. Post-Colonialism in
Meatless Days In Meatless Days, post-colonialism is used, like the English
language itself, self- consciously. Post-colonialism and English have become
not just historical links, but tools used by the authors to communicate their
unique, non-Western visions of life. Discussion of post-colonialism in this novel
illustrates the confrontations of two worlds, Western and colonized, but this
conflict is not bemoaned or decried. In fact, post-colonial rhetoric, metaphors,
and imagery have been appropriated in it, as it has the very use of English.
Meatless Days deliver a forceful image of a unique culture that has collided with
Western tradition in no uncertain way.
6. Works such as this can illustrate the effect the fermenting residue of colonial
power will ultimately have on nations confronting the dual identities of
indigenous and imposed culture. Meatless Days, colored by the effects of
colonialism, provides a unique vision that is not explicitly post-colonial in
nature. Meatless Days treats multiple themes (gender and sibling relations,
political strife, religion, etc.), but above all it is a personal novel, a celebration
and remembrance of her English mother. In communicating her personal
vision, Suleri necessarily writes about colonialism, for she is a Pakistani.
However, as a celebration of her mother, post-colonialism is conceptualized
as a communicating tool and metaphor. She asks, "How can I bring them
together in a room, that most reticent woman and that most demanding
man?... Papa's powerful discourse would surround her night and day" (p. 57).
Post-colonial rhetoric aids her in discussing her mother's relation to Pakistan
and herself.
7. Public and Private History in Sara Suleri's Meatless Days
Suleri constantly reminds the reader that she is writing a public history.
Even the death of her sister Ifat connects to chaotic politics in Pakistan,
for her family fears Ifat was murdered as a result of her father's political
leanings. The "alternative history" that Suleri calls Meatless Days is an
attempt to deal with private history in a public sphere, setting the two
"in dialogue." According to Suleri, she tried to create "a new kind of
historical writing, whereby I give no introductions whatsoever. I use the
names, the places, but I won't stop to describe them" (Interview,
December 1990). In contrast to other third world histories, which she
criticizes as too "explanatory," Meatless Days simply presents Pakistan
as it appeared to her. Using names and places without much definition,
description, or explanation was her "attempt to make them register as
immediately to the reader as it would to me." Some might argue with
her assertion, however, that she does not interpret.
8. The New York Times Book Review claimed, for example, that Suleri takes
"one step back for analysis with every two it takes toward description."
Indeed, some amount of reflection and interpretation is to be expected
when one writes from the present looking back on the past. At one point
she writes as she recounts a memory in the book, "Could that be it’s?" (p.
134) Here she is wondering, as she reflects back. Indeed, Suleri readily
admits, "How does one maintain a sense of privacy when you construct a
text like this?" and she acknowledges, "I'm sure I did reveal a lot" and that
Meatless Days is "a very private book" (Interview, December 1990). Suleri,
like Anglo-Pakistani author Salman Rushdie, weaves her own personal
history into that of Pakistan because the two entities are, as she says,
"inextricably connected to one another." Suleri set out to write a historical
novel, but one that is not based solely on facts and figures but rather is
based on the facts in interconnected public and private histories. The
deeply intimate aspect of the work, then, is not subjugated to the history of
Pakistan but, combined with her remarkable use of syntax and diction,
works instead to complement and redefine the country itself.
9. "I" Versus "They": The Textual and Communal Self in Sara
Suleri's Meatless Days
Although Meatless Days is more explicitly personal than Joan
Didion's The White Album or Slouching Towards Bethlehem, it
nevertheless belies a clean categorization as autobiography. Suleri,
links her personal story to the narrative of her culture. She conflates
her internal landscape with the external landscape so that what is
personal is never simply personal -- it is part of a larger question, a
more historical assertion. In turn, Suleri begins to "lose the sense of
the differentiated identity of history and [her]self" (14). Her mind
becomes a "metropolis" (74) "a legislated thing" (87). Suleri
struggles with a feeling of national displacement: her motherland is
Pakistan, and yet her own mother -- White, Welsh, representative of
the colonizer -- can barely speak the "mother tongue." She is a
woman from the third-world, and yet, as she puts it, "There are no
women in the third-world" (20), "Pakistan is a place where the
concept of woman was not really part of an available vocabulary".
By rooting her self in language, Suleri addresses her postcolonial
identity.
