Shamel Jayakody and Swarna Pushthaka Award-nominated novel. (Pictures Facebook)
I have read three novels with almost the same title in the recent past. Americanah by prolific Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie deals with the problems of Nigerian immigrants in the United States while Toronto-based M.G. Vassanji’s Amriika, focuses on an East African student who goes to study in the US and his involvement in radical politics.
The third novel, America, is written in Sinhala by Toronto-based writer Shamel Jayakody. The book has been shortlisted for prestigious Swarna Pushthaka Award in Sri Lanka. Four of her earlier books too were nominated for the same honour.
Two other notable writers who have dealt with immigrant life in the US are Noviolet Bulawayo (We Need New Names) focusing on the Zimbabwean diaspora chasing their American dream and my favourite Jhumpa Lahiri (The namesake, The Lowland) who is of Bengali origin and won the Pulitzer Prize at the age of 33 for her first book, a short story collection titled Interpreter of Maladies.
Shamel looks at American problems through the eyes of a Sinhala Buddhist husband and wife with one son who land in Atlanta armed with Green Cards.
When Nilanka’s Tamil friend Shantha Devi asks her “You are Sinhalese and why did you leave Sri Lanka?” she cannot find a suitable answer. Nilanka is more progressive than her husband who is the son of a Anuradhapura farmer and when she suggests to migrate to the US, he agrees, albeit half-heartedly, as he is disillusioned with chaotic political situation in his native land. As an engineer he signs cheques for senior officials of his government department allowing them to make money, knowing that he would land in trouble one day when there is a change of government. Another reason for their departure is to escape family and property problems.
In a whirlwind trip across their new promised land to escape living with immigrants they move from Arlanta to relocate in Los Angeles and then to Boston, a city that makes Nilanka comfortable for its leisurely lifestyle and its French inspired calmness but in this happy place too new problems await them almost ruining their marriage. They have good jobs with fat salaries and enviable life styles but the initial incompatibility of their different social background haunts them whatever they do.
Shamel’s Sinhala Buddhist characters come from a relatively peaceful country than Nigeria or Zimbabwe. Except for the Tamils who migrate with no hope of going back, Pradeep and Nilanka have not burned their bridges, keeping in touch with close relatives and friends to go back if things spiral out of control in their adopted land.
The existence of a second option seems to be preventing them from finding a solution to their own problems from the day they land in America, discouraging their immersion into the melting pot. Her husband Pradeep is critical of what America is doing around the world but Nilanka says the Americans don’t have the time to worry about what their government is doing in other countries as they have to concentrate on working hard for survival.
Shantha Devi adapts to American life style more easily than Nilanka as she does not have a second country to fall back on, but she faces other problems. She complains about too many Tamil relatives living in her area who interfere with her personal family matters.
Pradeep and Nilanka try to avoid immigrants from other countries and worry about her son Sahan growing up among black and Hispanic kids in Los Angeles. Pradeep tries to keep away from the Buddhists who frequent the temple. He hates their superficiality for trying to pretend to live a religious life kowtowing to every value of a culture that they discarded to migrate to the US. Surprisingly, there is no mention of Nilanka’s family associating or having contacts with Muslim immigrants.
Out of the Sri Lankan-born writers based in North America it is only Shamel who has gone to the extent of focussing the immigrant experience of Sri Lankan diaspora. Toronto-based Chandrarathne Bandara’s Walakulu Bemma is based on a Sri Lankan asylum seeker in Canada and only deals with his love affair with a former LTTE rebel woman in Toronto. Michael Ondaatje who observes Sri Lanka with a tourist’s eye did not have to go through the travails of a normal Sri Lankan immigrant has to face. Only Shyam Selladurai touches briefly on the immigrant experience of a Tamil in The Hungry Ghosts but its focus revolves around the protagonist’s problems arising from his homo sexuality. Naomi Munaweera’s brilliant What Lies Between Us is about a Sri Lankan Sinhala immigrant woman in America who does not have to go through the experience of Nilanka but suffers heavily from tragic mental stress caused by childhood trauma.
The only person with pragmatic approach to life in Shamel’s America is Niluka’s son Sahan who grows up among everything the new country has to offer and looks at life in a balanced manner.
The millennial tells his mother that the differences between her and his father were beneficial for them to succeed in America because ‘if both of you look at life in the same way you would have got lost in a complex society like this.’ He suggests problems in life are useful because they ground you to reality giving the strength to fight for survival. Shamel’s work of fiction crafted in fluid, simple Sinhala with its fast-paced action just proves that. – By Somasiri Munasinghe
