Home Boy’s ending is an indictment of Bush’s America, not an identity reassertion

Evidence

53. Asma Mansoor reads the ending of the novel as a reassertion of Chuck/Shezad’s Pakistani identity (“Post-9/11 Identity Crisis in H. M. Naqvi’s Home Boy,” Pakistaaniat 4, no. 2 : unpaginated), and Birte Heidemann sees the decision to return home as a “counter-Orientalist gesture” (” ‘We Are the Glue,’ ” 298). However, in context it is hard to see the ending as anything other than a defeat and, more importantly, a direct indictment of Bush’s America and its attitude to Muslims. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 807

Categorization

• XREF: Directly speaks to the reader’s guiding question about Naqvi’s Home Boy — whether a return-home ending contests or quietly concedes to the hostile framing. Rivals other critics (Mansoor, Heidemann) read the ending as affirmation.
• SEED: Angle: reading the ambiguous Home Boy ending as indictment rather than homecoming — usable in the reader’s own argument about contesting vs. reinforcing.