IN THE KITCHEN Monica Ali MONICA ALI Monica

IN THE KITCHEN Monica Ali

MONICA ALI Monica Ali (born 20 October 1967) is a Bangladeshi-born British writer and novelist. In 2003, she was selected as one of the "Best of Young British Novelists" by Granta magazine based on her debut novel, Brick Lane, published later that year. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, one of the world's foremost literary honors. She has also published three other novels: Alentejo Blue (2006) In the Kitchen (2009) Untold Story (2011).

Ali was born in 1967 in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, which at the time was known as East Pakistan. Her father, Hatem Ali, was a teacher who had met her British mother, Joyce, while studying in the north of England a few years earlier. Ali's mother returned to Dhaka with him, where they defied the wishes of his family —who had already selected a bride for Hatem—and married. "People came from miles around to see this white woman" Ali told in an interview for the Evening Standard about her mother's newlywed adventures.

Civil war broke out in East Pakistan in 1971, and this forced Ali's parents to move to England for their safety and that of their four-year-old daughter, who has vivid recollections of this period. "When the Pakistani tanks rolled into Dhaka, we used to sleep out on the balcony at night, fully clothed in case a knock came at the door” (Ali’s interview for the Independent).

The Ali family settled in Bolton, a city in northwest England, but several years had passed since her parents had met, and anti-Asian sentiment was on the rise in Britain. In the early 1960 s, the few southwest Asian residents in England were largely professionals, such as doctors, but intervening years had brought a new influx of poorer immigrants, which raised tensions and prompted the founding of a right-wing anti-immigration party called the National Front. The family struggled on several levels, because her father had difficulty finding a job, and so her parents ran a small trinket shop for a time—and they all sensed unease from their English relatives and strangers alike. «I experienced Ali told the reporter of the Evening racism» Standard

Ali entered Wadham College of Oxford University and graduated with a PPE degree (the philosophy, politics, and economics course). She went to work in a small publishing house before joining a branding agency. During this period she met her future husband, a management consultant named Simon Torrance, and quit work when she became a mother. When her first child was born, Ali decided to join an online shortstory writing group. She had never tried writing fiction before, but as she told: “Quickly I felt a bit constrained by the short-story format, as though I didn't have room to breathe. There was something else that I wanted to do. And then it was a question of getting up the courage. ”

Her mother's father died not long following the arrival of Ali's second child, her daughter Shumi. Immediately after the funeral, she and her husband went on vacation, and it was then she began writing Brick Lane, the novel that established Ali as a writer of real literary depth and dimension. The novel tells the story of Nazneen, a sensitive and intelligent woman who is obliged to move from Bangladesh to England in order to marry Chanu, an unlucky but at the same time comic and energic man. The background of their life is an ethnic universe characterised by death, debt, kidnappings, drug, the impossibility to feel at home but above all the impossibility to return to Bangladesh and forced prostitution, a topic that we also find in her no less important novel: In The Kitchen. “It’s a book about faith, hope, love and custard. ”

What does it happen… In the Kitchen? «It’s all bitty and blurry and muddly. You know, in a proper war, or even in the Cold War, there’s a really clear enemy and it all makes sense, like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end and you know what you want the end to be, but now we don’t have a good story, the plot is all over the place. » (Charlie, Chapter 9, pp. 190 -191) In the «Imperial Hotel» ’s basement, where the story begins, a dead man is discovered. He’s Yuri, an illegal immigrant who worked there as a kitchen hand. Our main character, Gabriel Lightfoot, the executive Chef of a multiethnic brigade, struggles with the attempt to solve this case while putting up Lena, another illegal immigrant who apparently lived with Yuri in the basement. «Every corner of the earth was represented here. Hispanic, Asian, African, Baltic and most places in between. Oona had taken a new dishwasher, from Somalia or somewhere pretty much like that. The other one was Mongolian and the third was from where? The Philippines? […] The room service guy was freshly from Chile and Gabriel doubted that his English extended beyond fries and burgers…» (Chapter 6, p. 129)

Meanwhile… At Gabriel’s home in the fictional town of Blantwistle, things are not going well either: a call by his sister Jenny informs him that his father Ted suffers from liver cancer. à London vs Blantwistle (Northern England) In Blantwistle there were only the Asian, or the Pakis as they were called then, maybe still were. They did only the night shifts at the mill, were just coming out as the morning shift went in. That was the way it was at first. (Chapter 6, p. 129) Gabriel wishes a bright future for himself and his girlfriend Charlie: he is going into business with Rolly and Fairweather, a businessman and a politician respectively, so as to open his own restaurant, «Lightfoot» . As the story moves forward, every subplot becomes more complex and

The point is: how to deal with such situations without losing control over himself? Little by little, Gabriel starts behaving oddly and aimlessly. He wants to help Lena, but actually takes repeatedly advantage of her; he has sex with her, promises her to find her money and his «brother» Pasha, but never keeps his word; - He breaks up with Charlie after having confessed his relationship with Lena; - His father’s disease makes him reconsider his childhood and adolescence, including his relationship with his parents. He finds out that his memories do not match with reality: his mother’s madness and infidelity, his father, working in a textile factory and trying to induce little Gabe to pursue his career in that field. -

Free Will vs Determinism «I might not be able to fall asleep when I want, but when I’m awake I can decide what I do, when I do it, how I do it. That’s free will. We make choices all the time. How we behave is up to us. » (Gabriel, Chapter 18, p. 373) «How we behave is determined by our childhood, by the accidents of birth and parentage and what happened to us along the way. A particular childhood strips us of certain choices, propels us in certain directions. […] Freud’s taught us that we need to examine a person’s past in order to understand his behaviour today. » (Nikolai, formerly a doctor in USSR) (Chapter 18, pp. 373 -374)

Gabriel sinks more and more into his problems and eventually has a nervous breakdown. - He tries to convince himself of being in love with Lena and that they’re equally free. Actually, he’s keeping her almost a prisoner in his house: «You keep me here like… like prison. Like animal in cage. » (Chapter 22, p. 440) - Obsessed with looking for answers about himself and his life, he comes back to Charlie’s home and asks her to describe his identity, than feels relieved thanks to her honesty. «Selfish, self-obsessed, pig-headed […] insensitive, unfeeling, stubborn, stupid, selfish pig!» (Chapter 24, p. 484) - He wanders through London and someone mistakes him for a tramp, then offers Lena all his money and finally starts looking for his brother Pasha.

