QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS FOR KATHLEEN JAMIE’S “SHIA GIRLS”

QUESTIONS FOR A SECOND READING

1. “Shia Girls” takes us into writing that resembles both a travelogue and a personal essay. As such, it invites readers unfamiliar with its geographies, traditions, and terms to research them — to learn, for example, what the town of Gilgit in Pakistan looks like, the meaning of “Inshallah,” and “purdah-observing,” the description and role of a “black dupatta,” and “shalwar-kameez,” the beliefs of Shia people, and the position and policies of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Question 24.1

2.

Question 24.2

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Question 24.3

4.

Question 24.4

ASSIGNMENTS FOR WRITING

1. One of the challenges of Jamie’s essay is knowing what to make of it. While the essay is made up of episodes and conversations, the piece seems to have no single controlling idea; it does not move from thesis to conclusion. One way of reading the essay is to see what one can make of it, to determine that to which it might add up. In this sense, the work of reading is to find an idea, passage, image, or metaphor — some point of reference in the text — and use that reference point to organize your reading of the essay.

Question 24.5

2. Jamie recreates numerous conversations with others throughout her essay. For this assignment, mark those conversations in some way so that you can read them in succession. When you’ve done that, identify two or three that you can discuss in an essay about these conversations. Why are such dialogues so prominent in her essay? What does she accomplish with them? Why would she choose to recreate conversations such as these, rather than simply report on them?

Question 24.6

3.

Question 24.7

4. Please reread the conversation between Jamie and Rashida starting with paragraph 150 and ending with paragraph 167.

This section serves as a good example of the unique style Jamie employs when recreating conversation. The essay is peppered with conversations that unfold in a “she-said, I-said, I-noticed-this, she-said, I-said,” movement. It’s a way of writing conversation that also allows her to comment on what she notices during the dialogue.

Question 24.8

MAKING CONNECTIONS

1. Mary Louise Pratt, in her essay “The Arts of the Contact Zone,” (p. 315 of the print book) describes the writing that one might find in a contact zone as such:

Autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression — these are some of the literate arts of the contact zone. Miscomprehension, incomprehension, dead letters, unread masterpieces, absolute heterogeneity of meaning — these are some of the perils of writing in the contact zone. (p. 324 of the print book)

She then goes on to define the pedagogical arts of the contact zone:

These will include, we are sure, exercises in storytelling and in identifying with the ideas, interests, histories, and attitudes of others; experiments in transculturation and collaborative work and in the arts of critique, parody, and comparison (including unseemly comparisons between elite and vernacular cultural forms); the redemption of the oral; ways for people to engage with suppressed aspects of history (including their own histories), ways to move into and out of rhetorics of authenticity; ground rules for communication across lines of difference and hierarchy that go beyond politeness but maintain mutual respect; a systematic approach to the all-important concept of cultural mediation. (p. 329 of the print book)

Question 24.9

2. Walker Percy, in his essay “The Loss of the Creature,” (p. 297 of the print book) develops a metaphor of tourists observing the Grand Canyon to make arguments about the ways in which a preconceived “symbolic complex” prevents tourists from actually seeing the sites they’ve come to see — in this case, the Grand Canyon itself. The tourists, Percy argues, instead see whatever it is they expect to see. As you reread “Shia Girls” alongside “The Loss of the Creature,” identify moments and language in Percy’s essay that you could use to explore the preconceived symbolic complexes that you bring to reading “Shia Girls.” Mark the passages in “Shia Girls” where you think you’re behaving like Percy’s tourists or like his student trying to study the dogfish. What is getting between you and those passages?

Question 24.10