Out on Main Street

The first sentence of Shani Mootoo's collection of short stories, Out on Main Street makes the reader quickly aware that they are being transplanted into another world where they must accept certain conditions and navigate situations and characters that are drawn very differently from most of those in Western literature.

'Me and Janet? We does go Main Street to see pretty pretty sari and bangle, and to eat we belly full a burfi and gulub jamoon, but we doh go too often because, yuh see, is dem sweets self what give people like we a presupposition for untameable hip and thigh.'

The title story is written in the patois of Caribbean-Indian dialect. Jarring at first, the reader soon the synthesizes with the language and enters the world of the narrator and her lover Janet, a lesbian couple of Trinidadian-Indian descent, as Mootoo paints a picture of what she does best; the world of the outsider. Mootoo's stories deal with the hybridist and the conditions which have given rise to their worlds. Colonialism, migration, Diaspora, multiculturalism, racism, and ambiguous sexuality all feature in these stories. Her stories could be read as a post-colonial examination of women from multi-ethnic backgrounds who have made non-traditional choices; however, they can also be read as stories from the voices of women who have never fitted in. Mootoo's stories leave the reader feeling uncomfortable at times. This deliberate device, never manipulative, is the very mechanism that allows the reader to gain insight and empathy with her characters who are often dislocated and searching for belonging.

In the title story Out on Main Street, the narrator and Janet are shopping in the main street of the Indian quarter in Vancouver, Canada. In the sweet shop, run by Fijian Indians, their pronunciation and accents are treated with derision by the shop owner who feels his 'Indianess' is superior to their Indian background. '...we is watered-down Indians,' says the narrator. The tension in this story twists and turns as different ethnic groups, drunken Caucasian men and straight Indian women enter the shop.  Here Mootoo examines prejudice and shifting allegiances brought about when people threatened by anything that does not meet other people's cultural and sexual norms. She explores the idea that culture is not a static phenomenon and that it is possible to forge an identity from multiple and eclectic cultural elements that can be incorporated into their identities.

Mootoo identifies as a lesbian writer and makes a stance against patriarchal values; however, she has sympathy for many of her male characters and her lesbian characters. Her protagonists are critical of other lesbian and non-lesbians alike. Mootoo's most celebrated work, Cereus Blooms at Night, is a testimony to her ability to create both transgendered characters, gay characters, and heterosexual characters both male and female whose choices and actions range across a broad spectrum of behaviours and responses.

The fact that Mootoo has eschewed writing in Standard English with traditional grammar and has rendered her story in dialect points to the conclusion that there is a rebellious voice in her character.  It is as if Mootoo is saying, 'This is how we speak. This is who we are. It doesn't matter if it is not perfect; it still communicates.' And it communicates authentically. Here Mootoo hints at a rejection of imposed structures of language and invites a closer look at the politics of the colonialist transplanting of 'superior' or dominant group language. Mootoo often mixes standard English, slang, French, Caribbean dialect, and Hindi all together in one sentence and makes no apologies for it. In fact, the writing is more interesting because of it. With Mootoo's work, the reader never knows what is around the corner. Exclamations in Indian dialect jump out at us, variations on adjectival phrases stand next to standard grammar with French thrown in the middle, and it is this unexpected construction that gives colour and energy to her stories.  

The title of the story points to the irony of the girls' situation. They are 'out' as in not hiding their sexuality, and yet when shopping on Main Street in the Indian quarter, they downplay their lesbian identities to fit in. The choice of 'Main' Street is also ironic. Main Street is, on the surface, full of mainstream Indians. Like any community, the Indian quarter is not homogenous. Under the veneer of what is 'true' Indian culture, there is variety in religious, sexual, and cultural practices. In her title story, Mootoo has shown that the construction of identity and the elements that contribute and shape it are never fixed. The narrator herself expresses the frustration about her identity when she says, 'I looking forward to de day I find out dat place inside me where I am nothing else but Trinidadian, whatever dat could turn out to be.'

Garden of her Own is a gentler piece written from both the first- and third-person point of view. The story of Vijai rocks back and forth between first and third person and allows us to view Vijai from a distance. We feel her innermost thoughts and her despair. Trapped in an arranged marriage, Vijai has immigrated to North America from India but finds her new homeland nothing like the images of North America she finds in National Geographic magazines. Mootoo captures the bitter disappointment that follows when women have no control over their own destinies and subsequently, their own happiness. In Vijai's world, nothing is her own. She had hopes of her own house but instead lives in a 'bachelor' flat where she lives with leftover smells and textures from the previous tenants who permeate her world. '... everyone's years of oil' and '...other renters' black, oily grit and grime which had collected in the grooves...'

