‘The Konkans’
New on the fiction shelves is The Konkans by Tony D’Souza, a writer who spent three years as an AIDS educator in West Africa. That experience resulted in his debut novel, Whiteman. He also penned what could be a response to Bharati Mukherjee’s The Tree Bride, a short story published in McSweeney’s called ‘The Man Who Married a Tree.’
The Konkans is more his own coming-of-age story, teasing out some of the ironic cultural inversions in a mixed-race family. It’s a tolerant, multiculti response to essentialism, one which reminds me of the Loins of Punjab point of view.
Here’s an excerpt about the narrator’s uncles moving in with his Konkan dad and Peace Corps mom in Chicago:
When they got off the plane at O’Hare in 1973, they were both sporting Fu Manchu mustaches that swept the edges of their chins, because an American kung fu film had been all the rage in India the year before, and knowing nothing of America other than that, they’d grown those mustaches to get ready for their immigration… According to my uncle, they became very popular with the girls.
The first thing my father said to his brothers at the airport… was, ‘Those mustaches have to go.’ He stopped at a Walgreens on the way home to by disposable razors, and before they could even sit down to their first American meal… they were in the basement bathroom shaving while my father looked on with his arms crossed…
My mother… [had] gone to India… because she had believed in John F. Kennedy’s vision… in marrying my father, she’d brought home with her the one living-and-breathing souvenir of that place who could also get a job in America. Sponsoring over my uncles was done to spite him… Many were the nights that my mother drank and sang and talked Konkani with them while my father glowered in his study…
[...] All of the things she loved about India — the flowers in the women’s hair, the call of the fishmonger in the mornings… the fuss and hullabaloo that went along with every simple transaction… those were all of the very same things that made [my father] hate that place.
A reviewer picked up on the same cultural inversions:
Is a white woman in a sari a pathetic poseur? Kind of, D’Souza allows, but she’s also a tragic figure escaping her own grim upbringing to embrace an environment that moved her deeply. Is it self-hating for an Indian family to deify Vasco da Gama? Probably, D’Souza implies, but his portrait of the D’Sai family reveals a history so thick with distortions that embracing a less-varnished truth would tear down the pride that sustains them. [Link]
What he has created — with an appealingly unfashionable simplicity of language — is a rich, warm, personal yarn, bright with a pride and love that survive even the choppier shifts in his chapters… ”You are a very small people in India, as are we Sikhs,” a fellow Indian immigrant explains to Sam early in his Chicago days, by way of bonding. ”But when you roar in the crowd, your roar is heard like ours is. We are the soldiers of India, you are its Jews. Both are good.” [Link]
D’Souza’s real-life parents were also Konkan and white, and in fiction at least he has a conflicted relationship with his ethnic background. The book draws deeply on his own biography:
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Tony D’Souza |
The Konkans are the Catholic Indians of Goa that Portuguese colonization left behind. They collaborated with the British during the Raj, and the narrator explores the wrongs of his grandfather, who was a police commissioner for the British, and who tortured and killed Hindus to enrich himself. [Link]
[I] had a little flat right on the Kensington Gardens and there is this gaudy, gilded monument about six stories tall in the gardens and facing the Royal Albert Hall call the Albert Memorial… it’s a masturbatory love-fest to British colonialism, beautiful, but awful because it celebrates in a phony way all that blood.