10. She deals with the "the unpronouncability of [her] life" (138) by
becoming "engulfed by grammar" (155), by "living in plot" (154). The
manner in which Suleri constructs the identity of her family and
friends, sheds light on the way in which she constructs her own
identity, in discussing them, Suleri uses the same techniques as in
discussing herself: she fuses somatic discourse with textual discourse.
The sister who was once "a house I rented" (4) becomes after her
death "the news" (68), and later, a "municipality" (104). Her mother,
who "seemed to live increasingly outside the limits of her body" (156),
becomes "the land [her father] had helped to make" (140) and later,
"the past [Pakistan] sought to forget" (164). Her face is described as
"wearing like the binding of a book" (151). Even her friend, Muskatori,
is represented as such a convincing piece of "land" that, as Suleri
declares, "they could build an airport on [her]" (70). Suleri refers to her
own "schizoid trick" (personality disorder) of disconnecting the syntax
of "life and body" (68) and, again and again, we see the trick, or
technique, in action. The book, which is self-consciously intertextual
and academic, turns everything in its wake into a construction of
language, a piece of text. The body becomes a narrative device, a
metaphor for -- but also a way of dealing with -- its fragmented
surroundings.
11. When Suleri leaves Pakistan, she remarks that she "was not a nation anymore"
(123). More than a denial of physicality, the statement contains an explicit
correlation between her self and her narrative subject. She abstracts history --
nationhood -- into her body, and then reads her body for historical clues. At
various points in the book, Suleri describes herself as a "landscape" (87), an
"otherness machine" (105), and a "state" (127). In one particularscene, Suleri
and Shahid swim together and get bitten by fireflies. Suleri interprets the bites as
"tiny writing on [her] skin" (108). When Shahid attempts to apologize, Suleri tells
him it doesn't matter: "It never had any plot to it anyway" (108). In this scene,
Suleri, like Didion, dramatically broadens the personal and physical. She turns
this scene of physical play into a scene of textual play. She interprets the
blemishes on her body as metaphors for the place she holds in the community:
she is written upon, or, colonized.
12. Throughout Meatless Days , food functions as a link between body and nation.
In Meatless Days , this logic holds: through food -- what the body consumes --
dramas of national identity play out. In the second chapter, Suleri writes that
"Food certainly gave us a way not simply of ordering a week or a day but of
living inside history, measuring everything we remembered against a
chronology of cooks. Just as Papa had his own yardstick -- a world he loved --
with which to measure history and would talk about the Ayub era, or the
second martial law, or the Bhutto regime, so my sisters and I would place
ourselves in time by remembering and naming cooks" (34). Whereas her
father measures history by keeping track of male heads of state, Suleri
measures history by keeping track of what enters her body. The passage
makes explicit not only the connection between body and history, but it reveals
a gendered dichotomy: the males participate directly in history; the women, on
the other hand, exist only in metaphorical relation to it. They keep track of
history by what they consume, by what enters and fills their bodies. This blurry
relation between body and nation/language, is one that structures the novel.
13. A Method to Her Madness: The Style of Sara Suleri
Sara Suleri's Meatless Days is an incredible literary work. Part memoirist, part
sage writer, Suleri shows us the wonder and the anguish of her childhood and
surrounds us with the bold colors and sundry sounds of a volatile postcolonial
Pakistan. Her intensely original style and flair for description leave the reader
with the sense of having read a complete and utterly true story. Each chapter is
brimming with memories from her past and present, interwoven with dialogue,
thought, and breathtaking description. The book, which is written in a free
flowing form, resembles in many ways the way a mind thinks: constantly
drawing upon different musings in order to come a final conclusion. The most
striking aspects of Meatless Days are how credible the story feels and the
uniqueness of Suleri's personal ethos. Suleri, who appears to bar nothing from
the reader, presents herself as a warm and trusted interpreter.