Vijai's husband does not belong to her, either. Cold and disinterested in her physically, she longs for intimacy but is always shunned. She wants to smell 'his indentation in the tired foam mattress. She inhaled, instead, the history of the mattress: unwashed hair, dying skin, old and rancid sweat...' Mootoo employs strong imagery of decay in this story and language that evokes the olfactory senses. The story is full of references to garlic, spices, and onions. She draws us into a world where we feel the texture of the walls, the cupboards, the doors, the everyday utensils. In this story, Mootoo examines the mother-daughter relationship. Vijai models her own marriage on that of her mother who would feed the children at dinner but would not eat herself until her husband came home, no matter how late. Vijai now imitates her mother's routine but because she is not content in her marriage, a part of her rebels against what she has been taught, especially when she is hungry and waiting for her husband to return.  'Why did you show me this, Mama? 

Desperate for something of her own, Vijai plants a garden, imitating the love her mother had for flowers and plants. Her other pastime is watching a French television station even though she does not understand one word of French. 'Something about listening to a language she does not understand comforts her...' Vijai understands what it is to be a foreigner in an alien landscape, disconnected and dislocated from everything that is culturally and linguistically familiar.  Like many of Mootoo's stories, this one ends abruptly with no catharsis or hope for the future, but the image of Vijai stays so strongly with the reader that in our imagination we do the hoping for her.

In The Upside-downness of the World as it Unfolds Mootoo explores the cultural cringe. There is a reversal of roles here which takes the reader into the worlds of women from two different cultures. In trying to bridge the cultural divide and create harmony and friendship between Indian and non-Indian culture, two white women end up doing just the opposite, causing offence and anger in the narrator. The story starts with the memories of the protagonist from her childhood days in Trinidad where her parents sent her and her sister for tutoring with the very British Mrs Ramsey. Through her 'tutoring' Mrs Ramsey manipulates the girls to see their Indian heritage as something to be pitied and to be rectified and their Hindu religion as something that is need of Christian conversion. When introducing new vocabulary, Mrs Ramsey makes certain that her superior culture is marked upon the girls. Mrs Ramsey makes the girls use the word 'pagan' in a sentence, but only after she has given her own example. 'The pagans of Indian ancestry pray to images...or the cow.' To counteract Mrs Ramsey's teachings, Ahji, the girls' grandmother, '...quietly, subversively and obstinately brought India into our house...' Mootoo builds a colourful portrait of Mrs Ramsey' thawing out her marrow in the colonies,' her Anglo-Saxon body a mystery to the girls. They are fascinated by her large breasts and want to see them 'to know what secrets their Britishness held.' When Mrs Ramsey is disapproving, she purses her mouth' anus-tight.'

When the narrator is older and has immigrated to Canada, she meets Meghan, and they swap phone numbers. The narrator longs for Meghan to call as she suspects that her new friend may be a lesbian like herself, and so anticipates a relationship. Meghan calls, they arrange to meet, but the narrator's hopes are dashed. Meghan has a partner, Virginia. The narrator accepts this and decides to remain friends with both women. However, it soon becomes clear that the women, although with the best intentions, have made it their mission to bring the narrator back to her Indian roots. Times have changed, and 'brown' is in fashion. The two women want to 'rub back in the brown that Mrs Ramsey tried so hard to bleach out.' The narrator thinks about what Ahji would have thought of white women singing bhajans in Hindu temples and concludes, 'Ahji would have been baffled by the upside-downness of the world as it unfolds.'

The narrator is perplexed at first by the women's enthusiasm for anything Indian, but after some time, she begins to feel ignorant and a charlatan. The women arrive one afternoon to take the narrator to a temple and are dressed in saris. Anger rises in the narrator. Inside she thinks, 'What business do you have showing me what I have lost? Go check out your own ancestry.' In this story, Mootoo questions the 'exotic' appeal of Indian culture as perceived by white Anglo-Saxons and the problem of cultural appropriation. The reader cringes along with the narrator at the antics of the two white women. Mootoo has a sharp eye for what makes situations uncomfortable, and so the reader feels the discomfort building as Meghan and Virginia become more Indian as the story progresses. We also feel the regret the narrator has about missing her chance to learn from her grandmother as she was too young to appreciate it. 'So now that I want to know about India, Ahji has died, and I can't afford to go there.'

All the stories in this collection carry an undercurrent of cutting criticism of socially constructed values which are not inclusive of those with alternate views and lifestyles. Mootoo's writing springs from a place within her that is restless and moves around.  Mootoo is angry, but she is never didactic, leaving the reader with a desire that the world be a different place without stating that it needs to be. The remarkable strength of Mootoos's writing for the Western reader is that the reader is able to identify with characters that are often diametrically opposed to our own backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences. A reader doesn't have to be an Indian-Trinidadian lesbian living in Canada or a mail order bride to have identification with her protagonists. Her narrators often remain nameless, but they are never forgotten, such is the strength and colour of their construction. Their namelessness perhaps reflects the place in-between, the place of the outside looking in. As the narrator in Out on Main Street laments, 'Cultural bastards, Janet, cultural bastards. Dat what we is.'