Intergenerational Relationships in Identity Construction

¶ … Intergenerational Relationships in Identity Construction

Every night, I have the same nightmare.

I search through a crowd of people on an endless expanse of green lawn, pushing past bow-tied waiters in white uniforms who carry trays piled high with biscuits, sandwiches, and tea. [….] Beyond the garden, there is a pavilion trimmed in teak, furnished with cane-backed chairs where the pale, white ghosts of British officers and their wives, the founders of this place, whose names are still etched on the plaques at the front entrance, congregate to laugh at the antics of the natives, swirling their gin and scotch, clinking their glasses. [….] I am distracted by voices behind me, calling my name. [….] These are the all familiar characters from stories I know, stories I have lived my life by. (Haji, The Writing on My Forehead 2-3)

The above quote, taken from the first chapter of Nafisa Haji's The Writing on my Forehead, introduces the idea of an individual torn between two legacies, two cultures, and ultimately two futures. One of the most interesting and complicated aspects of the Western world's exploitation of Asia, Africa and the Americas is the idea of identity formation on both sides: colonizer and colonized in the aftermath of colonization. Of particular interest is how this process of problematic identity formation has continued and does continue throughout generations. The above quote presents this problem as a nightmare for the main character, as she is caught between different voices calling out to her, attempting to get her to remember the past in a particular way.

Nafisa Haji discusses precisely this topic in her novels The Sweetness of Tears and The Writing on My Forehead by assembling her stories' plots around young, second-generation immigrants who must find a way to reconcile the post-colonial experience of their present with the colonial trauma of their families' past. The Sweetness of Tears resolves around Jo March, a young girl coming to terms with the realization that she is not exclusively related to her American, Evangelical family, while The Writing on My Forehead follows Saira Qader and her attempts to piece together the generation-spanning history of her family. In both cases the central characters must find a way to reconcile their present lives as American-born individuals with the lingering cultural and emotional attachments and memories of their immigrant past in order to construct a hybrid identity, a term later discussed in this paper. Faced with new knowledge that upsets their connection to a past they never really knew, Saira and Jo set out to discover the truth about themselves and their family, and in the process, they are able to repair a rift decades old.

Thus, this paper is primarily concerned with how Haji describes and demonstrates the ruptures and reconciliations that occur between the first and second generation of immigrant families and particularity families of Pakistani origin. As a result of the British separation of India and Pakistan, families are torn apart, seemingly forever, until the children of the next generation come looking for their ancestors. This separation takes different forms, with husbands and wives separating due to outside, colonial influence, or parents and children never meeting in the first place as a result of social propriety and cultural difference, but in each case it is up to the latest generation to bridge these divides by overcoming them through the creation of a new, hybrid identity that incorporates the experiences of both colonizer and colonized.

The second-generation protagonists of either story undergo a process of identity demolition as a result of shocking events or knowledge, and the plots of both stories consist of women attempting to rebuild new identities for themselves in view of these shocking occurrences, identities that can integrate and respect both their family histories and their own lived experiences. Each woman discovers a truth about her family that completely upsets the identity she had developed to that point, and the only way to move forward is to confront that truth head-on, with an eye towards understanding the reasons behind it. They leave their homes and goes searching for the truth, because as this paper demonstrates, a stable and secure identity depends on accurate and reliable information and history, because it is history, memory, and family that serve as the basis for all identity. In order to recover from the psychological trauma of having the lie behind their identities revealed, the protagonists must find a way to integrate this new information into their preexisting psyches.

In both the Sweetness of Tears and The Writing on My Forehead, these truths lead the protagonists on a journey of discovery that reopens wounds caused by British colonialism's legacy. In turn, these new daughters of colonialism's past must find way to begin a process of hybrid identity formation in order to overcome these lingering traumas. Although by the end of either story this process is not entirely complete, Haji demonstrates how a concerted effort to remember the past and reconcile with past generations can serve to transcend the collective and personal traumas brought about by the legacy of colonization. Her character find safety and a kind of salvation in hybrid identity, because their new hybrid identities are able to coordinate and combine the histories that otherwise forced to overwhelm them, emotionally, intellectually, and politically.

