The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

This lyrical novel, winner of the 1997 Booker Prize, explores love as an outpost in a hostile world, occupied in the understanding that it cannot survive the siege – of law, of hierarchy, of propriety, of obedience. The story is revealed slowly, descending through layers, in the eyes of twins, a boy, Estha, and a girl, Rahel, whose father is gone and whose mother, Ammu, lives at the mercy of in-laws who despise her. They live in a poor village in a poor province of India, and from the outset we know that something terrible – more than one thing – has occurred, scarring their lives. 

It takes till nearly the end to fully see those hateful and mournful ghosts, the love not permitted crushed under the bootheels of the intolerance that keeps society in order, order in society. In sensory detail, Roy offers the observations of children, true to their dramatic and playful sensibilities. When the twins are seven, their ten-year-old cousin, half-English, comes to visit with her English mother. During this short visit, the girl dies, though it takes most of the novel for us to find out the true circumstances. 

But in the opening chapter, we are with Rahel in church during the funeral, observing, “… Rahel watched a small black bat climb up Baby Kochamma’s expensive funeral sari with gently clinging curled claws. When it reached the place between her sari and her blouse, her roll of sadness, her bare midriff, Baby Kochamma screamed and hit the air with her hymnbook. The singing stopped for a ‘Whatisit? Whathappened?’ and for a Furrywhirring and a Sariflapping.” 

This book has made it onto Banned Book lists, not only for brief sexual content but also for the more explosive exploration of love between an Untouchable and a middle-caste woman. Roy deals frankly with social structures and the pull of desire, and it seems likely that the condemnation assailing this work has more to do with the violations of caste, than erotic content. 

She also lays bare the privileges of patriarchy – the twins’ drunken grandfather who beats their grandmother daily with a brass candlestick, the assumptions of the local Marxist leader that his wife will clean him up and clean up after him, available whenever he wants her and out of sight when he doesn’t. 

As with Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, there’s a good chance those who seek to ban the book have never actually read it, they’ve just heard something about it, or seen a brief quote. I found the novel both honest about the harm we do to each other, and well-written. Read it then judge for yourself.

Know My Name, a memoir by Chanel Miller

This riveting account is written by the young woman who was raped by a champion swimmer at Stanford in January, 2015. She leads us step by step through her own awakening to what happened to her, how deeply into her psyche the violation sank, how even now nightmares return, how both the legal system and Stanford University chewed her up and spat her out, making it her task to right herself, to become a recentered and functioning person again.

During the trial of her assailant, she was the one under the microscope. She was isolated, blamed, her actions questioned minutely, every bite and sip taken into account, while his behavior was glossed with “young people, frat party, could be an Olympic swimmer” as though the assault was to be expected and by filing charges she is ruining his life. “One of the greatest dangers of victimhood is the singling out; all of your attributes and anecdotes assigned blame. In court they’ll try to make you believe you are unlike the others, you are different, an exception. You are dirtier, more stupid, more promiscuous. But it’s a trick. The assault is never personal, the blaming is.” 

Every effort to put herself back together is pushing against a tide of anguish, self-loathing, a sense of worthlessness. “My mind is one step behind where it used to be. I call it the lag. Before I was living in real time. Now I evaluate the moment before I can move into it. I am always asking permission, anticipating having to present myself to an invisible jury, answering questions before a defense. When I reach for a piece of clothing, the first thing I think is, “What will they think if I wear this?” When I go anywhere I think, “Will I be able to explain why I am going?” If I post a photo I think, “If this were submitted as evidence, would I look too silly, my shoulders too bare?” The time I spend questioning what I’m doing, turning things over and talking myself back to normalcy, has become the toll.”

Chanel Miller, like her mother, has a future as a writer – her ability to make real for the reader her treacherous path, is phenomenal. And yes, she gives us the whole person she was before this assault, and the person she reconstructs from the shattering. Stanford University built a small garden area where she had been assaulted behind a dumpster, but would not use the quote she chose for a commemorative plaque. “Keep things positive,” they insisted, as though sexual assault has some soothing context. Then she suggests a more appropriate memorial to victims of sexual assault: “a piece called Construction; each victim is given a nail for every day she has lived with what happened to her. There’s a haphazard pile of wood in the center of campus. Victims can come as they please, hammering nails into the wood. All day people hear the banging, all the drilling and incessant interruption. This is a lot of what surviving is like, trying to carry on and get work done, while your past pounds into you, distracts you, makes it impossible. At the end there’d be an immense wooden structure, randomly nailed together, large, useless, pointy, and dangerous in the middle of everything, people forced to walk around it interrupting the pretty view of the trees. This is also what assault feels like, what to do with this, where to put it, what is it.”

If you have ever wondered why sexual assault victims take years, even decades, to come forward, this book makes all too clear the cost of speaking up in a system stacked in favor of patriarchy: “boys will be boys, what did she expect, if you dress like that you’re waving a red flag in front of a bull, etc etc.” And yet, she is not vengeful: she wants him to admit assaulting her, admit it was wrong, and apologize. She recognizes the futility of hatred and contempt: “Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom.”