What is «In the Kitchen» really about? «Let’s say you are reading a novel and this novel is about a man’s life. It begins with his childhood and follows him through various events until, maybe, a crisis somewhere in middle age. […] As you read, the character is always making decisions, choices, about his life, thinking, vacillating, about which way he will go. […] But if we have got to know him, his make-up, his circumstances, then we know he will act. […]. The protagonist cannot be otherwise, cannot do otherwise, and yet he is condemned to behave - as we all must - as if he were free. » (Chapter 22, pp. 445 -446) Thriller vs socio-economic essay

In conclusion… Gabriel arrives at the station and gets on a strange bus that he recognizes to be an old bus of the «Imperial Hotel» . It is full of immigrants. After a delusional night on the road, he arrives somewhere in the Norfolk countryside and the mystery is finally revealed. Yuri’s death was accidental, nothing significant about a dead illegal immigrant, but an entire human trafficking ranging from «bonded labour» to prostitution is discovered. Gleeson, the maître, manages a business with Ivan, one of the cooks: they «collect» immigrants from the hotel, looking for the most hopeless and needy, and sell them as prostitutes or farm labourers.

London The great thing about London, thought Gabe, was that everyone was just a Londoner. The city bound everyone together or kept them all equally apart. (Chapter 11, p. London is the largest city in the 222) UK. This capital is home of a wide range of cultures and languages. As a matter of fact one in three residents isn’t born in Britain since they mainly come from India.

On the other hand London has always been a multicultural landscape since its foundation by the Romans, which was followed by the Saxon and Norman conquest and it has been for a long time the capital of one of the biggest empires of the world, during the colonial period. So a lot of people moved to London from the empire’s peripheries.

The city has always offered a place where the immigrants made an attempt to establish a community in order to feel at home. This aspect is clear just thinking of the way in which the different cultures have shaped London. At the same time it’s the city itself to celebrate this multicultural reality with its food stalls, restaurants and street festivals, as the famous Notting Hill Carnival. In the novel Monica Ali perfectly describes the streets of London and its inhabitants coming from different parts of the world but what is fascinating is how she transports this macro reality in the micro reality of the kitchen of the Imperial hotel.

The Imperial Hotel Still, he looked at his kitchen and brimmed with something that he wouldn't say was love. […] Every corner of the earth was represented here. Hispanic, Asian, African, Baltic and most places in between. (Chapter 6, p. 129) The British kitchen of the Imperial hotel is crowded with people who come from every part of the world just as the streets of London, so in this description Monica Ali depicts the “immigrant Britain” reality on a small scale. Moreover the Imperial hotel itself seems to recall the colonial past of Great Britain in its structure, where the characters that hold a higher role in the hotel hierarchy are English and, on the other side, there are the “foreigners” that work for them.

In this perspective Monica Ali summarises and reveals the forgotten aspects of the London multiculturalism in which the “foreigners” are used and even sold, as the reader discovers at the end of the novel, in order to enrich the ones who take advantage of their status of illegal immigrants.

Northern England In opposition to the glittering multicultural London and its concealed underground reality, there is the Northern England viewpoint about the presence of the “others” in Great Britain, represented by Gabriel’s father’s opinions: 'Great Britain, ' said Ted, without looking up, 'no one says that any more. United Kingdom. Well, we're hardly that. It's going to the dogs, Gabe. Going to the dogs. ' 'This kind of opportunity. . . I've waited a long time for it. ' 'We've lost the "Great". Know what else we've lost? Britishness. People keep talking about it. That's how you know it's gone. ‘ This quotation appears revelatory about the major concern of the (Chapter 12, p. 241) British people who live estranged from the city universe, regarding the loss of their national identity perceived as deprived of its original value because of the arrival of the “others”.

At the same time the loss is perceived even in a more private sphere regarding the sense of community: 'That's not what we're talking about, ' said Ted. 'We're talking about how it was, when people round here cared about each other. When you knew everyone in the street and they knew you. Not that means anything to you. ’ (Chapter 12, p. 241) Ted is talking to his son Gabriel in this passage but it is that part of England far from the cosmopolitan and postmodern city of London that is talking, the one that hardly can understand this new country where even buying a box of matches made in it is impossible. “You can’t buy a box of matches what’s made in this country, never mind a ship. ” (Chapter 12, p. 242)

And this problem of a lost national identity, especially in the peripheries of this multicultural landscape, played and important role behind the “Brexit catastrophe”, as Salman Rushdie defined it when The Guardian interviewed him about his new book “The Golden house”.

Characters GABE “He had no debts, he wasn’t an alcoholic, he didn’t take drugs, he didn’t live on sugar sandwiches and Coke; and he had come this far without bankruptcy, coronaries, divorce or psychotic breaks. Looking sideways (for what man is (Chapter 4, p. strong to resist? ) he could say that things were not too bad. ” 103) Gabriel Lightfoot , the main character, is a 42 -year-old Northern English executive chef. He seems unable to muster enough energy to even raise his voice at the staff members. He appears as a self-centered man who goes through an identity crisis right after the body of Yuri is found dead in the hotel cellar. The real conflict comes from the collision of his life with Lena’s. Gabe is a fragile character and the only thing he had in common with the dead Ukrainian boy was the fact that both suffered of loneliness. He seems not to be open to the multicultural reality represented by the workers, but, with the passing of time, he tries to be more empathetic. His own surname, Lightfoot, testifies his tendency to run away from important decisions or compromise with others.

