Lots of debate following Germaine Greer’s criticism of Monica Ali in The Guardian:
Reality bites | News | Guardian Unlimited Books
Greer certainly seems overly prescriptive when she takes Ali to task for not having a better grasp of Bengali:
She has forgotten her Bengali, which she would not have done if she had wanted to remember it.
Greer seems to have taken an unhealthy interest in the particulars of Ali’s personal history – it’s clear that she is strangely keen to discredit her and contest her right to explore Bangladeshi-ness in the UK. This obviously says more about Greer than it does about Ali: what’s it to you Germaine? Do Ali’s privileged education and comfortable material circumstances really disqualify her from writing about the community in Brick Lane?
Her approach to her Bengali characters is not all that different from
Paul Scott’s treatment of his Indian characters in The Raj Quartet. An
author may say she loves and respects the characters she has created.
But what hurts is precisely that: she has dared to create them.
The quotation above makes it clear that we GG has an agenda that predates this novel and has little to do with it.
Her closing remark about misrepresentation makes me think that it’s she who is out of touch, not Ali:
It hurts to be misrepresented, but there is no representation without
misrepresentation. London’s Eastenders don’t watch EastEnders, because
they don’t recognise its version of their demanding and rigorous
minority culture. They watch Coronation Street instead. Farmers don’t
listen to the Archers. And Bangladeshi Britons would be better off not
reading – or, when it comes out, seeing the film of – Brick Lane.
