A Pop-Culture Force for Postcolonial Theory

In the second of a three-part series, undergraduate student Isabel Guigui reflects on blogger and activist Grace Ly’s visit to the Postcolonial Literatures and Theory class. The first article in the series is available here.

On Friday, February 15, 2019, Grace Ly, a Chinese Cambodian blogger, novelist and activist, was invited to speak to students in the Postcolonial Literatures and Theory class. Growing up in New York, I was acutely aware of the systematic maltreatment of nonwhites, so my ears perked up when Ly said: “The French think that America has a race problem, but in fact...” It was refreshing to listen to a proud French citizen, who grew up in the country, unflinchingly highlight issues surrounding race in France, rather than sweep them under the carpet with a platitude such as “in France we do not see color.”

Postcolonialism is a school of thought comprising several core tenets: critical thinking, the deconstruction of preconceived notions and the desire to reclaim language and move toward a more neutral lexicon. In so dissecting the styles of communication and historical accounts, a student of postcolonial theory investigates the origins of “facts” in dominant societal narratives and questions what motivated the creation of these “facts.”

As a Chinese Cambodian growing up in France, Ly’s life was dichotomized from a young age. She switched language depending on circumstances and often felt boxed in on both sides of this binary. At school, she was considered disrespectful for avoiding eye contact and disengaged for hesitating to raise her voice. At home she found her growing knowledge of and sensitivity to the world around her difficult to express, as her grasp of her mother tongue was limited to, in her words, “kitchen Chinese.”

“We don’t have Asian French. We just have French,” explained Ly. “Française d’origine whatever it may be.” It’s a language construct that relegates heritage to a secondary position, behind nationality, with a supposedly distant impact on character formation. Her analysis of this societal phenomenon speaks directly to the violence of the French assimilation model, which demands that immigrants relinquish their habits and mannerisms – or at least confine them to private life. This effectively prolongs the colonial pressure on “the other” to adapt.

The irony in her choice of website title (La Petite Banane, meaning little banana, is a reference to a derogatory term for someone who is “yellow on the outside and white on the inside”) promotes her cause by capturing her struggle with this dichotomy, inciting others to pose queries, question her stylistic choices and seek to understand her underlying motives. Ly’s work calls for us to be aware that people cannot be boiled down to a stereotype, but rather that they have their own stories and identities, cobbled together throughout their lives.

Balancing her criticism with a sense of humor, Ly represents the possibility of becoming an intelligent, socially calibrated woman in the face of forces seeking to simplify the unique expression of her identity. The tolerance imbued in her humor acts as a tonic for the deeper, less amusing implications of her work; this willingness to invoke a lighter note renders Ly’s arguments all the more valid as it protects her from yet another label – that of the humorless, oversensitive militant woman.

In the final article in the series, Professor Sneharika Roy will explore how her collaboration with the activist and theater director Jocelyn Brudey in conjunction with the Le Havre study trip opened up new opportunities for experiential learning within the Postcolonial Literatures and Theory class.