Characters Lena “Lena, in the marbled moonlight, was a carved beauty, a dying swan. Her lips were sheened to perfection, her flawless cheeks were pearled, and the unfathomable beauty of her eyelids would make a convert of any man. There she lay, his irritant, his ache, his skinny girl, colorless hair spread across the pillow, his salvation, his ruin, or neither, but simply his release. ” (Chapter 8, p. 159) Lena is a skinny young Belarusian girl who was a sex slave. She decided to run away from her former pimp and was recently fired for her absence on the day of Yuri’s death. Lena is portrayed as a mysterious, tiny, surly girl who stands in direct opposition to Gabe’s articulate, feminine, understanding girlfriend Charlie. She offered him sex, probably because she knew sex was the only thing she could offer him. When she meets Gabe, he starts controlling her, increasing her insecurities. Even Lena who seemed to be the one who needed Gabe the most, abandons him.

Characters Yuri The Ukrainian night porter Yuri was found dead in the hotel basement, the place where he had lived. Gabe and Yuri did not have a close relationship. As the protagonist starts to investigate Yuri`s life, he discovers that they had one crucial thing in common: loneliness. We only know about him that he has two daughters and he hid his savings behind a brick wall. Fairweather He is one of Gabe’s backers in a new restaurant venture and a British MP, is the voice of political reason and corruption. Fairweather has his own, personal opinion on British identity. He claims that actually being British means being able to keep all your options open, being open-minded. In his opinion freedom, fairness, plurality are British core values. The British identity just like British economy for Fairweather is based on the concept of plurality but he also claims that multiculturalism is something linked to a kind of neutrality of values, a kind of nonidentity.

Characters Charlie is a red-haired talented nightclub singer and Gabe’s girlfriend. She would dearly love to settle down but when she learns of Gabe’s affair with Lena, she walks out. She is an insecure woman that, at the age of 38, is not happy with her life. “I`m not really a musician, am I? Not really a singer. Don`t even know what I want to listen to. ” (Chapter 9, p. 183) She probably knows Gabe better than anyone does, in fact she doesn’t recognize him when he shows the first signs of his nervous breakdown. Ted is Gabriel’s father, a retired Northern English mill worker who is dying of colorectal cancer. Gabe’s never got on well with his father but when he finds out that his father has been diagnosed with cancer, he tries to get closer to him. Ted regrets the Old Britain, the one in which everyone knew everyone, when people cared about each other, so for old people the sense of nostalgia for a more cohesive community is really evident. In the past, people knew what being British meant, in modern times you just need to pass the

Characters Sally Anne is Gabe’s mother. She is a bipolar woman who feels jealous of the relationship between her son and husband. Not explicitly shown in the novel, it still seems like the bond between Gabe and Ted vanishes because of her. When Gabe identifies with his father, Sally Anne gets depressed. She wants her little boy to herself. Sally Ann wants to do something else in her life, to be someone else. Indeed, she runs away with men, hides purchase from her husband secretly goes out for drinks. Nana Sally Anne`s mother, Phyllis Henrietta Josephine Higson, called Nana in the novel, gives the impression that she wants to be someone else as well. Even though Nana is suffering from dementia, she is still the person she has always been. She lost her memory but she didn’t lose her prejudices about immigrants. She doesn’t understand the reason why they protest. She thinks that they are always complaining about this and that, and if they try to modify Great Britain into their motherland, they are wasting their time, because when they lived in their countries they weren’t happy with their lives, and this is the reason why they left

Characters Oona is Gabe’s Afro-Caribbean secretary and executive Sous Chef. Her physical appearance is really stereotyped: she represents the typical Afro-Caribbean woman with gold teeth and “fat feet” that belonged to a faith-based community. Oona, ’ said Gabe, ‘there’s a calculator here. ’ […] ‘Hoh’, said Oona, ‘calculator. ’ She laughed her cosmic laugh. ’ Give me the book, ’ said Gabe. He stabbed at the calculator with a pen. ‘Hexercise’, said Oona, ‘got to hexercise the brain. ’ (Chapter 13, p. 263) Oona is kept on at the hotel for her encyclopedic institutional memory, but she’s homely and quaint, not a serious chef like Gabriel. Even if she is an immigrant from the Caribbean isles, she is not a subject to repression in England. She appears as an independent woman, who always expresses her opinion.

Characters Nikolai, Benny, Suleiman The Russian commis chef, one of Gabe`s best workers, is called “doctor”, because he really is. Nikolai was an obstetrician in Soviet Union and he was investigating birth defects. He made public his discovery and was branded as a spy because the factory supplied military parts, so he had exposed military secrets. For this reason he had to leave, he came to London and started to work in the kitchen. He sees things through a scientific point of view, especially when he talks with Gabe. At the same time Gabe trusts Nikolai and wants to be helped by him in order to find out the meaning of his recurring dream about Yuri. Benny, from Liberia, told Gabe a struggling story about his friend Kono, who became a child soldier. According to him, refugees know how to tell their story because it’s precious like a treasure; maybe it’s all that they possess, when they have been robbed of both material and immaterial things. Suleiman, from India, speaks a better English than Oona’s. He is the only one of Gabe’s workers who seems to show interest in cooking. His parents in India were selecting a number of girls from good families but, at first, his presence is not required, because their astrological charts must be matched. Even if he

Characters Gleeson, Ivan, Victor Stanley Gleeson, the restaurant manager and Ivan, the Slavic grill chef, were suspected of trafficking people. Ivan gets girls from the hotel, Gleeson show them some photos, making these girls believe that they can become whatever they want, and then they sell them on. The same Gleeson is the man behind Gabe`s second discovery as well. With the help of his brother, he runs an onion farm where the employees are underpaid immigrants who are treated very badly and have their passports taken from them to lose all their rights. Victor is a Moldavan man who works at the Imperial Hotel. Thanks to Victor, Gabe finds out that there’s an illegal trafficking of women.

