What's in a Name, Video, Iowa City Public Library, September 18, 2009 |
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What's in a Name, Video, Iowa City Public Library, September 18, 2009
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| Rating | |
| Title | What's in a name, Iowa City Public Library, September 18, 2009 |
| Creator |
Kandasamy, Meena Ḥijāzī, Hanāʼ Sajjad, Azeem Peeters, Hagar, 1972- |
| Creator - Nationality |
Indian Saudi Pakistani Dutch |
| Contributor | Merrill, Christopher |
| Date Original | 2009-09-18 |
| Description | Meena Kandasamy of India discusses the problems she has faced with her official first name, Ilavenil. She discusses the political and religious origins of her name and that after wishing for a long time that she had a different surname, concludes by recognizing that the importance of a name is to express one’s individuality. Saudi author Hanāʼ Ḥijāzī gives the meaning of her first name as “happiness” in Arabic, and then discusses why she changed her last name. She states that her “official” last name belongs to a conservative tribe that she did not want to be associated with, and reflects that perhaps a specific name is less important than simply having one. Azeem Sajjad from Pakistan reflects on how power is tied up with names. He gives examples from Pakistan and discusses Malcolm X giving up his slave name as a political statement of identity. He then discusses how his personal name change may have been a professional mistake. Hagar Peeters of the Netherlands explains the Biblical origins of her first name. She relates the story of Abraham and Hagar and states she was outraged to discover the story behind her name. In order to “correct” the story, Peeters wrote a poem in which Hagar is a strong, independent woman. |
| Venue | Iowa City Public Library |
| Topical Subject (LCTGM) |
Authors Writing |
| Personal Name Subject | Kandasamy, Meena; Ḥijāzī, Hanāʼ; Sajjad, Azeem; Peeters, Hagar, 1972- |
| Geographic Subject | United States -- Iowa -- Iowa City |
| Chronological Subject | 2000-2010 |
| Transcription | 1 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu Meena Kandasamy THE WOMAN WITH TOO MANY NAMES I am another person in my passport and all my school records. I am Ilavenil Kandasamy. Mouths contort downwards, and eyebrows point heavenwards whenever the introductions are made. Whatever does that first name mean? Spring, I say. And I clarify when I see the confused look lingering on their faces. I was named after the season and not the source, or stream, or shiny, sprightly elastic objects. I smile all the while as if to make up for the unpronounceable name. And I volunteer more information as if it could explain the genesis of such a complicated name: My father was a Tamil professor. Sometimes I attempt an etymological attack: This name is made of two parts, Ila denoting young or starting, and Venil denoting summer, clearly aware that being named Ilavenil is way better than Summer-starts. But nobody gets my point most of the time, and I bear the burden of uniqueness. I still haven't met another Tamil woman carrying my name. It took Google to educate me, to let me learn that I shared my first name with Steven Pinker's wife. When I was younger, and much more worried about identity, this name seemed to ruin my whole life. I went to school with a lot of north Indians, and unlike my Tamil friends, who quickly caught on to this name, the others had trouble. Your name sounds like a train, they would say, reducing my day to a night that had to be wept away. My teenage years were more perilous—how were boys going to latch on to me if they had trouble even pronouncing my name? So I shortened my name for personal purposes, and insisted that I be called Ilaa. Small enough to be remembered but slow enough to be sexy. But when I became a writer, I wanted a name that was easy to spell, a name that nobody could get wrong. So, I chose the name that my family called me. Meena, after the fish-eyed Tamil goddess, Meenakshi. As a young man in his thirties, my father saw eighteen beautiful girls in eighteen different bride-seeing ceremonies, but never managed to find the woman of his dreams. So he went to Meenakshi's temple in Madurai, and promised the deity that his firstborn daughter would be named after her. Soon he met the nineteenth woman, who became his wife, my mother. Meena was the name I carried until it was time for me to go to school. At that juncture, he cheated on this wish-fulfilling goddess, and opted to give me a unique Tamil name. This craving to exercise the choice for a pure Tamil name is rooted in the socio-political history of my culture. Traditionally, the oppressed and untouchable castes were not allowed to name themselves after anything that reminded others of success, happiness or pleasantness. Though they held their right to name themselves, caste diktat ensured that they could only choose from a minimal list of abominable names. If I were to offer proof of evidence (apart from the names that appear in the genealogical trees of my family, and the families of those from similarly oppressed backgrounds), I would have to quote the Manusmriti, a codification of Hindu laws that was published during 1 C.E. Here's the relevant extract (II-31, 32) Let the first part of a Brahmin's name denote something auspicious, a Kshatriya's name be connected with power and a Vaishya's with wealth, but a 2 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu