Neo- Colonialism: Colonialism’s First Born
A creative book review of Migritude by Shailja Patel
If anyone were to ask me to describe Shailja Patel’s “Migritude,” I’d say:
This book is a revenge decree…
written for all those times migrants have been pitied, marginalized, misunderstood, for all those who were expected to adopt an English name because no one bothered to be decent enough to pronounce their God given ones, this is for all the pickers and sweatshop workers getting paid 3 dollars an hour, for all dishwashers, line cooks, convenience store cashiers and stacking clerks, waiters, nail salon technicians inhaling poisonous fumes everyday and getting covered in nail fillings, dead skin, and plexiglass otherwise known as acrylic nail powder, for all those times ethnic food has been described as gross and people smelling of condiments called dirty, for all the complains we swallow as water to push down the daily pills given to us as racist comments said in passing to our faces and behind our backs, to all those people with higher education degrees that are working in underpaid jobs, without insurance or retirement plans, for all the profit made by imperialist countries off of migrant food and culture that is embraced and adjusted while the people of those cultures are shunned and discriminated, for all the misconceptions of immigrants and immigration, Shailja Patel has birthed “Migritude”
— to avenge us all.
Colonial Exploitation and the Theft of Native Heritage
Shailja Patel’s “Migritude” describes the legacy of Colonialism in the modern world. She writes about the historical commercialization of products native to colonized countries, the privatization of those products and the wealth that accompanied it, away from their natives. In the section named “How Ambi became Paisley” (Patel 4), Patel explained how Mosuleen, the fabric “named after its city of origin, Mosul in Iraq” (Patel 5) earned it’s makers and their cities “glory and fame” (Patel 5), but these were fleeting sentiments, because when the British invaded India the British privatized the fabric through blood. That which is free and public cannot be private, that is a rule for colonialists, the “British… Hunted down terrified weavers, chopped off their index fingers and thumbs” (Patel 5). The British also privatized Kashmir now known as cashmere, and only some Indian weavers were allowed to make it, but when a town in Scotland learned to make a version of Kashmir, they “got to keep their index fingers and thumbs,” (Patel 7) sending a clear message that it was only the Indians who were not allowed access to the wealth of their native textiles.
She also talks about the Trauma carried in stories by East African Asians living in Uganda when the dictator Idi Amin rose to power. “In 1972, Idi Amin, Military dictator of Uganda, expelled the country’s entire Asian population,” (Patel 10) as a result of this trauma the Indian proverb “Raat thodi ne vesh jaja…The night is short and our garments change,” (Patel 10) was born. The proverb thought future generations that nothing is promised, not land, not wealth, not safety and you must only invest in things that are hard to take away from you “invest only in what we can carry. Passports. Education. Jewelry.” (Patel 10) Of those three things, many East Asians found terribly, that the possession of only one was insured. “The women would Carry the family’s savings in their gold ornaments, their valuable Saris” (Patel 11), women were respected and protected for being the guardians of their “family’s wealth” (Patel 11). When East Asians were “expelled” out of Uganda, officers “stripped of” (Patel 11) people of all their possessions, publicly. Patel describes a scene of a man who was crying because Ugandan soldiers had “dragged his wife off while he watched” (Patel 11) to strip her of all her possessions and her dignity, carrying his child in his arms the man cried, “because there was nothing left to hold tears back for. Not dignity. Not manhood. Not hope.” (Patel 11) The colonialist ideas made hundreds of years ago were inherited by Imperialists/Neo- Colonialists, to colonize one race must be put above the other, the one at the bottom must be stripped of all conceivable value, they must be made to believe they are less, and once all the value has been harvested from the colonized, the colonizer can dress itself in golden luxury for, gold, painted red with blood and tarnished with tears — is still gold.
Patel writes about the colonization of Kenya by the British “from 1952 to 1960” (Patel 17). She writes that “the British incarcerated, tortured, and murdered approximately 25,000 Kenyans” (Patel 17) and that when Independence was won against the British the Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta said that from that day on all should do as if the last eight years never happened, “let this be the day on which all of us commit ourselves to erase from our minds all the hatreds and the difficulties of those years which now belong to history”(Patel 17). So, the generations after should not learn the full extent of the truth of those eight years.
