"Homeland Elegies" by Ayad Akhtar

Homeland Elegies moved me in a way few books have recently. Despite that (because of it?), I've struggled to articulate my feelings in writing. I've put off writing about it. So instead of delaying more because of the lack of coherence, I'm just putting down my thoughts. Excuse the lack of transitions.

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I had a rather obvious epiphany when reading Homeland Elegies, an assemblage of stories and reflections about the narrator's Pakistani parents and his own life and success as a Muslim-American. In the wake of the protests last spring, I've read several books that address, in some way, the Black American experience (Intimations, Homegoing, Survival Math, The Hate U Give, White Fragility, Red at the Bone). However, it's been awhile since I've thought much about Muslim discrimination--perhaps not since Trump's travel ban several years ago. Homeland Elegies made me newly angry at myself and my country. 

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I love books that straddle the division of fiction and nonfiction. The cover of Homeland Elegies identifies the book as a "novel" on the cover, but the book's narrator--Ayad Akhtar--shares the same basic biographical history as Ayad Akhtar the author. And beyond the biographical similarities, the book very much feels like a statement of author-Akhtar's view of America and his place in it as a Muslim. Yet it's funny how discomforting I found the fiction/nonfiction ambiguity. I found myself constantly questioning: Is he really saying that about his mother? Of course, it's not really his mother. But why would I be bothered if that was true about his mother? Did he really have that experience with the police officer? Why would I question whether he really did? Akhtar plays with the reader's subconscious discomfort about Muslims in America.

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There's a point in the novel where narrator-Akhtar is having a conversation with Riaz Rind, a Muslim philanthropist who takes Akhtar under his wing and ultimately makes him rich. They're discussing the portrayal of Muslims in America, and Akhtar quotes Norbert Elias, a Jewish sociologist, who wrote, "The established majority takes its we-image from a minority of its best, and shapes a they-image of the despised outsiders from the minority of their worst" (139). Rind feels a compulsion to highlight the very best of Muslim-America in order to counteract the dominant "they-image" of Muslims as anti-American terrorists. Akhtar, on the other hand, feels more conflicted, and his novel is an expression of that conflict. 

His characters aren't simple American patriots railing against Islamic terrorists. Instead, they're complicated people with complicated feelings about their homeland (Pakistan, for Akhtar's family), America, and the relationship between the two. Homeland Elegies was the first time I read about, for example, 9/11 from this multi-faceted viewpoint.

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Akhtar describes several runs in with police. Given all the news coverage about Black Americans' experience at the hands of police officers, the stories shouldn't have been so shocking, but yet I felt a visceral fear when I saw just how vulnerable Akhtar--and other Muslim or Muslim-appearing individuals--are against racist white Americans, particularly those in law enforcement. Despite all I've read and heard, my default is still a naïve view that "right will win" that "justice will be served." Akhtar's stories were yet another reminder of the blinding quality of white privilege. 

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I saw some excerpted blurb about the novel that compared it to The Great Gatsby, which is not a particularly apt comparison beyond both works' focus on the failures of the American Dream--the appeal and shortcomings of this country. Even more so than Gatsby, Homeland Elegies is far-reaching and far-encompassing book, with a whole section about debt-buying and capitalism that almost lost me. Still, I'd recommend it for anyone looking for a nuanced look at America.