July 14, 2015, has been marked on every library enthusiast's calendar as the day you get your copy of Harper Lee's second novel, Go Set a Watchman. Lee has remained reclusive through all the popularity of 88-year-old American novelist almost remained a one-book wonder. That is, until, the unpublished novel was discovered earlier this year. The Pulitzer Prize-winning, almost unanimously loved modern classic has sold over 40 million copies, and we're still counting. A searing portrait of childhood, race and gender, rooted firmly in a context specific to its time and place, it has inspired decades of popular culture, and continues to do so.
As the world patiently awaits Harper Lee's recently discovered second novel, a parent book and sequel to the all-timeclassic To Kill A Mockingbird, three writers—Mira Jacob, Fatima Bhutto and Anjum Hasan—from the subcontinent reminisce about the cult novel and it remains relevant.
Fatima Bhutto, On real courage
"I remember reading To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time in the seventh grade in high school in Karachi. After we finished reading it in school, I went back to it. Because of how it defined courage and justice, TKAM changed my understanding of literature. Up until then literature was a school subject, like literature isn't chemistry. But this book made me realise that literature isn't static, it's not disconnected from life—it is life. It's the full and true expression of politics, life and art. I loved Atticus Finch and have continued to ever since, and this quote of his saw me through life: 'I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."
Anjum Hasan, On the serious child
"I read it as a child, from my father's bookshelf, and came away feeling that Atticus Finch was a good man and his children too grown-up for their age. I didn't get what 'rape' meant though I sensed it wasn't pleasant. As an adult, the righteousness around TKAM made me reluctant to return to it, the fug that can surround 'great' books, rendering their greatness impenetrable. It was an essay by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker, called 'The Courthouse Ring: Atticus Finch and the Limits of Southern Liberalism', that renewed my interest in the novel. I realised that, far from being a timeless classic, it is deeply embedded in the dreams and prejudices of its era. But the novel will continue to be read as transcendentally great literature. In the recent film Boyhood, a young girl, to distance herself intellectually from her classmates, who are all into the corny Twilight series, says with a trace of smugness that she’s reading TKAM for the third time. Can it really be that in the 55 years since it was published, America has not produced a novel of comparable depth and appeal for a serious child to fend off Stephenie Meyer with?"
Mira Jacob, On the colour of my skin
"The first time I read To Kill A Mockingbird was in middle school—age 12 or 13. This was a point in time when I was just starting to realise that being East Indian in the sparsely populated state of New Mexico, I was quite different from others around me. In class, whenever we'd discuss Tom Robinson, my classmates would look at me and an African American girl—not with malice, but they assumed the story was about us. The funny part was that both she and I had fathers who were doctors, which is to say our lot in America was a fine one. But that was somehow erased and we were both, it seemed, versions of slaves. It was the first time I understood that because of the colour of my skin, I'd be a target for the untethered emotions of white Americans—whether that was fear, pity, sympathy or embarrassment. There are so many readings of TKAM now—how it's another 'white saviour' plot. But its saving grace— the thing that transcends an ageing storyline—is its nuanced portrayal of that time in life when we lose a certain kind of innocence and move on with the much heavier companions of doubt and faith."
This article originally appeared in the June 2015 issue of Vogue India.
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