On the Outside, Looking Like a Writer in Desperate Need of an Editor

This week I took a detour from my usual reading after seeing a rather surprising Tweetstorm regarding Walrus Magazine's review of Rupinder Gill's memoir, On the Outside Looking Indian.

The Tweetstorm centred on Emily Landau's audacity in writing a negative review and the question was asked, 'couldn't they have found a brown girl to review it?' I didn't get into it. My question would have been, Why should they have? And my snarkier comment would have been, Here we go again with yet another version of the appropriation of voice argument. Frankly I'm fed up with this nonsense when attempting to evaluate writing. I doubt very much Rupinder Gill's intended audience is other 'brown girls' in the same way I doubt very much that Joseph Boyden writes for other people of aboriginal ancestry (he's certainly not sufficiently First Nations to make it in that category, and in fact, like Louise Erdrich, suffers from some pretty ugly reverse racism from First Nations folks).

Wary as I am of Walrus Magazine's lit crit and reviews, based as they are on a desire to be provocative rather than fair and reflecting a sensibility that is peculiarly 416-Toronto while thumbing its nose at the 905 area code and the majority of Canadians, and having found another, diametrically opposed review of OtOLI, I decided I was going to have to read it for myself and make up my own mind.

Luckily the library had it and it was a quick read. It was also a bewildering read on many levels.

Gill is the second child in a family of four girls and one boy (the youngest). Growing up in Kitchener Waterloo, she was isolated within her own family, as there isn't a significant IndoCanadian presence in the area. (Take a look at the demographics - IndoCanadians aren't even listed - there are barely any Italians in K-W!) And the book is both a memoir of her childhood spent in front of a television set and of her 31st year, in which she attempts not so much to recreate her childhood, but to overcome its legacy by finally doing some of the things she wished she'd done as a child. To some extent this book should really be compared with Eat, Pray, Love I think - except for the fact that Gill's year of living goal-mindedly was self-funded and - well - I refuse to finish reading Eat, Pray, Love.

Among the many things Gill's childhood lacked: summer camp, sleepovers, dating, and dog ownership. The child of first-generation Punjabi immigrants, Gill's parents wouldn't let her - or her sisters - do many of the things we think of as classically Canadian. As a WASP who's old enough to be Gill's mother, I have to begin my quibbling here though. Yes I had a dog. Yes I went to summer camp for four years in a row. Yes I learned to swim there. Yes I've been to a grand total of two sleepovers and I remember one of them. Yes I was allowed to date in high school - although I didn't do it much (nor did many of the other kids who attended my academic high school - we were busy with music lessons, student council, demonstrating against the war in Vietnam and nuclear testing, orchestra, theatre, sports, etc.). What I wasn't allowed to do was watch unlimited quantities of television - au contraire. I wasn't even allowed to read for pleasure until and unless my homework was done. And I certainly had household chores - by the time I was in high school I was responsible for doing all the dishes, cleaning the bathroom once a week and both vacuuming the living room and sponging down all the furniture (the pets, a cat and a dog were officially mine, therefore the responsibility for feeding them and for cleaning up after them was also mine).

And so, the year she turns 30, Gill takes tap dancing lessons, investigates dog ownership and decides she's better off as a dog aunt (after one of her sisters does eventually acquire a dog), quits her job as a TV publicist, attends a week-long summer day camp as a counsellor, spends two months in New York where she takes some swimming lessons, and goes to Disney World. More important, she comes to some sort of understanding of and reconciliation with her childhood and her parents, whose strictness regarding appropriate activities for a good Sikh girl chafed so much when she was growing up.

So this book's premise is just fine. Whether you accept Julian Barnes' character's dictum in England, England that over the age of 25 you're no longer allowed to blame your parents for anything or not, Gill's desire to live purposefully rather than whinily is to be applauded.

But then there's the book itself, and Gill's writing skills. For someone who in high school was voted 'most likely to become a stand-up comic,' Gill's writing indicates she needs either one hell of a good editor or a writing partner. From the book's first page: 'In Indian adolescence you never break free of the rules. You cook, clean, babysit, clean, get good grades, clean, be silent, clean, and don't challenge your parents in any way -- especially while cleaning.' That paragraph could work vocally, but timing's everything in comedy, and with the flat delivery of print, it doesn't quite cut it. There are repeated 'jokes' about IndoCanadian facial hair - from the 'hibernating slug' that is her eyebrows (have you ever seen a photo or a self portrait of Frida Kahlo, Rupinder?) to the 'sideburns' she artfully arranges her hair to hide.

Then there are the earnest segments, as when Gill's asked for - and been denied - a three-month leave of absence from her job and decides to quit instead.

'On Monday morning I walked into my boss's office and said the two words I have been agonizing over for the past week: "I quit." As they came out of my mouth it was as if I was having an out-of-body-experience. I couldn't believe it, but it was done. I offered more than a month's notice. I would stay until the end of August and then I would be cast out into the world, jobless, clueless, and full of hope and excitement. I was. In fact, I could not wait.'

There are myriad examples of Gill's awkward prose similar to the one above, but for me the failure to use contractions ('I could not wait' as opposed to 'I couldn't wait') is indicative of someone who's neither a naturally good writer nor someone who's been properly edited. During her swimming lessons she stays 'under the water' rather than 'under water.' 'The second I would extend an arm' - 'Zoe splashed a downpour onto my face' - 'I needed to get everything in line for a chance to return to NYC once again, and not just as a visitor.' This is prose written not in dialect but just badly.

The issues Gill raises are important ones. I've been fascinated by the immigrant experience and by the pressures on first-generation Canadians, caught between two worlds and two cultures, for decades now. The whole 'vertical mosaic vs melting pot' (Canada's approach to multiculturalism vs the US's) notion was first articulated just as I was entering university and embracing my own young adult freedom. She's not unthoughtful, and she's not silly. But oh did this book need to be sent back for a rewrite and very very carefully line edited. I'm very glad her 'second childhood' changed her life. I hope she succeeds in her goal of writing for television. However, since my taste runs more to gritty, dark, cerebral television dramas (or so Netflix tells me), I won't be salivating at the prospect of watching a show written by someone who grew up on a steady diet of Welcome Back Kotter and Three's Company without gagging. I'll be sticking with The Wire and Mad Men, thank you very much, and continuing to give Hot in Cleveland a miss.

Oh and by the way - for an absolutely phenomenal interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire, and someone who's committed to pushing the boundaries of television - take a look at this.