4. Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

4. Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People who Read Them

Elif Batuman, a Turkish-American woman who wants to grow up to become a writer, instead somehow finds herself getting a PhD in Russian literature. This collection of essays is about her graduate school experience (including endless questions on why she studies Russian literature instead of Turkish). Each of the essays focus on a particular moment in her studies: the trauma of attempting to help step up and run a conference, attending the quite strange International Tolstoy Conference in Russia despite the airline having lost her luggage, writing a paper on an ice palace in St. Petersburg, her relationship with another student. It's a very funny book, although unfortunately the essays don't hang together very well, and there's no sort of overall narrative. My favorite parts were the strange people she had to deal with, many of whom will probably sound familiar to anyone who has had to deal with academics.

In my opinion, the best essays were those dealing with the summer Batuman lived in Uzbekistan, in order to learn the language. You see, at her school PhD students are required to teach Russian 101 to undergraduates. However, as one of the few students who is not a native Russian speaker, Batuman is afraid to take on teaching this class, convinced that she'll make too many mistakes. So when she hears about an opportunity to teach Uzbek instead, she goes for it. Of course, she doesn't speak Uzbek, but neither does anyone else at the school, so they won't know if she messes up. And so she heads off to Uzbekistan for the summer. As you could probably guess, it does not work out as she expected.

A very funny book, although fairly forgettable. A fun read.

Comments

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

It sounds very interesting, it's definitely one for the TBR pile.

May I ask you (and the community at large)a question, though? How does a Turkish writer qualify as POC?

To clarify, I'm Italian and I've long had a growing suspicion that the English-speaking world has a different definition for POC than my own milieu. For me a Turkish writer would be 'Mediterranean'like a Greek, Spanish or Southern Italian one, not POC.

I'm honestly confused.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's a really good question, and to be honest, I hadn't given it much thought before writing this post. The Turkish people I've known don't seem to consider themselves white, but I haven't asked them about it in those terms, so I could have a mistaken impression. I also don't know what the more general opinion of race in Turkey is.

If anyone would prefer me to take the post down, I'm completely willing to.

[recklessblues.livejournal.com]

I think that here in America a Turkish person would definitely be considered a PoC. Part of it is cultural. Turkish culture has more in common with Central Asian and Middle Eastern cultures than the cultures that are part of the general perception of whiteness.

Alao, at least genetically, Turkish people are Central Asian (to what extent is highly contested in the anthropological community) as well as Mediterranean.

I know that some Turkish people consider themselves white, but others don't. Tricky question.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

The definition for communities of color that I have learned in the US is about imperialism, and whether a culture has been subject to Western colonialism either through direct rule (like, say, Nigeria) or other methods (say, China during the Boxing War). Under that definition, the carving up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI would definitely qualify Turks as POCs.

This definition comes in part from efforts to move away from genetic ideas of race, which are often linked to old racist ideas, toward more political ideas. That said, a lot of USians are used to thinking of POC as "anyone not of European descent" and defining Europe fairly narrowly. Part of this is because European people of Mediterranean descent have been thoroughly assimilated into whiteness in the US, and people from Turkey and other Muslim countries (with the possible exception of Lebanon, and maybe even not that) have not.

This is a really fraught issue in the US, because post-9/11 a lot of racial profiling has focused on people of Middle Eastern or Central Asian descent, and there have been a number of court decisions that ruled such people were "white" and thus not protected by US anti-discrimination laws, which have historically focused on other communities.

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the explanation! The question in US culture appears to be a lot more convoluted and loaded than I thought...

I think it's the 'color' part that confused me to no end, here when one speaks of 'people of color'it is actually a 'chromatic' distinction (aka 'not pink'), when we speak of the post-colonial countries we speak of 'former colonies' or indeed 'post-colonial world' or any of a lot of words that don't mention or imply color, those for us are two different, not necessarily related elements.
For instance here a 'typical' Sikh would be seen as non POC, while a member of a darker-skinned Indian population would be thought of as POC, but both would be considered together as 'citizen of a former colonial country' if we were speaking of history or politics, while if we were speaking of ethnology or pre-colonial history, or Indian cultures we'll go with 'peoples of the Indian sub-continent'...

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

This is a really fraught issue in the US, because post-9/11 a lot of racial profiling has focused on people of Middle Eastern or Central Asian descent, and there have been a number of court decisions that ruled such people were "white" and thus not protected by US anti-discrimination laws, which have historically focused on other communities.

I suspect this is related to the census protests by Arab and Iranian Americans--the reasons why people of Middle Eastern heritage have legally been considered white historically, is tied up in explicitly racist attitudes (and religious bigotry) about immigration.

I can't seem to find a good overview of the history, but this factsheet on Arab American immigration (http://www.pbs.org/itvs/caughtinthecrossfire/arab_americans.html) touches on some of it.

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

I see.
Over here it's different: anyone who doesn't show evident extra-European heritage is seen as white (meaning that a Turkish person who looks central Asian would be considered Asian, one that doesn't would not, unless him/herself identified as such)

Cultural elements don't really enter the equation, culture is (not in everybody's mind, but generally)kept separate from ethnicity. For instance one can very well be a practicing Muslim and live into a culture steeped in Islamic tradition and be of Indo-European stock (like most Iranians, for instance)

[(Anonymous)]

Three nights in Tokyo?

[(Anonymous)]

東京に4泊。

[(Anonymous)]

東京に５泊。

[(Anonymous)]

東京に one week.