THEMES AND CRITICAL REFERENCES In her third novel, In the Kitchen, Monica Ali creates a microcosm where gravitate several important themes of the post-colonial literature, already analysed in her previous works. Why this title? The title embodies the multicultural environment in which most of the novel takes place. In fact, the kitchen of the “Imperial Hotel” is populated by migrants from all over the world with their secret pasts and stories not easy to tell, while their superior is Gabriel Lightfoot an Englishman, a 42 -year-old chef who is, secretly, trying to open his own restaurant.

ntity Ide • ‘A language reveals the attitudes who use and shape it. […] At first, we were told, the goal was ‘integration’. Now this word rapidly came to be ‘assimilation’: a black man could only become integrated when he started behaving like a white one. After integration came the concept of ‘racial harmony’. And now there’s a catchword: ‘multiculturalism’ […]. Multiculturalism is the last token gesture […] and it ought to be exposed, like ‘integration’ and ‘racial harmony’ for the sham it is. ’ (Rushdie 1992: 137)

This problem of identity and need of classification is very clear in the choices, made by Monica Ali, of the names of the places and the names of the characters. It is also clear in the way she describes the places with their iconic representations of the old “Great” Britain who seems having lost all its greatness, a memory made of glorious ruins, whose legacy is just in names, buildings, monuments and objects.

The kitchen Imperial Hotel TWO DIFFERENT IDENTITIES

Gabriel Lightfoot

“He looked into those eyes where he had so often looked and seen nothing, as if they were milky with cataracts. They were clear, bright blue. And he saw in them pity. He saw compassion. Wasn't that a kind of love? He was more afraid of it than of her hate. Despite everything. . . in spite of it all . . . love was what remained. Gabriel could not speak. He bowed his head. 'Gabriel, ' said Lena, delivering a chaste kiss on his crown, 'like the angel. ’”

“He was like a general on a brief tour of the front line who, receiving a valiant and superficial wound, feels at one with his men. Still, he looked at his kitchen and brimmed with something that he wouldn't say was love. It wasn't love but it was something, when he took in his brigade, a United Nations task force all bent to their work. ” [Chapter 6, p. 129]

“You keep me here like. . . like prison. Like animal in cage' said Lena. He could see what he was doing wrong. He looked at himself with a mixture of pity and disgust. What a sap. What a fool. Would he never learn? 'Do I lock you in? Do I beat you? ' He should know better than to shout. He did know better. But here we go again. 'Don't I give you everything you ask for and more? ' 'You promise, ' said Lena, attacking her fingernail, 'but you don't give. ’” [Chapter 22, p. 440]

‘I was interested to examine a character living in a modern, metropolitan, multicultural society without any deeprooted ties (in terms of work, family, community), who thinks he is perfectly adept at living in that world, and then to pile the pressure on him in order to strip him down to his bare essentials. ’ Mon

a life under control Yes ? o n or

THE IDENTITY CRISIS “WHEN HE LOOKED BACK, HE FELT THAT THE DEATH OF THE UKRAINIAN was the point at which things began to fall apart. He could not say that it was the cause, could not say, even, that it was a cause, because the events which followed seemed to be both inevitable and entirely random, and although he could piece together a narrative sequence and take a kind of comfort in that, he had changed sufficiently by then to realize that it was only a story he could tell, and that stories were not, on the whole, to be trusted. Nevertheless, he fixed the beginning at the day of the Ukrainian's death, when it was the Y h t a e d s ’ i ur

The frontier is a wake-up call. At the frontier we can’t avoid the truth. […] Here at the edge, we submit to scrutiny, to inspection, to judgement. This people, guarding these lines must tell us who we are. We must be passive, docile. To be otherwise is to be suspect, and at the frontier to come under suspicious is the worst of all possible crimes. [. . ] the dangerous edge of things. This is where we must present ourselves as simple, as obvious: I’m coming home. I’m on a business trip. I’m visiting my girlfriend, I’m not anything you need to bother about, really I’m not the fellow who voted against the government…. I’m onedimensional. I’m simple. Let me pass. [ S. Rushdie, Step across this

“Gabriel was still gripped by the conviction that Nikolai knew why he had the dream; it was a faith that went beyond reason, was without explanation, and defied all logic. He knew it in his bones. He wanted to seize Nikolai by the shoulders and shake it out of him. But it was Gabriel who shook as he put a hand on Nikolai's arm and breathed, 'For God's sake, tell me why. ' Nikolai smiled gently. 'OK, I'll tell you. ' The words coursed through Gabriel's body. 'You think it has some significance. You want to know what that is. Am I correct? ' 'Yes, ' murmured Gabriel, 'yes. ' 'The significance of Yuri's death, ' said Nikolai, 'is that it is insignificant. That is why it is so troubling. That is why you dream. ' He freed his arm from

The wake-up call for Gabe, is the meeting with Lena: a Belarussian migrant, victim of the sexual tourism. From this moment forward his Freudian crisis starts: dreams, nightmares hunted him, memories of his childhood and of the relationship with his family came up, her mother was no more the portrait of the perfection who made him believe in dreams and falling stars, but she became a On the contrary, his relationship with bipolarised person with all her weaknesses. his father improved after the discovery of his cancer and after a talk with his sister.