2: Generations in Haji's Novels

2.1: The Second-Generation Subject

As a second-generation immigrant herself, Haji is particularly suitable for assuming the subjectivity of a second-generation woman attempting to build her own identity out of the memories and traumas of the past. Both novels are explicitly concerned with the experience and subjectivity of the second-generation immigrant woman, and although the memory and experiences of the first generation play an important role, as will be seen below, the identity of the second-generation immigrant is the common thread linking together every other character and event. It is worth noting up front that Haji's work is successful in portraying this experience partially because she manages to show the process of identity-formation and family development at different stages. In particular, while Jo March is just coming into adulthood when she begins to learn the truth about her past, Saira Qader is already a grown woman, with a career and independent life, when events lead her to the unraveling of her family's secret past. In both cases, this new knowledge demolishes whatever identity formation has already occurred, forcing the characters to rebuild their identity and subjectivity from the pieces left over.

The reason being that the identity of a second-generation immigrant is by definition dependent on "the ambivalence of modern society, and particular the fact that 'its transitional history, its conceptual indeterminacy, its wavering between vocabularies,' means that one cannot ever form a truly stable identity out of different national and cultural histories" (Bhabha, Nation and Narration 2). Because these second-generation immigrants must be constantly juggling different and frequently oppositional histories and cultures, they must either attempt to force the construction of an exclusionary and ultimately unstable identity or come to terms with a hybrid identity that can handle these contradictions. The second-generation immigrant is thus the site of an ongoing conflict, one that plays out over the pages of Haji's novels.

2.2: The First-Generation Memory

If the central organizing concept of Haji's work is the second-generation immigrant woman, then the most important supporting concept is the idea of first-generational memory and narrative as a constituent part of the immigrant identity. The memories and experiences of the first-generation are central to the kinds of lives led by the second, even if the main characters do not realize it at the beginning of their stories. In fact, both the identity disruption and eventual reconstruction is only made possible by the main characters' decision to acquaint themselves with the knowledge and experiences of the first generation, thus bridging a divide created by colonialism and ultimately allowing the creation of a new, hybrid identity. The second chapter of this study will concern itself with detailing the differing experiences of the first and second generations in order to demonstrate the intergenerational gap created as a result of colonialism, while the third chapter will focus on the development and maintenance of intergenerational relationships. Finally, chapters four and five will examine the identity crisis that emerges from the introduction of new intergenerational knowledge and relationships, and the way that this identity crisis can give rise to a new, hybrid identity.

2.3: Construction of a Hybrid Identity

As already established, this study's theoretical approach is deeply rooted in postcolonial theory, because only postcolonial theory can effectively account for the concepts and issues under discussion. As Ashcroft, Griffith, and Tiffin write in their book The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, postcolonial theory emerged "from the inability of European theory to deal adequately with the complexities and varied cultural provenance of post-colonial writing" like Haji's, because earlier theories simply could not account for the variety of experiences and injustices made evident by the legacy of colonialism (Ashcroft et. al. 11). In the same way that European colonialism itself depended on a limited view of the world that placed colonial subjects under the rule of their masters, European theory was based on a view of literature and identity that had no place for the identities and literature of colonized people. Postcolonial theory is the ideal basis for this study, because in many ways the process of developing a new, hybrid identity born out of the conflicting experiences of first and second-generation immigrants is analogous to the process of developing postcolonial theory in the first place.