Shudra's express something contemptible. The second part of a Brahmin's name shall be a word implying happiness, of a Kshatriya's a word implying protection, of a Vaishya, a term expressive of thriving and of a Shudra's an expression denoting service. My father is not alone in this longing to retrieve his language and identity. In Tamil Nadu, anti-caste/Dalit political movements, like the Liberation Panthers, have organized mass change-of-name ceremonies in the last few years, where people give up their original names that carry Hindu-Brahminical-Sanskritic connotations, and take up secular, powerful Tamil names. Since the 1960s, when the Dravidian movement in my state sought to counter Aryan-Hindi supremacy, people have renounced names that carry symbols of subordination. They christened themselves with new names to reflect new hopes and dreams. Such gazette-notified name changes seek to make political statements, even though they operate on the personal level of the name, which is at once a public and private identity. If this is the turbulent history of first names, last names are no less complicated. I carry my father's name as my last name, unlike some of my friends, who have the privilege of a caste or class pedigree that they can sport. Being a Meena Iyer, Meena Pandit, or Meena Oberoi could open many more doors, but hell, that's not who I am. I also carry my father's name because he has no sons to carry it for him. Sometimes, I have also thought of dropping it. I spent half-a-dozen years fantasizing about becoming the future Mrs. Politician-parliamentarian-boyfriend-with-a-ten-syllable-name only to realize after coming here that a famous name can provide me with status, societal respect and recall value, but not love. With one long short message I brought that affair to an end, knowing that it is much more important to be my own person, to make my own name. Or, even if I were to tragically end up in anonymity with this name, I could still console myself with the fact that I didn't need the crutches of someone else’s name to take me places. And given my uncontainable spirit, I always wonder if my last name will be my last name. I believe, and sometimes foresee that it is going to undergo too many fluctuations. Tomorrow I am getting myself tattooed. At Nemesis, in Iowa City, where Washington St. meets Linn St. This time, I am playing it pretty safe. I am going with God's name. Hanaa Hijazi DO YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR NAME? What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; That what Juliet – or actually Shakespeare, using Juliet’s voice— said about names. The Arab poet, Joseph Harb, said something similar: "Our names, how did our families choose them for us, what did they think of us. Names are words. What's in words. Our eyes are our names. How they look are our names". But there is also an Arabic adage that says that everyone resembles his or her name. 3 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu Well, my name is Hanaa. I have no trouble when I mention it to anyone, it seems it’s an international name, one that crosses cultural boundaries. In Arabic, Hanaa means happiness. My friend Kyoko, a Japanese writer, tells me that in Japanese Hana is a flower. It’s a popular name in Japan. And I wonder now, is that why I smile all the time, trying to spread happiness around me? Is it to resemble my name? Or would I still be smiling if I had another name? And does that mean I'll smell good in Japan or look pretty as a flower? I guess I’ll never know. But it's not my first name that made me decide to talk about names, it's my last name. I have two last names. I publish my work under one. The other one is for my ‘official’ work and all the other things in my life that aren’t related to writing. Hijazi is not my real name, and it's not totally fake either. My father was a famous soccer player in his youth, and he was known by this name. That’s partly why I choose to use this name instead of the one on my ID card. My other, official name belongs to a big tribe, a huge one. In Saudi Arabia, my tribe is known to be very conservative. I wanted to escape the name, I didn't want anything to do with them in my writing. I didn't want them to interfere with my work, or to say how dare she write in this rebellious way? And I didn’t want them to feel proud because a member of the clan was writing in this way. I wanted to make what Shakespeare said true for me. My tribe members had nothing to do with me, they didn't make me. My great grandfather migrated from their area a long time ago and I don't really know them or their traditions very well. That was my thinking when I first began to write. Now, if I had the chance to go back in time, I don’t know if I would change my name. I have changed and I don't think my real tribal name is a big issue for me now. Why Hijazi. Nostalgia maybe, for my father who was known by that name, and who died before I knew that I’d be a writer. Hijazi is the name of the area I was born in; Jeddah, Makkah and Madinah are in the region known as Hijaz. But earlier, 40 or more years ago, Hijaz referred to those who come from the Hijaz mountains, where my tribe live. So, for me it was perfect, since Hijaz means so many things, Hijaz were I was born and Hijaz as a reference to my tribe. Nobody really knows all this information, but I know, and this makes me happy, which brings us back to my first name, Hanaa. Everything