Family Relationship: Nostalgia, Melancholia and Understanding 'You didn't mean? What? Forget it, Gabe, no, just forget it, I don't even care. And about Mum, you shouldn't sound so superior because Dad did his best and you've never had family to cope with, not like that, not when there's someone ill for years and it's not even understood properly and you're just struggling on your own. Put yourself in his shoes, why don't you, and then you'll see how things really stand. ’ […] 'She was ill, ' said Jenny. 'Four or five times that happened and then there was all the shopping, endless stuff from catalogues that Dad and me would wrap up and send back. That was the mania, the manic episodes, and then she'd be depressed. Bipolar they call it now. ' Gabe shook his head. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He went back to shaking his head. 'You can't tell me about Mum like that, as if. . . Do you even realize what you've said? What you've accused her of ? '

'I felt so sorry for him, ' said Jenny. 'Poor old Dad. ' 'Poor old Dad? Poor me, poor you, poor Mum. She was never allowed, anyway. . . I don't know. What about you? Don't you want to, sometimes, just get back to being yourself ? ' She looked at him through slitted eyes. 'I am myself. What you see is what you get, Gabriel. And if you don't like it you know what you can do. ' [Chapter 11, p. 230]

“Gabriel represents the struggle of contemporary British maleness to adapt to contemporary society and values” Before the crisis After the breakdown “Every corner of the earth was represented here. Hispanic, Asian, African, Baltic and most places in between. Oona had taken on a new dishwasher, from Somalia or somewhere pretty much like that. The other one was Mongolian and the third was from where? the Philippines? ” [Chapter 6, p. 129] He starts to be interested in its busboys’ stories, Yuri, Benny, Seulemain, Viktor and Lena identities, he simply wants to know, wants to understand the Other.

<<Death Squad, Lethal Weapon, Killer Dog. . . Kono was not very tall for his age and his nickname was General Shoot-On-Tiptoes, for obvious reasons I think. ’ […]'He did what child soldiers do and had cornrows and cowries in his hair, and every day he got high. '[…]'Then one day Kono went on a raid and they did the usual stuff, raping, looting, killing. When they had finished this work they relaxed for a while in this village. Some of the boy soldiers began playing football and Kono went to join in. He saw that they were using a woman's head for a ball. Kono joined in the game. ' Gabriel looked sharply at Benny. 'I can see what you are thinking, ' said Benny, 'heh, you are thinking how can a human being do this? Even myself, I am thinking the same. What is it that makes us human? Are we just animals, after all? ' 'This is your friend? ' said Gabe. […] 'We are very close. After this day, he knew he had to get out. He decided he would rather die than stay. So when he was sent to the market one day to get food take it, not buy it, you understand he ran away. For a while he lived on

<<He needed to know now, and he needed to know urgently, what he was. He grabbed at words. Fair. He was fair, oh yes, everyone said so, everyone knew it. He was fair and he was reasonable. That was him. A perfect description. Above all, he was a reasonable man. Maybe not this morning with Oona, no, that was out of character. He wasn't really like that. […] What am I? he thought. What am I? The question pinged round and round plaintively until, firing faster and faster, it took on a sharper edge. What am I? A nobody? A nothing? A zero? Am I a hollow man? He was angry. >> [Chapter 24, p. 478] e e r h t y l On ? s d wor <<He couldn't describe himself. He couldn't see his own face. He would have to ask someone else. 'Suleiman, ' he said, panting with excitement. 'Suleiman, if you had to describe me in three words, what would you say? ' Suleiman peered anxiously over the top of his imaginary spectacles. 'Chef, could you please repeat the question? ' 'Three words. Describe me. First three things that come into your head. ' Suleiman looked aghast. 'Without preparation ' he began. Gabriel had already moved on to Benny. 'OK, listen, this is not a trick question and you can say whatever you like. How would you describe me in only three words? ' 'Only three words? ' said Benny. Gabe nodded eagerly. 'Yes, brilliant, you've got the idea. Good man. ' 'I would say, tall. ' He looked Gabe slowly up and down. 'Tall. White. Male. ’>>

'You want me to talk about you? ' shouted Charlie. 'It's all about you? You want me to tell you what you're like? ' 'You're the one who knows me. ' He could scarcely breathe but he pulled on one cigarette and then the next. In a moment she would tell him. Charlie, who knew him best. 'No, ' she yelled. 'I won't do it. I'm not going to stand here and talk about you. I'm not interested. I don't care. ' 'Oh, please, ' said Gabriel with great ardour. 'I'll never ask you for anything else. All I'm asking for is a few words. ' 'I'll tell you what you're like, then, ' cried Charlie. 'You're selfish. You're the most selfish person I've ever met. ' 'Oh, thank you, ' said Gabriel, almost crying with relief. 'Selfish, I see, I'm sure you're right, not the best quality but still. . . and what else? Anything else you can think of ? Anything at all? '

Finally, he becomes the Other, the migrant who works in the fields in a farm far-away from London. Becoming Danilo Hetman he can solve the mystery linked to Yuri’s death, a traffic of bodies, men, women attracted by the false promises of the Happyland, the West World where all dreams come true. But, actually, they are threatened by the White people who takes their passports, and constrains them to forced labour and prostitution. <<The most precious book I possess is my passport. […]A passport, after all, is a commonplace object. You probably don’t give a lot of thought to yours most of the time. […] but I have never forgotten that all passports do not work in this way. >> [S. Rushdie, Step across this line, p. 427] <<'We'll set up a fish and chip shop, then. People still eat fish and chips, don't they? ' 'They do. But we'd have to sell kebabs as well. ' Jenny stopped and puffed out her cheeks. ‘ >> [Chapter 27, p. 546]

“Post-colonialism and multiculturalism have arguably done more to transform our sense of who we are and what are about than any other intellectual and political recent movements. ” (Pope-1998) <<There’s a lot of different religions in here, Oona>> (Chapter 1, p. 19)

The Imperial Hotel • “Built in 1878 by industrialist and champion muttonchop grower Sir Edward Beavis, on the site once occupied by Dr Culverwell's Bathing Establishment in Yew Street, Piccadilly, the hotel shouldered as many previous incarnations as it did flying buttresses and gargoyles on its Gothic Revival exterior. ” • “In the war it had been requisitioned by the government, providing sickbays for convalescing officers and a transit point for soldiers on leave. Afterwards it went back into business but by the early - It represents the English Imperialism and the values of fifties the doormen were fighting over Britishness. the guests and the hotel was forced to

Immigrants in Britain “'The girl. What's the name? You know, washing the pots and all. ' She rubbed her breast while she thought. 'Oh, she so skinny that girl she pass under doors, she so thin she hard to see. ” (Chapter 1, p. 23) Despite the opportunities that the multicultural London offers, it seems that all its immigrants are just considered a cheap face-less workforce. Gabriel himself can barely recall Lena’s figure as well as he can’t remember all the names of his employees (sometimes he just remembers their nationality).

