Yes, I Liked: Identitti
But I HAVE QUESTIONS, also THOUGHTS #111
Occasionally I enter a fugue state where I say, “oh, I’d like to go to graduate school and enthusiastically engage with important ideas,” but then I realize that it’s more likely to be endless talking about theoretical concepts in an intellectually opaque way that says more about the speaker’s intelligence and demand for people to rise to their level of discourse rather than about their desire to be understood. And I realize I’m definitely not profound enough for that so I lie down in a dark room and wait for the feeling to pass.
I share this because Identitti feels like what I think grad school is like, in about a hundred different ways, some literal, some literary. And I liked it, but even more saliently, reader?
Je suis PROVOKED. And I want to TALK about it.
Power summary: The world of blogger and doctoral student Nivedita is turned upside down when it’s revealed that her beloved, famous, South Asian supervisor and mentor, Saraswati, is actually a white woman.
I KNOW, RIGHT? Plus that cover? Intriguing!
What you first and most pressingly need to know is that there are no easy answers in this book, about basically any topic. So unless you are emotionally quite actualized, this may rile you up. And every time a character says something where you think, “yes, exactly!” - that’s when another character counters that opinion and you splutteringly think, “but … but … that’s sensible as a concept but we live in reality!” It’s basically 384 pages of the Socratic method in a very modern and character-driven novel, designed to press on the weaknesses of every perspective. Many times I found myself equally frustrated and admiring of the eloquence and sheer gall of the characters’ assertions, so many of whom are deeply, maddeningly entrenched in their own certainty and rightness.
The majority of the book takes place in one of two apartments, with cloistered conversations almost like a play, where the conversation never fully stops or starts but simply swirls and coils around itself with people coming and going in a constant stream. It can feel both exhilarating and exhausting, heady and confusing. At one point, Nivedita exasperatedly says to Saraswati, “everything you say is right but I know it’s still wrong.” That’s how this novel feels all the time.
At its core, the novel busies itself with the slipperiness, and the actual fiction of identities of all kinds; the stories we tell about ourselves as children, citizens, or people, and the stories and fictions that we put on other people as a way to understand and protect and bolster ourselves, to find our own voices. Between Saraswati’s story and Nivedita’s own as an Indian-German-Polish woman, racial identity and identification, what it means to be a person of color in worlds that don’t always look like you, and in fact what whiteness itself means, are of course at the complicated heart of this story.
But the author also splashes on so many additional layers of “otherness” and oppositional forces, where characters are constantly seeking and rejecting their reflection in other people, whether it’s their parents and elders, professors, lovers, or even how their language frees or restrains them. Nivedita even has a surreal ongoing dialogue with the goddess Kali who love to weigh in on just about everything, because why not? (Also, this novel was translated from the original German and can we just shout out translators? This prose absolutely dances with youth and wordplay while nimbly conveying the ins and outs of a “mother tongue.”)
The book tackles the nature of public discourse around inflammatory topics, deftly incorporating real-life public Tweets and commentary from people like Jordan Peterson, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and J.K. Rowling into her fictional world. It pulls liberally from the conversation around Rachel Dolezal, of course, but also from other historical events to, ultimately, talk about how we talk about ideas.
Like what I think grad school must be, Identitti is very much a book about ideas, but it’s also quite a rollicking, often funny, sometimes playful and very contemporary novel about finding your own identity while considering others’. I mean Nivedita is a twenty-something doctoral student so of course she’s just as obsessed with sex as she is with post-colonialism, and of course she’s both concerned and myopic about her own life as well as the wrongs of society, in the messy and solipsistic way that young people can be. (Of course the title - her blogger nom-de-plume - is a pun about her breasts. Of course it is. She’s a Gen Z blogger who can only sort of remember who Barack Obama is. Congratulations on being young, fictional woman.)
And like what I think grad school must be, there are occasional times when it feels a bit like we’re witnessing a lecture rather than participating in it. The author crams a lot into the book; even though it’s insanely readable, it feels quite densely packed. And there’s entirely too much conversation about genitalia (divine and human) for my comfort but you all know I’m old-fashioned like that. It’s a little too cerebral and weird to be a book club book. So - I don’t know if it’s for everyone. But it’s probably the most interesting book I’ve read in a long time, and that’s worth a lot.
Have you read it? Will you read it? Do you have other books that you’re not sure you LOVED but that sure made you THINK? Is this actually what grad school is like or have I watched too many movies?
Important Course Notes
Maybe you’re wondering why this book received a three-lamb rating, and WTF that means. Pro tip: lambs do not reflect how much I LIKED a book. Let me elucidate »HERE.
Maybe Identitti sounds like NOTHING you would ever want to read, which is fine! Next week will probably be some fluffy romance or something, you’ve been warned. But in the meantime, please check the archive »> HERE.
Maybe you’re inspired to click on the link to buy this book! If you don’t mind me saying, maybe you should do it via Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores? I theoretically would get a few pennies if you do but it, like, never happens. Anyway, you can see most of my past book recommendations as well »> HERE in Bookshop.org.
Maybe no one has told you today that you are a great person, doing a terrific job being in this life. Let me do that HERE »> Go you! You made it! Look at how the world is better because you exist!