I'm talking about is so personal, but this discussion is about the name, the most personal thing in our lives. By mentioning a person’s name, you remember everything about her, how silly she was, how awkward she was, talkative she was, untalented she was, and how much you hated her. I know everything I'm saying is negative, the things that we might want people to forget about our names so they won't remember all those stupid things about us. So yes. Maybe we don't resemble our names, or maybe names aren’t that important and don't mean anything. Maybe if we call a rose by any other name it'll still smell as sweet. But nobody will remember who the person you're talking about is until you stamp her with a name. 4 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu Azeem Sajjad MY NAME SHOULD BE KHAN A million things come to my mind when I think of what’s in a name. As a Pakistani, everything is in a name. In Pakistan, if you happen to be named Zardari (the current President of Pakistan), you can rob a bank or a steel mill without moving your little finger. Or, if your name is Bhutto, you could own thousands of acres of land without spending a single penny; then, you could also become a feudal lord, end up in the Parliament and become the Prime Minister of Pakistan. So I have learnt that a name is not only a mark of identity but also a tool of power, particularly if you have the right name. Now why do I say the right name? There is an example that I would like to share with you today. When one of Pakistan’s popular political leaders, Benazir Bhutto, was recently assassinated, the political scene in Pakistan flipped from semi-military rule to a democratic republic. Benazir Bhutto’s husband, Asif Zardari, blessed by some technical miracle, became the President of Pakistan. As a first step, even before diving into presidential business, he changed the surname of his son from Bilawal Zardari to Bilawal Z. Bhutto, which is something very unusual in Pakistan. But Mr. Zardari, after spending more than a decade in jail on corruption charges and many other criminal acts, realized that in the future his son Bilawal would only be able to benefit and seize his turn on the musical chair of Pakistan’s power politics if his surname was the same as his mother’s. So he gave his son the ‘right’ name. Now, the above example was maybe a selfish one, of a political family trying to achieve power using their names. Let me mention another interesting way in which power can be displayed through a change of names. Since Turkey was ruled by one empire after another, its capital city Istanbul has carried several names, such as Byzantium, Augusta Antonina, Constantinople and Kostantiniyye. All these changed names were used to signify the power and dominance of the ruling empires. Since the personal is also the political, name changes have been an active tool for discarding identities of oppression. The charismatic African American leader Malcolm X gave up his surname “Little” because it was a symbol of his slave background, and gave himself the surname “X” to signify a lost tribal identity. In his autobiography, he wrote: "The Muslim's 'X' symbolized the true African family name that I never could know. For me, my 'X' replaced the white slave-master name of 'Little', which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears." Not only did African Americans change their surnames; they also took on African names in an effort to regain the lost identity. For instance, Audre Lorde took the name Gamba Adisa in an African naming ceremony right before her death. The new name meant “Warrior: She who makes her meaning known.” 5 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu Names do transform personalities. In the showbiz industry where I belong, changing one’s name is a regular practice, especially for women. In the Pakistan film industry, the names of actresses need to have sex appeal. Irtiza Rubab, upon advice from a film guru, changed her name to Meera, and became a star overnight. This has become a fashionable trend for actresses in Pakistan and India. Men too have changed their names. The famous 1960s superstar, Dilip Kumar, from the small Pakistani town of Peshawar (which also happens to be my hometown) surrendered his original name, Yousaf Khan, in order to win over the Hindu audience in the Indian film industry. Fortunately, today Khan has become the winning name in Bollywood—Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan and The King of Khans, Shah Rukh Khan are the ruling superstars of the Indian film industry. This reminds me of a major blunder I made a long time ago. My name was Azeem Khan at school. As there were too many Khans around me, and I wanted a unique identity, I changed my name from Azeem Khan to Azeem Sajjad, taking my father’s first name as my surname, a common practice in Pakistan. While many people seem to have gained from a change of name, I seem to have lost something by giving up Khan as my surname, especially when I look at the Khans of Bollywood. As I realize this, I am thinking of changing my name back to Azeem Khan. Next year, if you happen to see this same face, with a different surname, walking the red carpets at the Oscars, please do not be shocked. Hagar Peeters WHAT’S IN MY NAME? Hagar was the name my mother had chosen for me without consulting my father, who had left her while she was pregnant. Years later he came into my life, but by then it was too