…. I’d leave my flat and walk through the gardens and look at that big obscenity and shake my fist at dead and golden Albert on his throne. Because The Konkans is about colonialism and its aftermath… [Link]
D’Souza talks about his own identity conflict and his ability to pass as white:
My mother was born in Detroit in 1939, and my father was born in Bajpi near Mangalore, in 1942. My mother escaped poverty and joined the Peace Corps in 1966, hoping to make a difference in the world. She was sent to India, where she lived in Chikmagulur, Karnataka, teaching low-caste women how to make smokeless ovens… she and my father began a relationship that led to their elopement, and eventual relocation to Chicago… At first, they kept close ties to the Indian community that began to blossom along Devon Avenue; as I and my sister grew, our status as a mixed-race family, as well as our being Catholic Konkans drew us away from the larger Sikh, Hindu and Muslim majorities…
My very first taxi driver in Madras drove me around for an hour when he knew my hotel was only a few blocks from the airport; I quickly understood that I fit in in India as uncomfortably as I did in America… In my early fiction, my narrators are often young American men who do not have racial identity conflicts, have Anglo names such as ‘Jack’ and ‘Alex,’ and who the reader identifies as white. Most people assume I am Jewish, Italian, Spanish or North African. And for the sake of ease, I often allow myself to pass for these things. But I grew up with India in my home and in my blood…
This is the story of a Konkan man’s collaboration with the British as a police officer during the Raj, his involvement in the sandalwood smuggling trade… [and] the little-known Goan Inquisition conducted by the Portuguese that created the Catholics of India through torture and fire…
I loved [my father] and had a lot of difficult racial issues that revolved around… me being able to pass for white when I wanted… if he had lived I would have not been able to pursue writing… I would have gone to law school and lived my life for my father. [Link]
Just like British and American desi writers camping out in Delhi and Bombay for inspiration, he lives in Nicaragua on the cheap and gets kicked out regularly to renew his visa:
I drove my truck here from Florida so I could live cheap and live in another language and be in a new place and get to know it. But the Nicaraguans make me leave the country every month for three days with the truck, so every month I go down to Costa Rica to renew papers, and when I come back, some ex-pat has rented the cheap little dig… [Link]
He’s a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men), but his style is less spare:
… we went with Harcourt. I was leaning their way anyway because they publish Jose Saramago and he along with Cormac McCarthy and JM Coetzee are our best living writers. I said it tangentially in the New York Times Book Review, I say it to everybody: McCarthy deserves the Nobel. [Link]
He shares some tips on getting published:
I submitted probably twenty stories in eight years to the New Yorker, most of which would go on to be published in the lit journals. Of course the New Yorker turned them all down. Within four months of getting my agent, I was in the New Yorker, and then I was in it again later that year. They say they take stuff from the slush pile, but…
I was very lucky to get an introduction to [agent] Liz Darhansoff, and that she didn’t close her door on me when she didn’t want my early books. But I also would e-mail her once and only once and the e-mails were brief… then a month or so later the rejection would come… I wouldn’t e-mail her or anything until the next book was done, and then I’d write, “Liz, will you look at my new book?”
And he artfully lets drop a mention of his Playboy spread 
[My editors] just kind of roll their eyes at the things I do. Like I was in this Playboy fashion shoot, you can find it on-line. When they saw the pictures, they all just collectively groaned. [Link]
on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008, 4:18 pm in Literature › 
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um…i haven’t read the book, but the Konkan is a region. some konkanis are catholic, but several others are hindus. am i missing something here, or doesn’t tony d’souza read wikipedia?
Read it and reviewed it.
I guess I’m contractually obligated to read all books about white female Indophiles. *__^
Yes, and a significant number are also Muslims.
Damn, girl. You’re fast.
Thank you for paying attention to my work. The title of this book will be contentious. My uncles are already upset that I titled it The Konkans and not The Manglorians. Because they are Catholic Konkani speakers from Mangalore. In using the term Konkans, I tried to find a way to offer to a US audience a catchall term for a people that are varied by region and dialect and yes religion: Manglorians, Goans, etc. but who are unified by the language Konkani. I think it was the right decision because while I do hope that Manglorians, Goans, etc. will enjoy the book, my real hope was to broaden awareness of a people and history that most Americans know nothing about. So I made the decision to call this group of Catholic Konkani speakers The Konkans.
Mostly I wanted people to know about the Goan Inqusition.
This is a truly unfortunate distortion of Goa’s place in history and it’s contribution to global understanding. If Tony’s purpose is to “enlighten” North Americans about the Konkan region, then he has fallen into the trap of gross distortion and generalisation in order to win readers. In trying to “find a way” to get a US audience, Tony has merely re enforced ignorance and deprived the Konkan people, especially the people of Goa, a true understanding of their noble history and place in today’s world.
