{"id":10581,"date":"2026-02-11T14:56:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T14:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/?p=10581"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:00:29","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T15:00:29","slug":"what-strange-paradise-example-draft-post-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/2026\/02\/11\/what-strange-paradise-example-draft-post-2\/","title":{"rendered":"What Strange Paradise (Example Draft Post #2)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My Experience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been having a strange experience with this book. It’s kind of a growing sense of something that I don’t yet know how to classify. I’m going to try to write until I figure out what I want to call it. It’s sort of like guilt, but not really. What is the word for feeling like someone is trying really hard to make it easy for you to understand something? I’m not annoyed by it. It’s working. I appreciate being taught. I’m just aware that it’s being done. I think I’m being encouraged to notice my privilege as an English speaker. I’m really conscious of the fact that people only know what they can comprehend…that if an author wants people to understand something really complicated and really far away, they do things to make that story digestible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Classifying My Experience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I think the best thing I can come up with is increased awareness<\/strong>, but it’s a very particular kind of awareness. I’m more aware of privilege and my relationship to conflicts happening far away from me. I think there might be a better term for this that I haven’t found yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Features prompting my experience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The chapters in this book alternate between before and after, and the central event (that things are “before” or “after”) is the crash of a boat carrying refugees from Egypt to a Mediterranean island. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Table of contents for the e-book version <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

We see some of the events that brought one little boy, Amir, to that boat and what Amir does after the crash as he tries to avoid being held in a refugee camp on the Mediterranean island. Fairly early in the book, I realized that everyone was talking to everyone else in English, but that this was just for my benefit (the English-speaking reader). I noticed this first when Amir boards the boat with many other passengers, including a pregnant woman:<\/p>\n\n\n

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screenshot of page 53<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I was listening to the audiobook and when I heard “I need hospital and doctor to have safe baby,” I recognized that this was the only time I heard broken English in the story, and I realized in that moment that it was the first time I’d heard anything like dialect (some stories, like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em> are nothing but dialect). I was like, “oh, this author is telling us what everyone is saying as if they’re speaking English, but really they’re speaking Arabic to each other.” Ok. I filed it away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This decision by the author made it easier for me to understand, but also…something felt strange. I’ve now finally made it to a part of the book where this is sort of directly addressed. And it’s prompting me to recognize the power of the language that I grew up speaking–something it is really easy to take for granted. At this point in the story, a storm is starting to grown in the ocean and passengers are realizing that survival is very unlikely. Everyone is frantic until one of the passengers, Kamal, says that he has someone on the phone who can help:<\/p>\n\n\n

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screenshot of page 192<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At this point in the novel, we’ve heard many conversations between the people on the boat (this is a narrative technology I want to think more about, a really specific version of the “opportunity to observe” where you get to see many philosophical positions in conflict). Walid is the most cynical and he’s gotten into many arguments with others on the boat who believe they’ll find help when they reach their destination. Maher, we’ve learned in earlier conversations, lived in Gaza and studied English literature before some time as a “professional revolutionary” and then a “guest of the government,” which I take to mean he’s fought the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and is on the boat because he’s fleeing. The important thing to know, though, is that he studied English literature. I’m giving a big long passage where he speaks English to show how it’s narrated:<\/p>\n\n\n

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screenshot of page 193<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In a way the hadn’t been done yet, the narrator here is acknowledging the privilege of the language of the West. The narrator explains that the passengers who didn’t understand nevertheless “took comfort in the quantity and velocity of the spoken words, as though no Westerner could possibly refuse assistance to anyone who spoke the language so well.” This narrator who has been telling us this story and choosing to tell it to us all in English is now acknowledging why that choice has been made (or at least that’s what I was getting out of this moment).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Narrative Technologies at Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I think I want to isolate the decision this author has made to narrate the story in English and then insert subtle moments where we’re reminded that this has been translated. It’s REALLY subtle, but it feels a little bit like breaking the fourth wall<\/strong>. This isn’t officially a term in our glossary yet (the closest we have so far is the comic wink<\/strong>, which is defined as “Any moment where an actor breaks the stage\u2019s fourth wall to assure us: ‘None of this is really real.'” But here I think the narrator is showing their hand…like…helping me see that this story has been constructed quite deliberately…for me, an English speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some Final Thoughts (for now)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I’m still processing this recognition that a book has been written for me, a Westerner, and that I am very much in the imagination of the people in this story. Maybe I feel implicated? called out? But not in a way like “divest from governments that support oppressive regimes<\/a>” kind of called out. It’s something else. I’m constantly reading these characters argue about whether or not we (Westerners) will care at all about them if they’re lucky enough to survive the journey. They’re not sure if we’ll treat them like fellow humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are MANY other things I’d like to talk about in the novel, but I’m going to stick with this most complicated of emotional experiences for now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featured Image<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cover for What Strange Paradise. Vintage. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Experience I’ve been having a strange experience with this book. It’s kind of a growing sense of something that I don’t yet know how to classify. I’m going to try to write until I figure out what I want to call it. It’s sort of like guilt, but not really. What is the word […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[240],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-2","has-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10581"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10604,"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581\/revisions\/10604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/immigrant-literature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}