In particular, this paper draws most heavily on the notion of hybrid identity, a complicated subject that has arisen within postcolonial studies. The term is difficult to define precisely due to the fact that hybridity itself suggests something complicated and heterogeneous, and at the same time, "if hybrid identity is seen as formed at both the biological and cultural level, an important question arises: are well then hybrids?" (New Narratives). However, this paper can put aside these larger questions and focus specifically on the idea of a colonial hybrid, because it is the hybridity born out two specific cultures, one of the colonizer and one of the colonized, that runs through Haji's books. This means that this hybridity is largely a cultural and psychological identity, although biology does come into play when one character discovers that her features are different from her parents (Encyclopedia Britannica). It is important to point out that hybridity in this context "is not a third term that resolves the tension between two cultures, or the two scenes of the book, [….] because […] colonial hybridity is not a problem of genealogy or identity between two different cultures which can then be resolved as an issue of cultural relativism" (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 162). In other words, a hybrid identity does not completely erase any contradictions or differences between the two cultures and generations that contribute to that identity, but rather a hybrid identity is that identity which is able to contain within it, and thus manage, the contradictions and differences of either culture.

This is part of what makes texts like Haji's novels so interesting, because they are not concerned with crating a tidy, unproblematic identity in the wake of colonialism and its intergenerational affects. Instead, Haji is interested in how people manage to take control of conflicting and sometimes violently different influences and ideas in order to make their own way forward. People are continually in the process of making their identities, because these identities shift with new information and experiences. As a result, one can never hope to ever create a clean, simple identity, because they must always include disparate elements. As Haji's work shows, colonialism makes this process of integration especially hard, because it can create such deep divides between the different elements of a second-generation immigrant's identity and history.

Thus, before analyzing Haji's work in greater detail, it will be useful to make clear that this paper is not arguing that the identity formation, which occurs over the course of her novels, is neither complete nor completely free of colonialist influence. Instead, this study recognizes that cultural colonization is a process that continues even after soldiers have left, because the legacy of colonialism influences subsequent generations to the point that "colonial power [can be] maintained and reproduced through different disciplines, discourses, and texts," even as the individuals responsible are intentionally trying to avoid or else challenge that lingering colonial power (Morton 16). As will become clear over the course of this paper, the creation of a hybrid identity does not depend on discarding a colonial past, but rather integrating that past into the present in a way that processes the trauma of colonization instead of ignoring or forgetting it.

3: The Family Unit in both The Sweetness of Tears and The Writing on My Forehead

One may begin this study of identity formation by examining the family structures of either main character, because it is these structures that present the most obvious element of colonialism's legacy and influence. This is because the family structure of both Jo and Saira is entirely dependent on the historical ramifications of colonialism. As will become clear in the subsequent sections, the lives of both Jo and Saira stem from their respective families' experiences with colonialism, even as both women imagine themselves at first to be the products of their own ambitions and interests. The final chapters of this paper will demonstrate that only by remembering the past and integrating it into their own lives Jo or Saira can actually take some agency in the formation of their identities.

To say that either character's family structure is a product of historical forces is not a particularly interesting or controversial statement, but to say that it is a product of colonialism's influence in particular is to highlight a number of features that present themselves as direct consequences of colonialism. In particular, the colonial influence seen in Haji's work is characterized by a literal and metaphorical split between the first and second generations that occurs as a result of the British Empire's separation of India and Pakistan. This split is literal because family members are actually divided, but it is also metaphorical because the divide goes further than simple geographic distance, all the way to the level of personal and familial identity.

Understanding this split is crucial for understanding the narrative arc of both Jo and Saira, because the contemporary effect of this split is the traumatic learning of new information that either character experiences. In the same way that colonialism split apart the first and second generation in the past, the knowledge of this split serves to sever Jo and Saira from the identities they had developed prior to learning of it. As a result, understanding how Jo and Saira deal with this temporary loss of identity requires understanding the split that causes it in the first place.

3.1: The First Generation

The story of the first generation in The Sweetness of Tears largely revolves around the character of Sadiq, Jo March's biological father, who comes to America at the age of fifteen (Haji, The Sweetness of Tears 65). Although the portions of Sadiq's story that are offered to the reader largely concern themselves with how he comes to meet Jo's mother, they nevertheless reveal important details about his experience as an immigrant and how that affects their family structure. In particular, it rapidly becomes clear that Sadiq's experiences are the direct result of Pakistan and India's colonial past, because his negative experiences as an immigrant stem from his disjointed family configuration, itself a result of colonialism.