As stated by Franz Fanon, colonialism is over only once the colonialism way of thinking is challenged. (The wretched of the world-1961) This is particularly true if we take into account the sharp contrast between the alluring expectations for a wealthier life London offers and its hidden truth: a world of exploitation due to the rules of the market economy.

What is Britishness in 21 st century? • <<So far up their own backsides with this what's that word? "multiculturalism", they've got no common sense. >> (Chapter 11, p. 221) • <<'Great Britain, ' said Ted, without looking up, 'no one says that any more. United Kingdom[…] 'We've lost the "Great". Know what else we've lost? Britishness. People keep talking about it. That's how you know it's gone. ‘[…] We used to know what it meant to be English. It's a dirty word now, that is. ’>> - Loss(Chapter 12, pp. 241 -242). of identity of the old generations. - Britishness (embodied by Ted’s hobby to collect ships in glass bottles, symbols of the English naval fleet) VS Multiculturalism (embodied by the city of London and its inhabitants).

“The British way” “Plurality. Our so-called British identity is like our economy, Gabriel, deregulated in the extreme. It's a marketplace of ideas and values and cultures and none of them are privileged over the rest. Each one finds its own level depending on supply and demand. ‘” (Chapter 17, p. 364) “[…]employers want to buy labour as they buy other commodities supplies” (Chapter 21, p. 421) Here the explanation of what it really means to be “British” today. It is a cruel and utilitarian justification (Fairweather is a politician, so a member of the upper-class).

Rushdie- “Imaginary Homelands” 1992 “[…] a black man could only be integrated when he started behaving like a white one. After ‘integration’ came the concept of ‘harmony’[…] And now there is a new catchword: ‘multiculturalism’. […]it ought to be exposed for the shan it is. Despite the presence in the novel of many characters, very different for religion, language and ethnicity, it is not possible for them a real integration as the main focus is on the (white) English man: the only scale of values seen as possible is still the one of the West. “‘How would you describe me in only three words? ' […] 'Tall. White. Male. ‘» (Chapter 24, pp. 479 -480)

Hybridity: a journey for a new identity Homi Bhabha’s “Location of culture”-1981, focusing the attention on the post-colonial migrants who now inhabits the west, states that it should be created a third space where chaos and contamination rule over the old rigid categorizations. In the novel this becomes a possible solution only when Gabriel is willing to hear the stories of his immigrant employees. Gabriel’s personal journey becomes the journey of Britain for a new collective identity. This new identity should be the result of an amalgamation of all the “sub-cultures”. “'But every refugee knows how to tell his story. For him, you understand, his story is a treasured possession. For true, it is the most important thing he owns. ’” (Chapter 18, p. 380) “'The significance of Yuri's death, ' said Nikolai, 'is that it is insignificant’. ” (Chapter 23, p. 463)

The impact of Immigration and Globalization in Monica Ali's In the Kitchen Gabriel’s kitchen is 'immigrant Britain on display'. “Every corner of the earth was represented here. Hispanic, Asian, African, Baltic and most places in between”, he reflects at one point. (Chapter 6, p. 102) “It was touching, really, to watch them all, every race, every colour, every creed. ”

Migrants conditions In her novel Ali paints a shadowy world of illegal immigration schemes, slave labor and forced prostitution. This is the new Britain. Many of the characters we meet have an education, but have to content themselves with manual labour. -The commis chef Nikolai, from the Soviet Union, was once a doctor; -The Ukrainian Olek has a Maths degree, but came to England to escape poverty.

Bonded labour All right. If you really want to know. What happens is, the traffickers use regular migration routes and work visas, but then charge fees for arranging work which put the workers into debt before they've even arrived in the UK. Sometimes their documents are removed, they're kept in poor housing and charged a fortune, charged for transport to and from work, and so on and so forth. Threats, abuse, all sorts of things. Don't forget that these people very often speak little English and they're not aware of their rights. (Chapter 21, p. 420)

Language and acquisition of rights are strictly bound. Migrants who don't speak proficiently are easy to manipulate.

Violence and rape are deeply-rooted in her mind, in a manner which they sound normal to her. That's why, when Gabe offers to her a place to stay she believes he is acting with ulterior motives: 'If you want sex, ' said Lena, 'I don't have problem. ' Gabriel opened his eyes. 'No, ' he said. 'What? No. ' He shook his head. […] 'I don't have problem. We do it, OK, now if you want. ' 'Look. You don't know me, but if you think I. . . that's not how I am, I'm notlike that at all. ' 'OK, ' said Lena. 'You don't believe me? I didn't bring you here for. . . you said you needed a place to stay. ' 'OK. ' 'Jesus. '

But the adult Gabe defends the immigrants: 'Tolerance. Fairness. Fair play. There are definitely British qualities. I think we'd both agree on that. ' 'Just words, ' said Ted. 'Don't mean owt now. ' 'Come on, ' said Gabriel, laughing. 'It's not as bad as that. That's part of the 'British character always doing ourselves down. ' 'These sails, ' said Ted, 'they turn to dust in yer hand. ' He shook his head. ' 'British character, ' he said. 'There's no such thing. Not now. You see them, these politicians, talking about it, and it's like a Punch and Judy show. No, there's no substance. Time was, you could talk about decency. And it meant something. In this country, it did. ' 'You should see my kitchen, Dad. I've got every nationality in there and everyone gets along. ’ (Chapter 12, pp. 242 -3)

Who can handle the truth? 'And if you tell your own story, you may not be believed'. "Lack of credibility. " That is the stamp they use. I know somebody that this happened to. ' [. . . ] 'Lack of credibility. They asked him all sorts of questions. They asked how many children he had and how many had been killed. Eleven, he told them. And how many, they asked again, have died? Eleven, he said again. He should have said two or three. That was his mistake. We do not believe your story, they told him. It lacks cred-i-bil -ity. ' He made the word go on for ever, a long indictment, a litany of crime. They were right. But also wrong. It is not credible but it is true. [. . . ] What is a man to do? ’ (Chapter 7, p. 153 -154).