14. She unlike any other writer is credible, unfaltering and her personal ethos
is strikingly well defined. Perhaps the most expedient method by which an
author can create credibility is to prove that she knows more about a topic
than the reader does; more intricate details; more complicated names and
histories. Including exhaustive detail about a topic proves to us that our
author was truly a part of the event, or that she studied the issue in great
depth, either outcome solidifying our faith in her credibility. Suleri, McPhee
and Didion all use this method in their work. Throughout Meatless Days,
Suleri intermittently updates us about the changing political situation in
Pakistan, each time mentioning exact dates, and numerous names which
have not made the evening news for many decades: How different
Pakistan would be today if Ayub had held elections at that time, in 1968,
instead of holding on until the end and then handing military power over to-
of all people! -- Yahya . . . If Ayub had held elections there might still have
been a deathly power struggle between Bhutto and Mujib: Mujib, the
elected leader of East Pakistan; Bhutto, of West Pakistan. [120]
15. The detailed descriptions, facts, and citations that an author puts in a book help
to build her credibility, yet strangely, what the author leaves out can be just as
important. Although Meatless Days recounts her own thoughts and history, Suleri
admits that there are aspects of her life in Pakistan that she will never fully
comprehend and thus can not explain to us. When writing about her brother,
Shahid in the section entitled "The Right Path; Or, They Took the Wrong Road,"
she confesses her imprecise understanding of her brother: "We had always
thought of him, having as he did, the greater mobility of the male, as the most
Pakistani of us: it never crossed my mind that he would choose to stay away or
choose a life that would not allow him to return" (101). Though she confesses
that she does not have a full knowledge of the topic on which she writes, we
continue to value Suleri's interpretation. Her disclosure of her lack of certain
understanding, in fact adds to her credibility. Nonfiction pieces are meant to be
loyal to actuality and, as fellow human beings, we understand that when one is
writing about certain significance or the inspiration of another it is impossible to
possess complete understanding. Thus, admitting a lack of expertise in certain
areas helps to confirm the actuality of the story. What authors leave out of their
stories is just as important as what they leave in. It helps to build credibility when
an author admits to us that she will not tell us about something because her lack
of understanding will not allow her, but it is also effective when an author tells us
that there are some topics about which she chooses not indulge us.
16. Scattered throughout Meatless Days are mentions of a woman named
Dale. It is apparent that Suleri cherishes her, yet she never divulges
where they met or even the nature of their relationship. The modest
amount of information about Dale is a clear choice made by Suleri,
who even writes in the closing pages of her book: "I will not mention
Dale at any length, although great length occurs to me (be distracted,
elsewhere, Dale, as you read through this shortest sentence)" (176).
This line adds further to the mystery of Dale and to our frustration
about our lack of knowledge. But Suleri's refusal to bestow upon us
her entire story creates credibility. Her story is a personal one. Thus, it
is expected that there are certain people and memories from her past
that she would want to keep for herself. Although we may be frustrated
and curious, we expect that if her story is in fact credible she, like the
rest of us, holds certain memories sacred and will shield them from
the world.
17. The powerful and effective nonfiction writer like Suleri is a trusted interpreter of
events. The greater the displays of knowledge, prowess in written word, and
alluring personal style, the more effectual the author is as a trusted interpreter,
yet she must make heed not to inject her writing with too much of her own
opinion and judgments. Suleri's seemingly emotionless and judgment-free
writing style can at times take readers by surprise because her writing is so
extremely personal. Her writing about her father's sudden divorce from his first
wife, Baji, after having fallen in love with her mother, is completely free from any
judgment of her father's insensitive action toward his daughter Nuz: Mamma at
twenty-five must have been a talking thing-but I would hardly have thought that
sufficient for him to pick up his life with Baji and just put it in his pocket. Oh,
knowing his makeup I have no doubt he sang with pain, but he went through
with it anyway. The divorce was conducted by mail, and in Karachi Nuz at nine
was told that her grandparents were her parents, that Baji was her sister. [116]
Suleri was wise in omitting many of her own judgments out of Meatless Days.
The book is already charged with her very personal and very painful stories.
Thus if she had included more of her own judgments and emotions, her
credibility would have been threatened, and the book would be at risk for
appearing too slanted a view. In brilliant displays of her writing expertise, Suleri,
like Didion, often uses other means then direct statement to convey her
emotions or opinions.
18. Much of the uniqueness of her style comes from her
ability to substitute other images as metaphors for her
emotion. In the chapter "Goodbye to the Greatness of
Tom," Suleri describes her relationship and its end with a
man named Tom by piecing together images of their time
together, thoughts about being alone, and scraps of
conversations with her sisters. At the conclusion of the
chapter when she describes Tom's final words to her, she
does not write about her own sadness but instead lets
her interpretation of his words portray the emotion for her:
In the closing words of the chapter, Suleri successfully
uses the image of the wind whipping through an empty
cave to portray her sadness. Further, her certainty that
she would hear Tom's name in the wind clearly conveys
that she was affected by the ending of their relationship.
