Silence Matters from the "other" to the "Conscious other": Reading Monica Ali's Brick Lane with Gloria Anzaldúa's "Coatlicue State"

The paper examines the narrative attribution in the novel Brick Lane (2004) in relation to the significance of silence from the perspective of a Third World, South Asian diaspora woman. The novel closely manifests the female protagonist’s dialogues and silence(s), which underline the protagonist’s cultural and linguistic ambivalence.

The novel clarifies that a diasporic location of a first-generation woman complicates the patriarchal imposition of silence. The protagonist is not allowed to speak in public and is not even taught the new (host)land language. In that way, the patriarchal silence is doubled with a racist one on new land. Eventually, she learns to express her resistance through her silence. However, the paper goes beyond the dichotomy of oppression and resistance, particularly in the novel. The study will review the protagonist’s strategy of silence within a patriarchal and racist society to cross from the position of the “other” to the “conscious other.” In this regard, the study will first talk about silence which is oppressive and resistive, using the text of Gayatri Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988) Then it will employ Gloria Anzaldúa’s Coatlicue State to see the conceptualization of silence as a survival mechanism (1987). Hence, the study will emphasize the transnational feminist strategy of looking at silence beyond the oppression and resistance as a time to move from the “other” to the “conscious other.”