RUSHDIE “The frontier’s everyday life may look banal, meaningless, and above all continuous, but it begins with the planting of a bomb and ends with the radical discontinuity of an explosion. This frontier is anonymous, denaturing; it strips humanity bare. Life, death, no much else matters, except, maybe, alcohol. ” Step Across This Line, p. 417

RUSHDIE “Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory. And the novel is one way of denying the official, politicians version of truth. ” Imaginary Homelands, p.

RUSHDIE “The migrant severed from his roots, often transplanted into a new language, always obliged to learn the ways of a new community, is forced to face the great question of change and adaptation; but many migrants[. . ] retreat from such questions behind the wall of the old culture they have both brought along and left behind. The running man, rejected by those people who have built great walls to keep him out, leaps into a confining stockade of his own. ” Step Across This Line, p. 415

ANDROCENTRISM “a habit of mind and set of attitudes which are based upon a male perspective and which ignore female experience and interests” Jeremy Hawthorn “When I was growing up, in the Soviet Union’ said Nikolai ‘femininity was a simple thing. A woman was a worker. A woman was a mother. A woman was a wife. My mother, she worked in a factory. In the factory she wore blue overalls, like a worker. When she came home, she wore an apron, like a mother. And once a month she went out with my father to listen to music and drink a little vodka, and she wore lipstick. It was bright red [. . . ]’But now’ said Nikolai, ‘what does femininity mean? ’ [. . . ]’My mother had one lipstick’ said Nikolai ‘We all knew what it meant. How many lipsticks does your girlfriend have? ’ [. . . ] ‘But now a woman has many shades. She might wear them all in one day. It depends on her moods. It is very confusing for men. ” (Chapter 14, pp. 295 -297)

Spivak states that the subaltern (as female) cannot speak because she has always been denied a possibility of enunciation (Can the subaltern speak? 1988) «Dad came home, trailing Jenny and a cloud of poison gas. ‘It’s past o’clock, he said, his ears colouring Mum clamped her hands over her breasts as if she feared they would be confiscated. ‘Don’t, she yelled at Dad. ‘Don’t tell me who to be’. » (Chapter 3, p. 67 -8) «‘What do you want me to do? Cooking and cleaning and shopping and cooking. I shouldn’t do anything else! Just you wait, madam, it’ll be your turn soon enough. See how you like it then’» (Chapter 3, p. 71)

GABRIEL’S RELATIONSHIP WITH WOMEN • GABE AND HIS MOTHER: «‘Well, I think you look right lovely’ said Gabriel, when she finally let him go. » (Chapter 3, p. 67) • GABE AND HIS SISTER: «Two years ago […] She used to be so many words now and all of them passed you by. » (Chapter 2, p. 49) «They were pretty eyes. She had Mum’s long, fine nose and her top lip curved up in a sculpted arch. That oval that contained her features sat on her face like a mask, untouched by the fat of her jowls chin. She didn’t suit being fat. It didn’t seem right. It seemed unnatural, a joke, as if she were about to burst out of

• GABE AND HIS GIRLFRIEND: «Charlie wanted to start a family. ‘I’m not getting any younger’, she said. She was only thirty-eight […] Gabe thought he would pop the question on the day the contract was signed. Do you want to move in together? He knew the answer, of course. […] ‘We could run away to Tobago’ Charlie had said, when she came off the stage. ‘You dish up the surf’n’turf, I’ll be pouring the drinks. Gabriel stared at the floor, …» (Chapter 1, p. 30 -1) «‘Nana’d like you’, Gabe told Charlie. ‘She’d think you should be on the telly as well’. ‘That doesn’t actually sound like a plan. That sounds, in fact, like you think she would like me if only she met me but she’s not going to so she won’t’»

• GABE AND OONA: “There was something about Oona that infuriated him. [. . . ] What offended him about Oona was simply this: her domesticity. When she blew into his office and sat down it was as if she had just got home with the shopping, looking forward to a cuppa and a chat. The way she talked, the way she walked, the way she pressed her bosom when she was thinking, all of it, at core, was irreducibly and inescapably domestic. In Gabe’s experience, women who worked in kitchens – and there were a few – worked the hardest, swore the loudest and told the dirtiest jokes. It wasn’t about being one of the boys, not necessarily – they could flirt like hell too – but it showed they knew the rules. ” (Chapter 1, p. 18 -19)

• GABE AND LENA: “Her face was thin and rigid and her hands, which she held twisted together at her chest, were fleshless claws” (Chapter 1, p. 33) “He approached her gradually, as he would a wild creature” (Chapter 5, p. 104) “She had a feline nose, small and snub, high, skinny eye-brows and a pale scar of a mouth. It was difficult to tell, Gabe could not decide, whether she was pretty or not” (Chapter 5 p. 108) Said’s reflects on the traditional attribution of non-human features to the second element in the binary self/Other (Orientalism, 1978) “Close to tears, he sat on the edge of the bed took and hold of her feet. He appraised each toe, the pearly nails, each little knuckle, the delicate articulation of each joint. [. . . ] marvelling at how truly she was flesh and bone, his Lena, his ghostly girl. And the anklebones, they were real all right, the shinbones and the knees, and she raised her hips lightly so he could raise her dress. He worked

DEATH • Yuri’s death: What if Yuri was not dead? Benny had told him with a calm and unquestionable certainty that Yuri was dead. But what if he was still alive? […] I should have sent you a doctor, Yuri, not Mr James with his bloody Montblanc fountain pen and his executive leather pad. (Chapter 1, p. 13) • Death and illness mark Gabe`s family and old home.