Sadiq's characterizes himself during his first time in America as a "pretty mixed-up, miserable child myself -- also angry, resentful, sullen," largely due to the fact that he was going to live with mother and new husband, whom he had not seen in six years" (Haji, The Sweetness of Tears 18, 64-65). He meets Angela, Jo's eventual mother, very soon after, and although he is only in America for about a year, he spends most of his time with her (65). Part of this is due to his own disjointed family life, and part of this is due to the difficulty he has with integrating with American children:

A bunch of boys were yelling at him out of the windows of the bus. "Sad-Dick! Hey Sad-Dick, the Iraynian! Watch out, Sad-Dick! We're gonna kick your ass!" One of the boys spit at him, but missed. (76)

Most likely, it is these circumstances that lead him closer and closer to Angela and eventually to a relationship that ends in an unwanted pregnancy, because the isolation and alienation Sadiq feels from both his own family and his new surroundings lead him almost inevitably to seek comfort and intimacy with anyone he can. Further on, Sadiq does not feature prominently in Angela's life after the discovery of the pregnancy. In fact, somewhat surprisingly, she gets a new companion immediately: "Angie. I spoke to your father. This baby. It's not Jake's. [….] You married the handyman, Angie. So much older than you" (128). Because of the cultural difference between the two, it seems as if they could never be together, and as a result of this split Jo grows up thinking something completely untrue about her own identity and history. Learning the initial truth about her mother's past is what sets her off on her search for her real father.

When Sadiq meets his daughter Jo, he is much older and mature, but does not seem to have outgrown a desire to connect with his roots, because the years have not diminished the sense of isolation and alienation. When Jo knocks at his door she hears music, "a high, woman's voice, singing in a foreign language,"(17) demonstrating that even after all these years and miles, Sadiq stills listens to the music of his home country as a way to connect . Furthermore, when Jo enters the room, Sadiq thinks about "the beginning of a journey I have taken, in body, many times, to and fro, unable to find my place in this world or that one" (20). This is a clear indicator of an identity problem and one that is a result of his divided loyalty between his home country and host country, which he has now accustomed himself to. This problem of identity and belonging has serious consequences for Jo's own family structure.

Accordingly, The Writing on My Forehead exhibits similar issues impacting the first generation immigrants. The most evident is Saira's mother's challenge of bringing up children non-aligned to the Western culture, a challenge exemplified by the title of the book itself, which refers to the words Saira's mother would write on her and her siblings' foreheads with her finger when they were little (Haji, The Writing on My Forehead 1).

The "letters and words of prayer that [Saira] never understood"(1) are remnants of an earlier generation, a pre-colonial past that relies on traditional religions and beliefs, and it seems as if the best Saira's mother can hope to do is trace them with her finger, rather than effectively write them on the hearts of her children. The writing can be seen as Saira's mother's attempt to instill tradition and memory in her daughter, even as she realizes that she has little to no power to actually do so. This helps demonstrate the strain that exists between the two generations, because Saira's mother struggles to include the past as part of her daughter's upbringing and identity while her daughter is intent on looking forward to the culture and identity presented by the newer world of America.

Saira's mother's lack of power becomes clear later, when Saira decides to leave and her mother recognizes that she does not have the power or right to stop her (Haji, The Writing on My Forehead 72). Saira's mother's attempt to instill traditional values and identity in her daughter is somewhat ironic, because it is precisely Saira's desire to become a journalist that ultimately allows her to return to her family's fractured history and become the intergenerational storyteller that she needs to be. Like Jo, Saira eventually discovers the family secrets that have structured her own life and the lives of both generations of immigrants, and in both cases, the fracturing of these families is a result of colonial legacy.

