Sorry, Cambridge for my dire performance: Here’s what I’d say if I did my interview again
By Gurpreet Raulia
Graphic by Jas Calcitas
At the age of 17, I was guided through a garden on the grounds of Fitzwilliam College towards what looked like a manor house. It was dark outside as I approached my second interview of the day. I walked up the stairs into a room with a fireplace; the interior reminded me of a quaint cottage. Old books covered the walls, but I was so nervous that I didn’t look to read the spines, to see what I might fish out of my memory to impress these people with. Two white people sat in front of me and began to ask me questions. What would the world be like without literature? It’s interesting that you asked that, because when I answered, my interpretation of literature was wholly white, with the exception of one Toni Morrison novel and a few poetry books that Cambridge probably wouldn’t look favourably upon because they weren’t sonnets by Donne or Joyce; they were by Nayyirah Waheed and Upile Chisala. My scope was colonial and it was limited to the canon. In fact, I didn’t want to say this, but I didn’t read very much at all. I detested it, actually. I read what was necessary for my classes but that was it. I spent most of my time writing depressive confessional poetry and watching anime. So, technically, my world was without literature, in some form.
Now, I would answer, the world is without literature. To use the word literature is to sponsor the idea of a scope, and for many years I thought good literature, influential literature, groundbreaking literature, was white. You’ve just asked me about Conrad, and I have never read it. I have to sit and feel cowardly because I can’t engage in this conversation with you, because I simply don’t know and I simply don’t care. In fact, a lot of me doesn’t care about what is considered to be ground-breaking in English literature. You can say there would be no ethnic literature had there not been great English novels, and I would scoff and say, ethnic literature does not have to be valued against a euro-centric and racist ideal. Read Bhanu Kapil, who rejects the novel, who doesn’t feel she can even satisfy the novel. Read how uncomfortable and anxious the text is, which feels like it’s coming apart at the seams. That’s what your ideal does.
Sonora Jha once said “Western publishers almost entirely expect an Indian woman to write a ‘story of struggle’”, and the same goes for the majority of BIPOC writers. They want to see us suffering under the guise of racism, sexism, abuse. They don’t want to see BIPOC characters smile and go on great discoveries like Christine does in Fran Ross’ Oreo. So instead they feed us Rossetti and Shakespeare and Austen. I’m sure they’re good but they’re good because it’s all anyone knew. I don’t care about the old, I care about the new and the now. The literature that represents a language encompassed by so many racialised nations. Is their literature not English?
I wrote about Christopher Marlowe in my personal statement and you asked me about that in my first interview out of the two, when the day was still bright. I truly enjoyed Dr. Faustus, so much so that I went and watched the play the day of my exam on it. Before the interview, I memorized certain dates. When was the Renaissance period; when was the other one… Jacobean? Who was the King; what were contemporary audiences saying? But then you started asking me about why this text stood out so much, and what its response was. Suddenly I wasn’t in conversation with you, I was trying to form an essay in speech before you. I wanted to impress you but the holes in my knowledge were showing and I felt incredibly vulnerable. I knew I had botched this interview before it had even started, because I didn’t understand my own reason for being there. Why did I ever pick English? Simply because I was good at it. I hadn’t found my passion for it yet.
Three years on, studying at the University of Sussex, having taken a year abroad in Waterloo, I was given the exclusive chance to study modules on dissent, post-War literature, modules on race, gender and society, and soon I will be taking a decolonisation module. These modules have taught me what my inspiration is. It’s to reclaim the English language and venture into an English literature of voices who are denied of their English-ness. If I went into that interview now, I’d say, I can’t tell you what happened in Ulysses and I can’t tell you that I care about Chaucer. I’d tell you I enjoy Bronte and Shelley but I cannot stomach them. I care about Chimimanda Ngozi Adiche, Fran Ross, Bhanu Kapil, Rumi, Rupi Kaur, James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston. I care about Malcolm X, Nikesh Shukla, Gloria Anzaldua, Cheryl Suzack, bell hooks, Lucille Clifton, Fanie Lou Hamer, Cornel West. I care about literature and the literature about literature written by people who literature excludes. I care about literature that exposes colonialism, racisms and I care about reclamation literature. I care about everything outside of the Canon. If you’d like to talk about that, let’s do it. Let’s sit down again and let me not perform. Let’s talk.