Style and Language • Novel’s structure • Narrator and point of view • Lexis and grammar • Figures of speech • Language

Structure • 27 chapters with further internal division • Opening in medias res • Symmetry: opening and ending of the novel with episodes of death • “Overcooked novel”: slow but detailed narration with continuous reiteration of events and thoughts that, gradually, bring toward the turning point of the novel

Narrator and point of view • Heterodiegetic narrator: third person narration switching in first person only in direct speech • Internal focus: point of view based on Gabriel's life and thought • Irruption of past through flashbacks about childhood

- very complex; - descriptive and detailed; - specific about some fields: Semantic fields: 1. Textile 2. Kitchen

Detailed descriptions “[…. . ]The ceiling was high with quadrangular lacunae in the baroque fashion, the cavities hosting intricate flowers and unknown coats of arms. The walls were covered in fleurde-lys wallpaper in a richly subtle colour somewhere between silver and beige. The colour was picked up in the carpet, and complemented by the table linen which leaned more towards pink. On the walls, at regular intervals, hung vast mirrors with rococo gilding and in the middle of the room stood a small stone fountain on which a pair of seahorses pranced. The French chandelier hid its ugliness in a blaze of light and this evening appeared to flirt charmingly with the scene below. […. . ]” (Chapter 4, p. 88)

Use of specific terms/expressions related to the culinary field • Executive Chef: sometimes called the head cook, he/she is the responsible of the food preparation in a kitchen, orders and supplies, making staff schedules, dealing with administrative tasks. Executive chefs are usually employed by large restaurants, hotels, country clubs and even cruise lines. Most manage a staff of at least ten employees. • Sous Chef: a chef’s assistant, from the French ”sous” meaning "under. “ • Mise-en-place: French culinary term meaning "put in place. " It means a set up with all the ingredients and components ready to prepare a dish, from chopped veggies to cooking tools (Chapter 1, p. 12: “[…. . ]he saw Suleiman working steadily at his mise-en-place, chopping shallots and, with a clean sweep of the broad knife blade, loading them into a plastic box […. . ]”). • En papillote: From the French ”papillon” meaning “butterfly”, this describes a cooking method in which the ingredients are sealed in a parchment paper or foil pouch and baked in the oven to steam in its own juices. It is usually used to cook seafood. (Chapter 3, p. 78: “[…. . ]Gabriel gave Benny a hand to make up more portions of bass and scallops en papillote. […. . ]”) • Michelin Stars

Use of specific terms/expressions related to textile […. . ]Can you tell me what's on the pirn? ‘ Thread, Dad. ''You'd call it thread if it was in your mum's sewing basket. We call it yarn. […. . ]To produce the yarn, there's a process, to get it from cotton balls to this. First you've got to untangle it, that's called carding. You straighten the fibres down into long strings and you've got roving […. . ]. So then it's got to be spun. […. . ]a spinning mill […. . ] it's basically drawing and twisting it and turning it into the yarn. […. . ] (Chapter 6, p. 135)

Lexis and Grammar • Vocabulary overwhelmingly full of words related to death: e. g Characters’ expressions: […] is scared half to death; […] he will drop down dead of anger; […] smelling like a dead cat, dead-white cheeks, […] the business of dying. Suicides in the novel. • Verbs: Past Simple and Present Simple. • Linguistic melting pot as British regional accents combine with Caribbean, French and Belarussian: e. g Chef Albert «Je suis en pleine forme […], My docteur – he gives me more zan ze’ealth. He gives me me!» . (Chapter 13, p. 266) • Characters’ language: often offensive and full of grammatical errors: «You piece of shit [. . ] You fucker! You fucking fuck!» (Chapter 13, p. 279) «One day he is coming and when he come to my room I see he is play with wedding ring and I say, ‘Oh, you are marry? You have wife? ’ Like this, I say, because I think maybe if wife come to his mind he will be better, he will not do this things to me. You see how stupid? You see how stupid I am? »

Figures of speech • Metaphors and similes: “(…)His brow was dark and heavy, as though authority resided there. (…)” (Chapter 4, p. 99) “(…) She had a feline nose, small and snub, high, skinny eyebrows and a pale scar of a mouth. ” (Chapter 5, p. 108) • Personification: Lunch service The town Death The Union Model of labour

A language of frustration He ran over it again. Get Dad to the opening. Get the restaurant on its feet. Move in with Charlie. Have a kid. Dad. Restaurant. Charlie. Kid. Tick them off, cross them out. Tick, cross, tick, cross. (Chapter 5, p. 115) In more than an occasion Monica Ali makes Gabriel think of his own life as a list of things to do. This kind of sentence construction communicates a deep frustration which, during the unraveling of the plot, is revealed by his actions. As a matter of fact, he seems to fulfill his aims but, at the same time, he tries to escape from them, procrastinating page by page and finally throwing away his life savings.

Realistic language in the dialogues Monica Ali uses in the dialogues a realistic language that perfectly denotes the personality of the characters and their personal trauma as in Lena’s case. She has been tricked into moving to London and the consequences of this traumatic event are shown through her harsh way of talking which reflects the brutality experienced firsthand: 'You promise, ' said Lena, attacking her fingernail, 'but you don't give. ‘ […] 'You say you look for Pasha. You say you pay someone. But I don't believe. ' (Chapter 22, p. 440)

Presentazione a cura di: • • Martina Boccia Michela Borrelli Elvira Carbone Michela Cioppa Roberta De Rosa Anna Falco Marianna Franzese Anna Fucito • • Federica Genovese Valerie M. B. Peluso Valeria Perna Rosita Pisano Elena Scuderi Maria Fiorella Suozzo Claudia Tarantino Grazie per l’attenzione!