OJ- I hope you check back on this thread to answer this– I’m genuinely curious as to what you are suggesting actually constitutes the noble history and especially, the “place in today’s world” of Konkani and Goan peoples. Certainly the history of the Goan Inquisition isn’t the sole essence of the people or the place, but…I guess I don’t know what else is. I don’t mean this facetiously. I’m a first generation Indian American of Mangalorean Catholic descent (a D’Souza, predictably) with little knowledge of Mangalore/Goa/the Portuguese outside of this fact, and the search for a true understanding of the history of my origins and place in today’s world is of particular importance to me. Please oblige (or anyone else)…
Maria,
there are a couple of books that might help. One is ‘Saraswatis children’ by Alan Machado Prabhu. I bought it Yeswith the intention of reading it, but never had the time and now i cant find the book.
The other is ‘A Genealogical Encyclopaedia of Mangalorean Catholic Families’ by Michael Lobo. I was able to trace my folks back six generations to Anthappa Shenoy who was a master sawyer.
good luck
Also being a D’Souza, I picked up this book and I dont regret it. I am proud to see my state of Goa out there and published in books. I am catholic and Goan. For those looking for a history lesson, try reading a history book not a work of fiction. I think as a first generation American, we all have our individual stories that will vary from other immigrants and even set us apart from other Indian Americans. The state of confusion and struggle to “fit in” and the thin line that makes the konkans a unique group of people; this book depicts just that.
I think it is important for people to realize that growing up in America with parents of Indian heritage is a unique experience, where the clash between traditional values of a land thousands of miles away and modern American values is an ongoing struggle. To grow up with a mixed heritage further complicates the experience and as a purebred I cannot intelligently comment. However, to see these events through the eyes of someone who can identify with each culture is truly wonderful. I don’t think D’Souza’s intent is to distort or misrepresent the Konkans of India but rather to paint a picture of events which may have happened in 1973 Chicago which mirrors the experience of contemporaries growing up around America. I commend Tony on his keen insights and vivid descriptions of the characters and events which resonate well with most American-born children.
It is unfortunate that Tony D’Souza has relied on British and Hindutva sources for information on the Goan Inquisition.
There is a funny vignette on Patels. Here he describes his father’s view of Patels.
“He especially disliked Patels from Gujarat, who had immigrated in droves to the Chicago area at the same that he did. They bought all the 7-Elevens, liquor stores, and Super 8 Motels, and they didn’t assimilate well because there were enought of them thaty didn’ t have to. The Patels thought that yelling at patrons and not speaking English while chewing on veg samosas with a Ganesha poster on the wall was good customer service, and so the white people started their camel-jockey, sand-niger, and dot-head jokes and lumped my father in with them, causing my father to hate Patels.”
I just finished the novel.
I really liked it, and have put down some, er, ‘limning’ thoughts here.
I’ve also linked in the Bollywood version of E puri kon achi, which is interspersed throughout the novel. Couldn’t place it at first because of the transliteration, but finally found it on youtube. It has a really lilting tune and beat, like so many other Konkani songs, and is an apt subtitle, if not subtext, for the novel itself (I thought).
For those who want to read more about the Goan Catholic community, I recommend Victor Rangel Ribeiro’s ‘Tivolem.’ It won the 1998 Milkweed Prize for fiction.
I’m coming to this discussion a little late since I just started reading “the Konkans”. As a first generation Indian American of similar background as Tony I was impressed with his use of language and vivid descriptions of of his characters as well as their motivations. I recognize in the characters members of my own family both Indian and American.
Just as an minor point I wanted to call attention to the fact that not all west coast Indian Catholics are Goan or Manglorean. I belong to the group of west coast Indians known as East-Indians who were based on the islands of Bombay and surrounding areas and also colonize by the Portuguese. Their rise to prominence and success was based on their working for the East India company and hence the name. There are still scattered groups of them around the suburbs of Bombay and their history and roots go deeper and from before there was the Bombay we now know.
Growing up Indian and Catholic in the US was a non typical experience both from a American and an Indian perspective. I didn’t share all the US experiences my American peers did and did not share all the Indian ones either since culturally and religiously I was different. Thanks again Tony for a book that made me feel like there are others in the world who have similar backgrounds and experiences.