3.2: Disruption of the First and Second Generations

Both books exemplify the collapse of family structure under the weight of history and colonialism, and although they ultimately end with the hope of a hybrid reconstruction of this family in the second-generation, the fact remains that disruption and destruction are potent forces in the initial construction of both Jo and Saira's identities. For example, Jo's life is largely the result of the fracturing of Sadiq's family, because the death of his father causes a monumental shift. Sadiq narrates that:

The orbit of my childhood world was small and safe. It was a woman's world, my mother's, located in the house where she had spent her childhood -- an old fashioned pre-Partition home with a rickety double-front door whose paint had long ago chipped and peeled. (Haji, The Sweetness of Tears 20)

This is why Sadiq is eventually sent to live with his mother by his grandfather, but by this time his mother has married someone else and Sadiq finds he cannot fit in with them. As a result, he goes looking for acceptance elsewhere, and finds it in Angela.

In the same way, the relationship between Angela and her parents was also fractured, a fact that contributed to her and Sadiq's relationship. Angela's father was absent following a troubling relationship with her mother in which he was frequently violent (Haji, The Sweetness of Tears 108). Furthermore, Sadiq had a strained relationship with his stepfather just as Angela and her stepmother:

"My dad is dead." "Oh. So -- Deena's husband is your stepfather?" [….] His scowl went fierce. I understood. Until that second, I hadn't thought of Connie that way, either. She was my stepmother. It was hard to think of the word without adding "wicked." I figured Deena's son must feel the same way about her husband." (Haji, The Sweetness of Tears 118)

With both Sadiq and Angela lacking father figures and mothers they could relate to, it makes sense that they would end up in a relationship featuring an unexpected pregnancy and eventual separation. This has a direct effect on Jo's formation of identity because until she discovers the truth about her parentage, she is essentially lacking a substantial portion of her own history, to the point that she grows up believing herself to be something that she is not. This in turn causes strain and fractures within her own immediate family, and the only way to come to terms with these strains is for her to learn her true history and so she begins constructing her own identity.

Similarly, in The Writing on My Forehead, family disruptions seem to have had devastating effects on Saira's family. The major disruption was in London when Saira's grandfather left her grandmother for an Englishwoman. This was an open family secret, one that divided the family. This incident separated Saira's mother from India, her country because she hated her father and she never saw him again. She instead visited Pakistan more often, leading her children Ameena and Saira to identify more closely with Pakistan than with India. In turn, Saira's abandonment of his wife for an Englishwoman instilled a resentment of Western morality and culture in Saira's mother, which contributed to the way she raised her children.

She came to believe that western culture had a negative effect on morality, and she discouraged her children from indulging in western traditions such as prom: "Don't you see Saira? Dancing- that's what led to that mans downfall. He-he didn't follow the rules of his own culture and community. [...] When you forget the rules of your culture, you lose it. You forget about what is right and wrong" (The Writing on My Forehead 14). She believes that one cannot reconcile different cultures, but rather must guard against the corrupting influence of the new. This too has a direct impact on Saira's life, because her mother's overzealous denunciations of Western culture ring false, ultimately leading Saira to rebel and forge her own path. In turn, Saira's rebellion leads her to discover more and more about her family in an attempt to reconcile their two cultures and multiple generations in a way Saira's mother thought impossible.

The examples of both Jo and Saira's families coincides with real-world data on the effects fragmented families can have, because studies into how children's perceptions of their families affect their own behavior and identities has demonstrated that fractured and fragmented families lead to more unstable and complicated identities and relations (Rodriguez et. al. 177). While this paper is not a sociological study, it is worth pointing out that the fragmentation and fracturing that Haji is interested in examining in the context of intergenerational immigrant experiences is actually just one form of a kind of familial fragmentation that can occur anywhere. This should help the reader appreciate how the historical influence of colonialism and its fractious legacy functions in familiar ways, albeit on a larger scale.

3.3: The Impact of British Decolonization on Intergenerational Ties

The separation of India and Pakistan into separate countries following the British Empire's withdrawal from the region, had a traumatic effect on Pakistani-American families, and the influence of the partition or of British colonialism in general, can be felt throughout both novels. Furthermore, the spread of the American empire in the wake of the British Empire's decline informs the contemporary issues that help to keep both Saira and Jo from being able to sufficiently reconcile their American experiences with their Pakistani heritage. Although both novels are more concerned with the immediate familial experiences rather than larger geopolitical events, these events do warrant at least some minimal discussion, if only because they provide the backdrop for both stories.

