An end is another beginning - Misrepresentation & lost in translation
An end is another beginning
In Abdoulela’s short story, The Museum, we meet Shadia, a Sudanese student and Bryan, who is a Scottish student as they begin a friendship. The details we learn about each person also reveal the important contrasts, things that are beyond the characters and the museum. The interaction between Bryan and Shadia and their interpretation of the museum exhibition presents many of the issues we’ve been discussing in class.
Misrepresentation in the museum causes tension for Shadia, “Nothing was of her, nothing belonged to her life at home, what she missed. Here was Europe’s vision, the cliches about Africa: cold and old” (2001a, p. 115) Shadia’s interpretation is one based on her own, lived experience while Bryan’s is by looking, and from books. Contrast this to The Smithsonian’s interactive website, http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/ which has a variety of information and “Included are historical and contemporary objects from the Museum’s collections, as well as commissioned sculptures, textiles, and pottery. Video interactives and sound stations provide selections from contemporary interviews, literature, proverbs, prayers, folk tales, songs, and oral epics”.
When we are first introduced to Bryan, we learn about him through Shadia’s observations. As a reader we learn Bryan as a character by forming an interpretation of him based on his habits, his physical features, his hand-writing, his actions, his speech. This is how Shadia gets to know Bryan. In particular, I enjoy the moment that Shadia notices Bryan’s earring. She teases him about his hair too. It doesn’t take long for him to remove his earring and also cut his hair.
The ending of the story, Bryan said, “Museums change. I can change -”
I think about this statement and how over time, things do change. Our interpretations can change. Bryan cut off his hair and took off his earring after Shadia commented to him - these are physical things that is his own presentation to the world, to Shadia, and to us the reader. It is a physical change, but other aspects of Bryan’s character, his identity we
assume are stable in this story. These physical attributes give us a description of Bryan, just as artifacts have attributes, are measurable, are quantifiable and can be classified, typified. However, it is limiting with only an objective interpretation.
If we take note, the narrator tells us that Bryan doesn’t pronounce Shadia’s name correctly. A name is a label, a personal and unique thing a person grows up with and identifies with. It is similar to the way in which objects can be misconstrued - the museum exhibit shows a history of Africa and Scotland. However, the museum displays African culture and artifacts as being possessions of the Scottish, showing the trade and exchange of these artifacts.
Once again, the dialogue is spaced between Bryan and Shadia. Shadia is homesick, and conflicted by the museum’s representation of African culture.
Since interpretations can change, purpose can too - in the museum context. The way Bryan and Shadia interact throughout this story builds up tension because of the way each of them experiences judgement and revealing about themselves. Shadia did not respond to Bryan’s comment about being able to change, and the narrator tells us that if she was strong she’d “have explained and not tired of explaining… if she was not small in the museum… she would not have made his trip to Mecca real, not only in a book” (Aboulela, 2001a, p. 119). Bryan invites Shadia to share, to challenge the dominant (meaning) but she doesn’t say anything.
Fom the BBC website, I read about Mecca, and how Muslims go there to gather once a year. “It is a ritual that is designed to promote the bonds of Islamic brotherhood and sisterhood by showing that everyone is equal in the eyes of Allah”.
In this story, the dynamic between Shadia and Bryan is not evenly distributed. They are both subject to the museum and misrepresentation. I feel I can relate to this way in which Bryan and Shadia interact with each other and in the museum. Do you focus on the details or the big picture, the vision? Details do make up the big picture, and I think details are important. Shadia’s experience is memory-based and it doesn’t correspond to the museum’s representation. Bryan asks her, but Shadia cannot express herself to him. She can’t and doesn’t explain.
I often feel that way about myself when people ask me personal questions. What I mean is, for example I feel detached from my Chinese culture, other than having heard stories from my mother growing up and my dad’s memories. When I make personal changes, or come to important realizations about myself that I want to share, what I want to do, I find I have to just do, just live it and then explain myself. I often have a difficult time arguing with another person, and I’m not sure why but I’d like to figure this out.
word count: 768
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This is my professor's response to me:
Taina Chahal Says:
April 16th, 2011 at 8:01 pm e
Your post is an interesting reading of “The Museum.” It is true that Shadia’s experience of the museum is memory-based and based on her experiences; the artifacts, their arrangement, the texts, and the depiction of colonial Scottish men, cause her to become disoriented, to feel small. She, as a woman of colour and a Muslim, is too often answerable to dominant society representations so she feels she cannot explain what she feels. She is tired of explaining herself. Her reaction is symbolic of the compulsion put upon people of colour and Muslims to explain themselves to “the center.”
To take up your discussion in your last paragraph, some of this resistance (or unwillingness or inability) to explain yourself (even if it is subconscious), stems from the ways the power relations play out in everyday life. It stems from ideas of who is considered Canadian (unhyphenated, needing no explanation of where they are from) and who is considered Canadian only after the fact of some ancestral or cultural belonging (the hyphenated Chinese-Canadian, for example). This happens too often especially when a person is marked as racially other. They are expected to explain themselves. To go back to the story, this is one of the reasons why Shadia can’t bridge the gap between Bryan and herself. While Bryan may be different, his behaviour doesn’t make dominant power relations disappear.
