The Reluctant Fundamentalist
May 8th, 2014 by mbprasad
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is an open-ended story about changing identity post 9/11. The narrator, Changez, grapples with how society views him and how he views himself as he moves from Pakistan to America to attend Princeton. He spends much of his time trying to fit in and be a successful businessman. However, eventually Changez realizes that he has become the very thing that he hates. He conflates arrogance with being American, and the changing political climate post 9/11 fuels this.
What struck me most about this reading was the struggle that Changez has with his identity, particularly what it means to be a Pakistani in America. This brought up a lot of questions about immigrant life in America and how people identify with their past homelands and their current country of residence.
I painted this silhouette of a contemplative man and overlapped it with the two flags of his identity. My painting is supposed to also be stylistically similar to pop art or modern interpretations of art, because of the flipped colors and the silhouette style. I did this to mirror the simple writing style of the book. I made the man’s silhouette contemplative because of the contemplation Changez does throughout the book.
I do not mean to offend anyone by combining the American flag and the Pakistani flag into one image, but I thought that this best represented the identity struggle Changez faces in the story. He gives up trying to fit in and instead chooses to embrace his roots. He sees this as an act of solidarity with the people of his nation. I also wanted this image to evoke questions of what it means to be a Muslim in America in a time when the “War on Terror” has led to discrimination of Muslim citizens or Middle-Eastern appearing people all over the country. I know that Changez is anti-American by the end of the story, so I thought about what it would mean to put the American flag on his image. I can’t help but wonder if things would have been different for Changez had he not already felt like he had to try so hard to fit in, despite the fact that he was successful and educated. That is why I think that Changez is a person defined by both nations because both countries affect his search for identity.