late to alter my name. I learned that it was the name of a slave in the Bible, who had been sent away with her young child. Maybe my mother, who had been brought up a Catholic, knew this biblical name from her own religious background. ‘It’s a Hebrew name’, she told me, and I told anyone who wanted to know where that strange name came from. Maybe it was a tribute to my Jewish grandfather (from my father’s side) as well, who had lost both his parents, brother, and sister together with her husband and two little children in Nazi concentration camps. But during a holiday in Tunisia my strange name turned out to be a very common Arab name, as a later Moroccan boyfriend also confirmed. It is pronounced there as ‘Hadjar’. As a child, I took my name as a mark of Cain, the sign that I was different. At summer camps I called myself ‘Claudia’, a much prettier name, I thought, which would make me more easily accepted by the other children. Only much later I started to appreciate this rare but universal name, since I did not know anyone else who was called 6 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu Hagar, save a Norwegian cartoon character, and a figure who in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions played a key role in the genesis of the human race. The story of the latter is this: God promised Abraham an enormous number of offspring, that he would in fact be the patriarch of all the peoples that were about to come. ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ Abraham asked both God and himself, for he was seventy-five, and his wife Sara already ninety: they were far too old to have children. But God said: ‘Trust me, just wait and see’. Sara got inpatient. She could not believe that she herself was going to give birth, so she took up what she believed to be a clever idea: she convinced Abraham that he should sleep with their seventeen-year old Egyptian slave, Hagar, and keep the child as if it were theirs. And so it happened. But the situation turned out less than harmonious. Hagar, proud that she had become the mother of Abraham’s firstborn, Ishmael, found herself above household chores. In Sara’s opinion, though, Hagar had become arrogant. And God said: ‘That’s what you get when you don’t listen to me. I promised you offspring of your own.’ When Sara found out that she indeed had become pregnant, and gave birth to her son Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael became totally useless, and were sent into the wilderness. Hagar could not bear to see her son dying. She left him in the only bush she could find in the Sinai desert and sat herself nearby and cried. That was when God showed his more merciful side. He sent an angel who showed Hagar a well and told her that if she went back to her master and behaved like a proper slave, without any whims, and wishes for herself, she and her son would be saved and would stay alive. Ishmael would also have a great number of descendants: the Arab people. Those of Isaac would be the Jews. When I heard the story of my name for the first time, it made me crazy with anger at the injustice of it. A young girl, given as a slave to a very old man, gets raped by him and then the old man and his wife pretend the child is theirs. And then, when she shows any signs of self-respect and pride, for she has become a mother, she is sent away. Only by promising obedience to her oppressor and rapist can she save her life and that of her young child. I thought, if this story is at the roots of our culture, at least we can start by changing the story. And the idea arose to rewrite the story of my own name. My most recent book of poetry is the result. In Loper van licht (Light Walker), I took Hagar as the main character and wrote most of the poems from her perspective. I showed her as a historical and mythical as well as archetypal figure, transporting her to our own time, in which she is an Egyptian housemaid living in the house of an older Western couple. I tried to show the pertinence and actuality of the dilemmas all the characters are confronted with: their confusing triangular relationship, Sara’s frustrations about aging without having a child, and her jealousy of the much younger Hagar. I also took Hagar as the symbol of all who have been expelled from their homelands – because of the frank expression of their political opinion, or sexual identity, or whatever – who seek political asylum in the Netherlands, 7 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu but are sent away or have to wait for years until they know whether they will be accepted as new citizens of our country. And instead of the message you could obtain from the Bible, in which Hagar had to give up her pride and remain the slave they made her, I wanted to show a proud Hagar who only obeys what she thinks is right: I let her stand for human rights in general, and women’s rights in particular, for those who suffer from oppression on the one hand, and from abundant sexualisation on the other, when I let her exclaim: ‘Anything that limits my freedom of movement, makes me invisible or stands in my light I’ll cast it off, I’ll fling it at the feet of whoever requested it, before I trample on it. Anyone who asks me to strip off I’ll tell him you go first and leave it at that.’ I don’t have time to read the entire poem to you here, but you can find it at the bottom of the text that was handed out to you, so you can read it later if you wish. When my book was published, critics were confused by my trick of using a literary character whose name corresponds with my own. They allowed themselves to break the first rule anyone who analyses texts should learn: that the ‘I’ in the poem does not necessarily have to be the ‘I’ who wrote the book. It was too easy for them to blame me for feeling oppressed and expelled, and to put the safe etiquette of feminism upon me, which they all seemed to dislike, and which gave them a handle for overly shallow interpretations. Others regretted the fact that the book did not contain enough love poetry, which was easier to understand. Showing Hagar as bold as she should be, I had gone too far, and that – for the theme was boldness - was exactly what I wanted. 8 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu HAGAR’S AMBITION (Translation: Donald Gardner) Let me be one of the decadents and drink with the men. Let me follow you, Baudelaire, Whitman and Álvaro de Campos all the triumphant victors who believe in themselves all those who ride on the backs of dangerous beasts all those who shamelessly raise their voices. With my ruddy cheeks and superior mien, let me be one of you. Prosit! You are the inventors of deliberate degeneracy, dissolute braggarts who see the road to ruin as heaven. With my hair done up at the back and my necktie, my waistcoat and trousers, my shirt open on my breasted torso, the locks in my nape lifted by every breeze, let me raise my glass to our select camaraderie. Here’s to yours! Hoist me onto the backs of your elephants and I’ll ride with you into the bush. Let me put on these filthy trousers and I’ll be after you, you bunch of scallywags. I want to go out on the town with the great men. I want to go on an expedition with the powerful fathers. Let them spell out the world to me spread out at my tiny feet. Open up the continents, drive my elephants down the path the slaves have slashed open let the workers look up at me with my red nail varnish and filth under my nails let me be one of those workers whom I slap on the back as I yell with the voice of a master: Santé! I will splash through the puddles in my galoshes that are the same for everyone – what difference does it make to a puddle. And I’ll write the world’s bloody chronicles only to wipe them out immediately and rewrite them because I want to weep like a woman over all the pain that’s been suffered and press children to my motherly breast at the get-togethers of your clubs, clans, regiments, societies or assemblies. And I’ll reserve the right to turn down your proposals yes, to reject you, never mind if you feel hurt or mortified. I don’t love someone out of pity. Make me your accomplice at your card tables, you brigands and pirates. Let me not stand on the sideline screeching in panic at the vermin crawling over the earth and in my hair. Hunting and larking around and jousting, that’s the life for me. Santé! Santé! Santé! Fathers of the world, please have a heart. Make an exception just once now and for ever to create a precedent all must follow admitting me to all the realms and domains of the world that have been taboo to me since time immemorial as suited the stewards of these royal properties. 9 . Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series, September 18, 2009: Meena Kandasamy (India), Hanaa Hijazi (Saudi Arabia), Azeem Sajjad (Pakistan), and Hagar Peeters (Netherlands) For electronic texts please visit www.iwp.uiowa.edu Let me squander the cheques with your signature. Everything with your seal on it all inventions with your patent let my hand caress them voluptuously toss them carelessly over my shoulder hand them out to the children make bread pellets of them for the sparrows let me play Santa let me make free with them and go on blind spending sprees but entrust them to me. I want the key to the forbidden chamber the computer code, the access to systems the password to the lucrative terrains. Let me wave my fans and fling my lassoes in one movement. In return for your power let me have my weapons and sorely-needed materials. Let me speak at table and don’t interrupt straightway. Dare to talk to me at parties without expecting a night of bliss. I’ll snap off the high heels on my party shoes. why should I totter over the cobbles unless they are the flagstones leading to my palaces, and anything that limits my freedom of movement, makes me invisible or stands in my light I’ll cast it off, I’ll fling it at the feet of whoever requested it, before I trample on it. Anyone who asks me to strip off I’ll tell him you go first and leave it at that. Hagar Peeters |
| Type (DCMIType) | Moving Image |
| Type (AAT) | Presentations (Communicative events) |
| Type (IMT) | mp4 |
| Duration | 01:10:52 |
| Language | English |
| Digital Collection | Virtual Writing University Archive |
| Contributing Institution | Iowa City Public Library |
| Subcollection | International Writing Program Collection |
| Rights Management | Educational use only, no other rights given. U.S. and international copyright laws may protect this digital object. Commercial use or distribution of the object is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. |
| Contact Information | Contact the VWU Webmaster: http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/info/25/ |
| Date Digital | 2009 |
| File Name | iwp-icpl_09-18-09.mp4 |
| Original File Name | iwp_09-18-09.mpg |
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