In Abdoulela’s short story, The Museum, we meet Shadia, a Sudanese student and Bryan, who is a Scottish student as they begin a friendship. The details we learn about each person also reveal the important contrasts, things that are beyond the characters and the museum. The interaction between Bryan and Shadia and their interpretation of the museum exhibition presents many of the issues we’ve been discussing in class.
Misrepresentation in the museum causes tension for Shadia, “Nothing was of her, nothing belonged to her life at home, what she missed. Here was Europe’s vision, the cliches about Africa: cold and old” (2001a, p. 115) Shadia’s interpretation is one based on her own, lived experience while Bryan’s is by looking, and from books. Contrast this to The Smithsonian’s interactive website, http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/ which has a variety of information and “Included are historical and contemporary objects from the Museum’s collections, as well as commissioned sculptures, textiles, and pottery. Video interactives and sound stations provide selections from contemporary interviews, literature, proverbs, prayers, folk tales, songs, and oral epics”.
When we are first introduced to Bryan, we learn about him through Shadia’s observations. As a reader we learn Bryan as a character by forming an interpretation of him based on his habits, his physical features, his hand-writing, his actions, his speech. This is how Shadia gets to know Bryan. In particular, I enjoy the moment that Shadia notices Bryan’s earring. She teases him about his hair too. It doesn’t take long for him to remove his earring and also cut his hair.
The ending of the story, Bryan said, “Museums change. I can change -”
I think about this statement and how over time, things do change. Our interpretations can change. Bryan cut off his hair and took off his earring after Shadia commented to him - these are physical things that is his own presentation to the world, to Shadia, and to us the reader. It is a physical change, but other aspects of Bryan’s character, his identity we
assume are stable in this story. These physical attributes give us a description of Bryan, just as artifacts have attributes, are measurable, are quantifiable and can be classified, typified. However, it is limiting with only an objective interpretation.
If we take note, the narrator tells us that Bryan doesn’t pronounce Shadia’s name correctly. A name is a label, a personal and unique thing a person grows up with and identifies with. It is similar to the way in which objects can be misconstrued - the museum exhibit shows a history of Africa and Scotland. However, the museum displays African culture and artifacts as being possessions of the Scottish, showing the trade and exchange of these artifacts.
Once again, the dialogue is spaced between Bryan and Shadia. Shadia is homesick, and conflicted by the museum’s representation of African culture.
Since interpretations can change, purpose can too - in the museum context. The way Bryan and Shadia interact throughout this story builds up tension because of the way each of them experiences judgement and revealing about themselves. Shadia did not respond to Bryan’s comment about being able to change, and the narrator tells us that if she was strong she’d “have explained and not tired of explaining… if she was not small in the museum… she would not have made his trip to Mecca real, not only in a book” (Aboulela, 2001a, p. 119). Bryan invites Shadia to share, to challenge the dominant (meaning) but she doesn’t say anything.
Fom the BBC website, I read about Mecca, and how Muslims go there to gather once a year. “It is a ritual that is designed to promote the bonds of Islamic brotherhood and sisterhood by showing that everyone is equal in the eyes of Allah”.
In this story, the dynamic between Shadia and Bryan is not evenly distributed. They are both subject to the museum and misrepresentation. I feel I can relate to this way in which Bryan and Shadia interact with each other and in the museum. Do you focus on the details or the big picture, the vision? Details do make up the big picture, and I think details are important. Shadia’s experience is memory-based and it doesn’t correspond to the museum’s representation. Bryan asks her, but Shadia cannot express herself to him. She can’t and doesn’t explain.
I often feel that way about myself when people ask me personal questions. What I mean is, for example I feel detached from my Chinese culture, other than having heard stories from my mother growing up and my dad’s memories. When I make personal changes, or come to important realizations about myself that I want to share, what I want to do, I find I have to just do, just live it and then explain myself. I often have a difficult time arguing with another person, and I’m not sure why but I’d like to figure this out.
word count: 768
--------------
This is my professor's response to me:
Taina Chahal Says:
April 16th, 2011 at 8:01 pm e
Your post is an interesting reading of “The Museum.” It is true that Shadia’s experience of the museum is memory-based and based on her experiences; the artifacts, their arrangement, the texts, and the depiction of colonial Scottish men, cause her to become disoriented, to feel small. She, as a woman of colour and a Muslim, is too often answerable to dominant society representations so she feels she cannot explain what she feels. She is tired of explaining herself. Her reaction is symbolic of the compulsion put upon people of colour and Muslims to explain themselves to “the center.”
To take up your discussion in your last paragraph, some of this resistance (or unwillingness or inability) to explain yourself (even if it is subconscious), stems from the ways the power relations play out in everyday life. It stems from ideas of who is considered Canadian (unhyphenated, needing no explanation of where they are from) and who is considered Canadian only after the fact of some ancestral or cultural belonging (the hyphenated Chinese-Canadian, for example). This happens too often especially when a person is marked as racially other. They are expected to explain themselves. To go back to the story, this is one of the reasons why Shadia can’t bridge the gap between Bryan and herself. While Bryan may be different, his behaviour doesn’t make dominant power relations disappear.