Jhumpa lahiri sexy analysis

Lesson 15 Minimalism and Postcolonialism In our final lesson, we exam two examples of literary styles that came into vogue in the 1980s and 1990s: minimalism and postcolonialism. These styles are interesting for the degree that they emphasize the importance of storytelling. In both our texts, we see how people learn to cope with their dilemmas through communication. Let’s define them a bit more precisely: Minimalism Minimalism was never a literary movement in the sense that modernism was. It was defined more by its detractors than its practitioners, so the term itself carries a faintly pejorative or negative connotation to it. Essentially, minimalism describes a story in which all elements of character development and description have been deleted. A minimalist story is more observational than analytical, keeping outside of moods and psychological portraiture to emphasize the surface events of a story. Carver’s text is not a classic example of the mode, although Carver himself was considered the preeminent minimalist in the 1980s. Many minimalist stories are more negative; they offer a nihilistic glimpse of modern life that stresses the emptiness, the stunted emotion, and what Carver called the "dis-ease" of everyday existence. "Cathedral" is a good example of this. In an otherwise conventional exploration of alcoholism and adultery, the main point here is the observational quality of the narrator: he cannot experience what is going on, only observe it happening to himself. Notice the use of the present tense here and how it limits his actions. Postcolonialism Both Reed and Lahiri exemplify postcolonial writing, which is essentially a type of postmodernism that emphasizes ethnicity. Writers such as these two have won notoriety for discussing the daily lives of overlooked minorities, whether African-American, Chinese-American, or, in her case, Hispanic-American. As with Carver, notice the emphasis on storytelling. The Reed text is an experimental collage attempting to rewrite black culture into a positive, empowering device. It is a manifesto in the sense that it says blacks are no longer willing to allowing the meaning of their history to be written for them. “Sexy” is a more conventional story about the clash of cultures that occurs. It essentially dramatizes the relativity of cultural values and asks us to interrogate how we can claim one is better than another without prejudice. The main question this story asks is whether Western notions of beauty—the sexiness of the story—have corrupted the Indian character who wants to leave his wife. Notice how all things Western permeate the story: from the styles to the jogging, there is a sense that Indian culture no longer exists but that Western ways dominate all. Lahiri doesn’t go to the extreme that writers like Reed to do depict this as “imperialism”—instead she leaves it to us to drawn conclusions. ...