“But that was before 9/11”: The work of memory in Neesha Meminger’s Shine, Coconut Moon

Abstract

This essay analyzes Shine, Coconut Moon’s (2009) delineation of the post-9/11 resurgence of racial anxieties in the perception of the turbaned Sikh male with the intent of highlighting how the present affects our engagements with unfinished pasts. In directing critical attention to the reactivation of Orientalist frames differentiating between minoritized subjects in post-9/11 United States and the racialization of minoritized subjects as effects of hate violence, the novel reveals how both individuals and groups are unmade and remade in and through such political “crises”. Contesting the United States’ positioning of itself as a hospitable and generous nation that has been infiltrated by terrorists, the novel insists that it is normative whiteness that threatens the civil liberties of immigrants and diasporics of minority backgrounds in the United States. By bearing witness and offering testimonies, the fictional victims of post-9/11 hate violence in Shine, Coconut Moon rupture the notion of 9/11 as a fixed “event” and urge the American state and the general public to take responsibility for inflicting pain on myriad others. The narrative’s call for the recognition and acknowledgement of the pain of diasporic and immigrant subjects offers hope for reimagining community beyond hatreds based on stereotypical divisions between Them and Us.

Keywords:

• 9/11
• Neesha Meminger
• Shine, Coconut Moon
• turban
• memory
• racism

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

1. Muneer Ahmad argues that “individual hate crimes and governmental policies of racial profiling [ … ] mutually reinforce a shared racist ideology” (“Rage” 1264). In his view, “post-September 11 hate violence should be understood as a form of racial profiling” (1277).

2. When Molly asks Sandeep why Rick Taylor, Chuck Banfield and Simon Monroe were pelting bags of garbage and soda cans at Sandeep’s car, when he didn’t “do anything”, Sandeep responds: “Tell them that [ … ] Sikhs, Muslims, Arabs, Indians – it’s all the same to those guys” (55; emphasis in original).

3. Ironically, while Meminger interrogates such Orientalist homogenization, the influence of Orientalist discourse is evident in her classification of Samar’s classmate Shazia who immigrated to the United States from the United Arab Emirates (207) as a South Asian (242).

4. For critiques of liberal inclusion and multicultural hospitality, see Derrida and Ahmed.

5. Ahmed argues that being orientated around something, such as “whiteness”, is a way of centering the self around that thing or constituting the self at the center of that thing (Queer 116).

6. Simon writes: “Indeed, the enactment of cultural memories of loss is about the production and distribution of stories with the potential to change our own stories. [ … ] Such change offers the possibility of transforming how I am prepared to give an account of myself and where I take courage to admit to responsibility for myself and my relation to others” (“Altering” 371).

7. It is worth noting here that Rais Bhuyian, a Bangladeshi Muslim whom Stroman shot in the eye on 21 September 2001, spearheaded the attempt to get Stroman off death row, seeking to create a climate of forgiveness and reconciliation. Bhuyian writes: “I believe that by sparing his life, we will give Mr Stroman a chance to realize, through time and maturity, that hate doesn’t bring a peaceful solution to any situation” (n. pag.).

8. In addition, the continuing hate attacks on racialized/Orientalized subjects suggest that 9/11 is not a past event; it is something that individuals and communities are still living through. For example, in July 2006, in San Jose California, a Sikh man, Iqbal Singh, was stabbed in the neck by Everett Thompson, a neighbor, who said in police interviews that he stabbed Singh because he wanted to kill a Taliban (Gokhale).