Ayad Akhtar
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar, the Pulitzer Prize winning author for drama, seamlessly blends memoir and fiction. Akhtar uses experiences from his life as the skeletal framework which he fleshes out with fact and fiction. Where the memoir ends and the fiction begins is impossible to discern. Ultimately, it makes no difference. What emerges from this brilliant hybrid of a novel is a raw, convincing, and gripping portrait of America and of life post 9/11 for an American born Muslim son of immigrants.
Unfolding in the first-person point of view, the narrator and author of the novel have much in common. Both are born in the U.S., are the sons of Pakistani immigrants, and are successful authors awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama. But that is as far as we can go with the comparisons. We don’t know with any certainty when we slip from memoir to fiction or vice versa.
The novel reads like a memoir interspersed with a series of essays in which the narrator critiques American capitalism and its obsessive focus on materialism to the detriment of the health and well-being of society as a whole. Akhtar weaves history, political events, and real characters in his narrative to add to the confusing blend of reality versus fiction. His parents are successful doctors. His father embraces all things America, initially lending his whole-hearted support for Donald Trump. The narrator shares with his mother a more critical and nuanced perspective on all things America.
Although he was born in America and has lived all his life in America, the narrator experiences “othering” and bigotry as a Muslim person of color in a post 9/11 America. Those experiences, described in vivid and immersive detail, are chilling. His critique extends to fellow Muslims. He argues they have lost focus by adhering to rigid, fundamentalist thinking and by reacting to what others have said about their religion. He suggests they should deconstruct their own behaviors and attitudes and accept some measure of culpability for their failures instead of seeking to blame others.
The narrator’s voice is engaging, brutally honest, genuine, not always likable, and carries with it the appeal of self-disclosure. He struggles with identity. He experiences contradictions as an American born of immigrant parents. He interrogates the culture that victimizes him with its racism and bigotry. He feels the push and pull toward Islam and Muslims. He undergoes a temporary change in attitude when he experiences a moneyed lifestyle. He excoriates an America fragmented by race and class; the diminishing of its middle class; the lifetime of student debt; the unbridled greed of the health care industry; and the decline of critical thinking in education.
This combination of memoir and fiction delves deep and covers wide. It is unique, riveting, challenging, and compelling.
Highly recommended for its intensity, provocative thinking, originality of form, and sheer brilliance.