Civilized War Earned Independence
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Once, my Professor, Doctor Marissa Solomon, told me as we were discussing slavery, colonialism, Mexico, and mestizos, while standing in the African Burial Ground Museum and monument, in Manhattan, — “we must know the violence that creates us.”
I think Patel agrees with that idea, for in her book, she included some of the “history we didn’t read” (Patel 17). She included “oral testimonies from women who survived the camps” (Patel 17), where Kenyans were incarcerated. In those testimonies, people described both physical and mental torture, forced starvation of men, women, and children, public and private rape, and other horrors. Yet, she writes “In April 1956, Britain’s Sunday Post ran an interview” (Patel 18) that described the independence as a peaceful civilized endeavor, a “model” independence agreement. This agreement also included the accord that Kenya had to buy back the colonized territory because it was somehow not theirs anymore, the “Kenyan government was required to take loans of 12.5 million pounds from its ex-colonial master… to buy back stolen land from settlers who wished to leave” (Patel 19). “Wished to leave,” are key words of hypocrisy, as it was a “peaceful” settlement, Kenya could not treat the British as they had treated them.
The Immigrant Experience and Education… the only valuable you get to keep
Patel describes what it is to be an immigrant and travel to foreign places with native definitions. In the 6th Chapter named “Shilling Love”, Patel describes “…love/ in shillings/ to those who’ve/ never gauged who gets to leave/ who has to stay/…/and what they pay.” (Patel 26) Patel writes of the most important thing in her parents’ mind, a lesson that had been thought by the old proverb “the night is short, and our garments change,” “Invest only in what we can carry” (Patel 10), of those things the most mobile, and that which once acquired cannot be ripped out of your person, except perhaps, through great and horrible effort, was education. “Education…held the key to the future” (Thiong’o 51). Her mother and father expressed their love through earnings, “My parents never say/ they love us/ they have and count/ count and save” (Patel 27), their earnings would aid in the acquisition of education, “my mother’s daughters/ will/ have/ world-class education” (Patel 26) Money equaled tuition, which gave opportunities, and social, political, and economic security.
Cultural Misunderstandings in Imperial Contexts
Patel describes her life in the U.S. including how misinformation, and ignorance, can shape comments, treatments, and ultimately her immigrant experience. She writes “how much we can do without is our strength. But you find it comic. Pitiable. Miserly… You mistake austerity, living without waste, for deprivation.” (Patel 34) She also describes a difference of culture that has come from a state of mind that has come from the U.S. becoming an Empire, one of the richest countries in the world and shockingly one that had been colonized previously. Most colonized countries were left with the seeds of austerity and imbalance, and while it is not perfect, and there is still a lot of racism, and disparity of wealth, the culture has changed, the way of thinking about shared wealth, shared experiences, shared success was lost somewhere between the British colonization and now, we became capitalists/maximalists.
Patel explains that this book, and the performance from which it is derived, are made “from rage” for “every encounter that’s left my throat choked/ with what I dared not say/” (Patel 35), she explains that making this work is like the inherited duty of all migrants and marginalized people endowed by all those before us, she writes “I make this work/ because I still have hands” (Patel 35). Patel writes page 35 like a challenge and an invitation to all those like her, who were embraced, and lifted by the sacrifices of our parents and ancestors. Through Colonialism, one race came on top of the others and few countries became empires, but all people have known struggle at some point in the timeline of human history, but Colonists ideas that are embedded in all human’s history has made some unsympathetic non-believers, so in the spirit of Patel’s work, we must all bare testimony of “the violence that creates us.” (Prof. Solomon) We must all speak up and display generational scars! Dissect them! We can no longer take upon us the “job to protect you from the discomfort of seeing inequality” (Patel 35). We must all gain “the right to see the saris in all their splendor” (Patel 95), we must all earn the right to partake of the multicultural beauty that diverse groups of people bring, embracing different cultures and their people.
We must all gain a MIGRITUDE!
Works Cited in this text:
Patel, Shailja. Migritude. Kaya Press, 2010.
Wa Thiong’o, Ngugi, and Ben Okri. Weep Not, Child. Penguin Books, 2012.
