The main aim of the activities proposed to work on Hanif Kureishi's short story “
My ... discussion and debate on the topics present in Hanif Kureishi's short story.
Generalitat de Catalunya Departament d’Ensenyament Escoles Oficials d’Idiomes
“My Son the Fanatic” by Hanif Kureishi Teaching Notes The main aim of the activities proposed to work on Hanif Kureishi’s short story “My Son the Fanatic” is to help students as they read the complete short story and to stimulate discussion and debate on the topics present in Hanif Kureishi’s short story. Since the complete short story is quite a long text, the activities proposed can be divided in three parts, as it is detailed below.
Level : Upper intermediate/advanced
Timing: around 60 minutes for part 1 and part 2; around 30 minutes for part 3.
Approach: Parts 1 and 2 are intended as ‘pre-reading’ activities with the purpose of making students familiar with the background and with the three main characters in the story. Their main purpose is to help students make sense of the story as they read it. They can be used in different session or in a same session.
Part 1: The Guardian Interview with Hanif Kureishi
Materials elaborats pel grup de treball Brit-lit – Departament d’Ensenyament / British Council Hanif Kureishi. My Son The Fanatic. Teaching notes
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Generalitat de Catalunya Departament d’Ensenyament Escoles Oficials d’Idiomes Click on the picture or go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2010/may/05/hanifkureishi The first three minutes of the interview serve the purpose of introducing the writer, the story and the main themes, and it’s also a starting point of a debate on what’s happening now in our country/area. Students are expected to listen to the first four questions of the interview, take notes and comment on what they have understood. The questions and answers provided by Kureishi are:
1. Becoming a writer as a way to explain identity. - Being a “paki” in Britain in the 1980s. What was it like? Paki: Chiefly British Offensive Slang. A person from Pakistan. “A Paki, an immigrant, is a generic disturber of the white, monogamous environment. Deciding you are a writer is like a form of assertion -I’m not just a paki you can spit on, I’m a writer. “ - Kureishi’s memories from when he started writing. “I remember thinking when I was writing in my teens ‘I want people to know what’s like when people go on you and call you a ‘paki’, what’s like to be in Britain today. Being a writer meant having a place to speak and say these things.”
2. When did you first decide you wanted to be a writer? “When I was fourteen. I remember being at school looking out the window bored out of my mind, and this occurred to me, and I suddenly felt very excited for once about my future, this was exactly what I wanted to do. This was the 60s, and you were supposed to live in the suburbs and be a clerk, like my dad, he worked in an insurance company (that was a great deal if you lived in the suburbs) or you became a footballer or a pop star. I couldn’t do either of these things so writing seemed to me a way out of the suburbs.”
In relation to the suburbs, the inner city and the slums: You may want to find the similarities/differences, and compare them with the situation in your country/area. You may want to compare the connotations of the word ‘suburb’ in English/Catalan/Spanish.
3. What did the writers’ life look like in your head? “Basically, you didn’t have to go to work. My dad used to go to work every day, and it was a real pain in the ass for him to get up at six in the morning and get home really late and exhausted. And everybody in my neighborhood did that, that was what ‘work’ was for us. So being an artist, a writer was like playing.” Materials elaborats pel grup de treball Brit-lit – Departament d’Ensenyament / British Council Hanif Kureishi. My Son The Fanatic. Teaching Notes
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Generalitat de Catalunya Departament d’Ensenyament Escoles Oficials d’Idiomes
Part 2: Character description through narrative. Guessing. The purpose of this activity is to make students familiar with the three main characters in the short story, their context and the main focus of tension between them. The three excerpts will serve as a first contact with the three main characters, and a basis from which students will be expected to speculate and guess: personality traits, habits, likes and dislikes, etc.
Only when they read the story will they learn that - Parvez is taxi driver from Pakistan happily adapted to Western culture. He is married, but he keeps a sporadic in a relationship with Bettina, a prostitute. Bewildered by his son’s new attitudes, he can’t understand what is wrong with him. When he learns that his son is becoming a radical Muslim, he can’t understand why he rebels against the comfortable way of living England offers. - Ali, Parvez’s son, is becoming a strict Muslim, and therefore getting rid of anything related to a comfortable ‘Western’ way of life; however, the reader does not know this piece of informationat this stage. Students try to guess what Ali’s problem might be, as well as what is the role of his father and Bettina in the conflict. - Bettina is a prostitute and Parvez’ friend and confident. Open minded, she will try to use the word as a weapon against Ali’s aggressiveness. Students may speculate on whether she’ll succeed or not.
Part 3. After-reading activity. Character description through dialogue and final discussion. At this stage, students must have read the complete short story by Hanif Kureishi. In order to work more specifically on the complete story, students will be asked to reflect on the three main characters of the story by looking closely at their speech, reflected on the dialogues present in the short story, as well as on their attitudes towards key topics such as life, religion, gender, pleasure, family life and relationships and identity. By looking at the characters from different angles, students have more information to start and participate in a discussion about the main topics that the novel tackles. (Key for the activity in Part 3: 1. Ali, 2. Parvez, 3. Parvez, 4. Ali, 5. Parvez, 6. Parvez, 7. Bettina 8. Bettina, 9. Parvez 10. Ali, 11. Ali 12. Parvez.)
Materials elaborats pel grup de treball Brit-lit – Departament d’Ensenyament / British Council Hanif Kureishi. My Son The Fanatic. Teaching Notes
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