The separation of India into India and Pakistan by the British plays a very obvious role in the case of The Writing on My Forehead, because the experience of Saira's grandfather, grandmother and mother in many ways represents the national partition on the level of personal relationships. The decision to split the country was made by the British and it resulted in the "fracturing or disallowing "of the idea of conciliation and continuity between Pakistan and India, to the point that what may have been a shared identity was forcefully split apart (Loomba 169). When Saira's grandfather leaves her grandmother for a British woman, he is essentially participating in the same kind of partition, albeit a partition of the family rather than of a country. This familial partition has serious consequences for subsequent generations, because it determines the cultures and ethics they are brought up in.

In a similar fashion, The Sweetness of Tears demonstrates the legacy of colonialism by focusing, at least partially, on the role of Christian missionaries in Pakistan and India. Jo comes from a missionary family and she is raised as an Evangelical Christian. One cannot separate the legacy of European colonialism from the history of European missionaries, because in practice there is no difference between the two. Furthermore, as the United States gradually took over the mantle of the world's foremost empire after the decline of the British Empire following World War II, Christian missionaries began to replace British missionaries in the process of cultural and religious imperialism. In some ways, then, one may view Haji's decision to place Jo in an Evangelical Christian family as a form of what Clement-Ball describes as "postcolonial satire," because a kind of dramatic irony occurs when Jo's American, Christian identity is "colonized" by the memory of her biological father and his decidedly non-American, non-Christian roots (Clement-Ball 12). In this way, The Sweetness of Tears is "writing back" against the spread of Christian religion and literature into the histories of colonized peoples (Clement-Ball 13).

4: The Creation and Maintenance of Intergenerational Relationships

If the context of both The Sweetness of Tears and The Writing on My Forehead is the fracturing of families as a result of colonialism and its effects on the family, as well as the incomplete, unstable identities that this fracturing creates in second-generation immigrants, then the first major movement towards something new comes from the creation and maintenance of intergenerational relationships. Seeking out these relationships is what leads both Jo and Saira to have a crisis of identity and ultimately allows them to reconstitute more stable identities. By examining the impulse behind their desire to make and maintain intergenerational relationships, one is able to see how these relationships are a central element to the potential for a hybrid identity.

The structure of the process of hybrid identity formation becomes clearer as one examines the creation and maintenance of intergenerational relationships, because creating these intergenerational relationships is the first step towards the production of a hybrid identity. Learning of the familial and generational divide is what disrupts either protagonist's existing identity and sets her off on her search for the truth about her families history. Thus, the first step towards learning that truth is to make contact with those generations who had previously been lost, because opening up these avenues of communication enables each woman to gain the information she needs in order to begin rebuilding her identity on more solid, honest footing that is free from the falsities that were planted as a result of colonialism's splitting of their families.

4.1: Jo March and the Search for Truth

Jo March is entirely consumed with a search for truth when she gradually comes to realize that she is not related to her adoptive father. She begins to suspect something when she realizes that her eyes do match those of her parents: "My parents -- they have blue eyes. Both of them do. Here was the dilemma that had given birth to my doubt" (Haji, The Sweetness of Tears 14). Her doubt leads her to begin questioning what she has been told of her parentage, and her questions fore the truth to gradually emerge, a truth that completely ruptures the comfortable family life Jo has lived thus far.

This passage also reflects the satirical nature of the novel, as Jo reflects that "I had never heard anything against Mendel's Laws of Inheritance -- not from Mom, not from my pastor," because even though Jo's identity is completely controlled by her Christian upbringing and her lack of knowledge regarding her true identity, because that religion does not account for genetics and history, it leaves an open space for Jo to discover (14). This demonstrates how the different elements of her identity that are not wrapped up in religion and falsehoods give her the critical eye necessary for discovering the truth, a truth that her mother would rather have been kept secret. Her search ultimately leads her to discover her father and her past, and even here the image of eyes helps to demonstrate the emotions that go into the search for truth.

