Novelistic form shapes whether religious identity can be articulated

Evidence

These two books present distinct answers to the question of whether it is possible, within the confines of the novel, to articulate Islamic religious identity. The avowedly materialist Black Album, like its predecessor The Buddha of Suburbia, recognizes all identity as experimental and performative; therefore, claims to a core, true religious identity are treated as opportunistic or dishonest. Brick Lane foregoes collective identification for individual self-assertion and a religious faith that, although depicted ambivalently, remains private and unthreatening. Similarly, while Kureishi uses the social comedy and bildungsroman forms to construct a bawdy, rambunctious disavowal of religious purism, Ali offers us supposedly unvarnished realism as a way to draw us in and ensure our sympathy for her downtrodden protagonist. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 149

Categorization

• XREF: Directly transferable to Hamid and Naqvi: The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s frame-tale monologue vs. Home Boy’s first-person wit determine whether collectivist Muslim identity is articulable inside them.
• ADDENDUM: Sharp tool for assessing whether Changez (Hamid) or the narrator of Home Boy (Naqvi) contest or quietly reinforce Islamophobia through their chosen narrative forms.
• DEEPTHINKING: The form-determines-what-identity-is-articulable claim is the book’s central analytical instrument, dense enough to carry the whole comparison thesis.