Suleri's subtle yet stirring manner of conveying her
emotions is unparalleled. This ability enables her to
weave her own personality throughout her writing while
still maintaining her credibility.
19. Just as central to the effectiveness of a piece as an author's
credibility is her personal ethos. A writer's personal ethos is the
lens through which she views the world and the manner in which
she projects this view to her reader. The writer's voice is of course
extremely significant to the personal ethos of the piece. The
words of the people about whom the author writes also help to
create its message. In Meatless Days, Suleri's quotes people in a
style that is uniquely her own; so much her own in fact that she
often seems to be feeding her own eloquent words right into the
characters mouths. In "Goodbye to the Greatness of Tom," she
quotes what her former boyfriend supposedly said to her once in
sadness: "'I am sick,' he said in self remorse when he last spoke
to me. 'It clutches at my heart and does not let me move,' he
wailed; 'It puts me out of pulse and frightens me' (89). It can be
safely assumed that her boyfriend, in a moment of intense
emotion, did not speak so poetically and explain himself in
symbols. It is also safe to assume that when her mother
expressed her worry about her biracial children she did not
wonder to herself, as Suleri tells us: "What will happen to these
pieces of yourself‹you, and yet not you‹when you dispatch them
into the world? Have you made sufficient provision for their
extraordinary shadows?" (161).
20. Although it is apparent that Suleri gives us her own
lyrical interpretation of other people's words, the
constant weaving of her own voice throughout every
aspect of her story is enormously effective in creating
the personal ethos of Meatless Days. The book is a
memoir and as such we look to be taken to Suleri's world
as she sees it. By shaping the character's words into a
voice that is more her own, she creates a world held
together with the majesty of her own prose. The fluidity
of her voice as narrator is never broken, not even broken
in the words of other people. It goes with out saying that
Suleri, McPhee, and Didion are all masters of prose.
Credibility and personal ethos in the nonfiction piece can
be helped by detailed information, subtlety in employing
judgment, and well placed quotations, but what ties any
great piece together, any piece that makes you quiet
with inspiration, twinge with recognition or shiver with
emotion, is the writer's ability to create brilliantly crafted
words.
21. Suleri's greatest strength in Meatless Days is her flair for description. Her book
focuses a great deal on Pakistan, a land most readers have never seen, thus
her ability to create striking visual images is at the heart of the book. When
writing about her trip back to Pakistan to run away from pain in her life Suleri
silences the reader with the grandeur of her description: I went in search of
another cure from him, back to the Himalayas of my childhood, the winsome
gullies that climb up the hills beyond the more standard attractions of Murree-a
mere hill station of a place, with its mall, its restaurants, and its jostle. [86] In
this short description of a hill side, we can truly envision the mountain with "its
winsome gullies", a sweet haven from the bustle of the city below. Each of her
chapters are infused with awe-inspiring descriptions which make the world of
Pakistan come alive to the reader. Upon finishing Meatless Days, a silence
immediately came to me. I knew that if I were to once again crack open the
now wrinkled pages, I would immediately be taken back to Suleri's intensely
visual world, to the colorful streets of Pakistan, the dusty and uncertain roads
of her childhood, or to the cold sidewalks of New Haven. Meatless Days is a
jewel of a book, full of emotion and astounding insight. Sara Suleri is a master
writer, who creates a warm and effective personal ethos and develops a bond
of trust with the reader. There is clear technique and skill involved in nonfiction
writing, and just as a blacksmith must learn the tricks and steps to shaping
metal, writers too have steps to follow in their craft.
22. To read Meatless Days is exhausting. Not because the
book is boring by any stretch of the mind, but because
Suleri writes so effectively that the reader feels transported
to her world. We are involved in the arguments with her
father, emotionally wrenched by the death of her sister, and
touched beyond words by the enduring love of a family that
cannot be together. Sara Suleri must have tirelessly
studied the techniques and methods used by remarkable
nonfiction writers, for her implementation of their craft in
Meatless Days is breathtaking. Works Cited Suleri, Sara.
Meatless Days. The University of Chicago Press, 1991.
McPhee, John. The Crofter and the Laird. Farrar,Straus,
and Giroux, 1998. Didion, Joan.The White Album.
Farrar,Straus, and Giroux, 1990. Fitzerald, F.Scott.The
Great Gatsby. Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1995. [Fatima
Abdul Jabbar]