When Jo finally does talk to Sadiq, the dark eyes they share serve to illustrate the desire for knowledge and the painful truths it can bring up. Jo narrates that:

It took a lot to keep my face clear of all that I felt in response to what he told me pity, disgust, revulsion. Until the end, when his eyes -- dark brown and dominant -- came back into the room and found mine staking a claim I had no intention of granting. I left him as fast as I could, chased away by the questions I didn't give him a chance to ask. I knew what those questions would have been. About my mother. But I didn't want him to talk about her. I didn't want to hear about her, either. Not from him. To see her through his eyes would have been too much - making her as alien to me as he was. (The Sweetness of Tears 66)

Even though Jo has followed her eyes to find Sadiq and learn her true past, she cannot bring herself to do the same for Sadiq because it simply would be too painful and she would run the risk of further unsettle her identity. She does not want to see her mother through Sadiq's eyes because it would serve to dismantle and shock the last bit of her identity that remained, and at this point in the story she is not ready to go that far.

4.2 Saira Qader: the Family's Historian and Keeper of Tales

In a similar fashion, Saira Qader is motivated by a search for truth. At first, this search takes a very general form, because Saira becomes a journalist, seeking out the truth about developments worldwide. However, as the story progresses, she becomes a kind of journalist of her own family, recording the stories from across generations. This is ultimately what allows her to reconcile herself with her family, because by incorporating all of their stories into her own, she is able to maintain her autonomy while respecting her history.

Stories are essential to Saira's life from the start, as her mother would always tell "neat and tidy stories, with neat and tidy morals, [….] with all the messy details removed, because they don't serve the message" (The Writing on My Forehead 15). Saira's initial rebellion can be seen as a kind of automatic response against this sort of self-censorship, born out of a desire to get at the messy details, because those are where real truth emerges. This is why Saira believes that real journalism is concerned with the "contradictions and complexities that threaten the order of the pattern," and is also why the resolution to Saira's quest involves figuring out a way to incorporate and understand the contradictions and complexities inherit in the second-generation immigrant identity (227).

5: Identity Crisis Leading to Reconciliation

Both Jo and Saira have identity issues that arise from the contradictions that emerge between the lives and histories they have been taught and the realities they experience as they learn more about their past. For example, Jo has been struggling not only with her internal feelings but also against the religious definition of this feeling also being viewed as unholy:

"The first time I ever experienced doubt, I tried to climb over it. Literally. The way I'd been taught, doubt was a seed planted by Satan, the fruit of which led to disobedience. But my doubt had nothing to do with God or the Bible. My doubt was closer to home - though it would take me far from it, eventually, across oceans and continents, stretching bonds of love and loyalty to the breaking point before I could return again, finally, at peace with all of who I was" (The Sweetness of Tears 3).

For Jo, doubt arises from noticing what does not fit in the pretty picture painted by her family, and similarly, for Saira, her identity crisis emerges from attempts to parse out the details of what has been kept hidden from her.

5.1: Jo March: Where Do I Belong?

As discussed above, Jo's identity crisis begins when she notices that she has a different eye color than her parents, a fact that cannot be sufficiently explained by any of the belief systems or histories she has been previously given. At first she feels guilty about this doubt, but soon she is forced to come to terms with it, simply because she cannot will it away, and the truth of her past is literally staring her in the face any time she looks in a mirror. Noticing her eye color is a small thing, but it represents a tiny crack that ultimately grows into a practically insurmountable divide between the identity she once had and the truth that had remained unknown to her all along.

5.2: Saira Qader's Search for Oneself

In a similar way, Saira's identity crisis stems from the contradictions between what she has been taught and what makes sense. Saira does not understand why her mother would not let her wear shorts or skirts that ended above the knee when she was nine years old, whilst boys can wear shorts any time they like. She eventually learns from her past by claiming that:

"I have survived the night, the memories of what has led me to now. But the past is catching up with the present, both of them only partially deposed. There are left-out details to reckon with yet facts in the forest that I have chosen not to hear" (Haji, The Writing on My Forehead 281).

