Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows (2009)

Pakistani writer’s 5th novel

Interlocking histories and geographiesruins of Nagasaki

Partition of India

Pakistan 1980s

New York post 9/11

Afghanistan post US-invasion

The past/the present• “How did it come to this?”: Complex shared histories: against

the clash of civilizations thesis (Islam vs West; us/them)• Historical correlations between seemingly unconnected places

—writing against historical exceptionalism (of 9/11; of Partition, etc)

• Histories of imperialism and neo-imperialism• Nations and borders policed through violence and destruction• Nations and identities: religious, linguistic• States, ideologies, individual fanatics: agents of terror• Nagasaki/Dilli/Kandahar/Ground Zero

Hiroko Tanaka

• Figure of gendered transnationalism--unhomely

• Young school-teacher turned munitions factory worker; daughter of an artist who is designated as a traitor for speaking out against the emperor and militarism

• Translator of languages

Modern girl• Modern girls ( モダンガール , modan gaaru)

(also shortened to "moga") were Japanese women who followed Westernized fashions and lifestyles in the 1920s. These moga were Japan's equivalent of America's flappers, India's kallege ladki, Germany's neue Frauen, France's garçonnes, or China's modeng xiaojie (摩登小姐).[1] By viewing her through a Japanese vs Western lens, the nationalist press could use the modern girl archetype to blame such failings as frivolity, sexual promiscuity, and selfishness on foreign influence.[2] The period was characterized by the emergence of working class young women with access to money and consumer goods. Using aristocratic culture as their standard of Japaneseness, the critics of the modern girl condemned her working class traits as "unnatural" for Japanese. Modern girls were depicted as living in the cities, being financially and emotionally independent, choosing their own suitors, and apathetic towards politics.[3] The woman's magazine was a novelty at this time and the modern girl was the model consumer, someone more often found in advertisements for cosmetics and fashion than in real life. The all-female Takarazuka Revue, established in 1914,[4] and the novel Naomi (1924) are outstanding examples of modern girl culture.

• Japanese modern girls—Hiroko’s mother

Japanese modern girls

Gender and modernity

• “I want a modern wife” p. 52• P. 130• P. 132

History as loss/Unbelonging

• Hiroko from Nagasaki• Sajjad from Delhi• Henry from India• Abdullah from Karachi

• Condition of modernity• Displacement• Memory and nostalgia: “the light in Kandahar”; the clear

blue skies of Nagasaki—remembered in New York (311)

Ghalib’s home in Dilli

Poetic/Linguistic transnationalism

• Imagining of different, alternate histories of solidarity and belonging, unmoored from place and identity

A Ghalib couplet in Urdu

Japanese writing