Crossing Borders: Queerness, Freedom, Race in Contemporary Bangladeshi Immigrant Writings

Abstract

When Bangladeshi-American Rukhsana Ali’s mother catches her daughter kissing a white girl, she is convinced that it is the result of “so much freedom.” Rukhsana’s parents whisk her off to Dhaka hoping to set her straight by finding her a suitable husband. Less dramatic in their reaction than Ali’s parents, Bangladeshi-Irish Nishat’s parents similarly worry that “too much freedom” is the cause after she comes out to them. Her mother gives her the silent treatment, making Nishat feel like a “ghost” in her home, and she finds comfort in the company of her Brazilian-Irish girlfriend Flávia, holding whose hand “is better than biryani.” Through the lens of Sabina Khan’s The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali (2019) andAdiba Jaigirdar’s The Henna Wars (2020), this paper addresses contemporary literary representations of the dilemmas faced by children of Bangladeshi immigrants – children who, on the one hand, reject parental expectations respecting sexuality (and, at least as the parents see it, family), while, on the other, they refuse to relinquish their cultural roots—roots symbolized by biryani, mehndi, grandmothers, and Bollywood. Further, the paper excavates the parents’ fear of the community’s reaction, both in the diaspora and back “home,” and traces their eventual acceptance of their children’s decision, revising, in the process, the meaning of family and the significance of the family’s immigration. The process of raising children extends the immigrant experience beyond anything the parents initially imagined, even as it pushes in a similar direction—beyond ascribed-community towards achieved-community and modern bourgeois family belonging