By the dictates of Saira's culture, it is everyone's responsibility to be subservient, to look into the economic interest of the family, to marry a parent-approved spouse as the only long-term option. Obligations and duties, which always supersede personal interests and whims, have created the controversies and trauma of the past that Saira's parents have kept quiet for so many years. This is clear from the passages that state:

"Your mummy said she would never forgive her father. That he was dead to her. And she kept her word. Never spoke to him again. [….] Oh, Shabana. You never gave him [Saira's grandfather] a chance. He wrote to you so many times. You never answered his letters. He talked to me about it, was so hurt that you never wrote to him. He was human, Shabana. Only human. And that is why you are so angry with him. Because you thought of him as perfect." (The Writing on My Forehead 41, 197)

After a long struggle, Saira has come to terms with the truth of family and that her obligation to them mandates their happiness which the author portrays in the statement:

"I close my eyes and imagine the touch of my mother's hand on my forehead, smoothing away the residue of childhood nightmares. Her finger moves across my forehead, tracing letters and words of prayer that I never understood, never wanted to understand, her mouth whispering in nearly silent accompaniment. Now, waking from the nightmare that has become routine - bathed in sweat, breathing hard, resigned to the sleeplessness that will follow - I remember her soothing touch and appreciate it with intensity that I never felt when she was alive" (The Writing on My Forehead 1).

Saira, perhaps quicker than Jo, realizes that it is the hidden past that should serve as the foundation for one's identity, because it is only this past that can offer concrete explanations for life instead of the mythical comfort of traced letters and convenient lies. In other words, one needs actual, true information to form a consistently stable identity, because otherwise this identity will run up against painful contradictions at some point. However, Saira must undergo a near-total destruction of her former identity in order to reach this point of awareness.

6: Intergenerational Reconciliation and Hybrid Identity (Re-)Formation

Learning more about one's past and forging the beginning of intergenerational relationships leads inevitably to an identity crisis, because the individual is forced to confront uncomfortable truths that before were either hidden or ignored. Before, both Jo and Saira maintained generally stable identities, but they were only stable because they were based on contradictory details being left out. Once they begin investigating these details by exploring their intergenerational relationships and histories, they have a crisis of identity. However, just as intergenerational relationships are what lead to this identity crisis, they also help the characters reform new, hybrid identities in the aftermath, because having a more complete view of their own histories allows Jo and Saira to generate more stable, though complicated identities, that are able to incorporate both past and future.

The forging of new intergenerational relationships in the wake of an intergenerational rupture is the first step towards hybrid identity formation in Haji's novels, because the only way to access the kind of knowledge and memory needed to develop a truly hybrid identity in this context is to access those parts of family and identity that were previously hidden or removed. From these new relationships spring new experiences and ways of looking at history, which provides new information for incorporating into an individual identity. As a result, a past that at first seemed to thrust itself into the present in a violent process of learning can be integrated into that present identity in a more stable, hybridized form. This form both pays homage to the past without letting that past overwhelm the individual's present life, and provides Saira and Jo with the self-awareness they need in order to live in the complicated, contemporary world of a second-generation immigrant's life.

6.1: Jo March as a Mixed Race Adolescent

The Sweetness of Tears is predominantly about Jo March's process of revelation; a period marked by doubt, confusion, and anxiety. The opening lines of the first chapter are indicative of Jo's motivation in search of the truth. She has been struggling not only with her internal feelings but also against the religious definition of doubt, which was also viewed as unholy, "The way I'd been taught, doubt was a seed panted by Satan, the fruit of which led to disobedience" (Haji, The Sweetness of Tears 3). Doubt leads to disobedience because it; leads one to question religious precepts, precepts that ultimately fail when considered in the light of science and rationality. Despite the fact that she knew that doubt was discouraged, the feelings in her were so strong that she could not help but respond to them.