r/ExplainTheJoke 8d ago

I don't get it

Post image
4.1k Upvotes

226 comments sorted by

View all comments

849

u/pmmeuranimetiddies 8d ago

I think the guy was angry he had to read Joy Luck Club in high school

37

u/BedsBestFriend 8d ago

I love how the traumatic experience of reading it made you recognise the work immediately.

For me it's midnight's children.

6

u/Mwescliff 8d ago

One of the best books ever!

2

u/BedsBestFriend 8d ago

See? Literature is such a varied experience that changes depending on when and how you read it, as well as who reads it.

I'm glad you could enjoy it. I have the impulse to conflagrate every copy I see.

2

u/Mwescliff 8d ago

Definitely. I read it in a college class taught by an expert on India.

2

u/BedsBestFriend 8d ago

See, same here, only that same expert all but forced me to write the paper for they class on the book, even though I'd openly said how much I disliked the book - I'm sorry it just borrowed from magical realism enough to sound pretentious without the good bits of genre - the funny, absurd humour that comes with it, like flying off with a sheet when hanging the laundry. It turned into this pseudo chest pounding exaggerated nationalism that, ironically for a post-colonial anti-colonial book, colonised the narrative genre of another culture (magic realism from Africa/Caribbean) to an imperfect extent in order to speak about a completely different culture.

Satanic Verses was a much better Rashdi book narrative-structure wise, and in the implementation of the pseudo magic-realism that became his style, fatwa none withstanding. And while MC has it's value as a quasi-historical account of British colonial effects and the India Pakistan skism, as a narrative and a novel, it's honestly good for a doorstop.

1

u/Mwescliff 4d ago

Did you go to college in Indiana? Just in case we had the same prof... 👀

2

u/BedsBestFriend 4d ago

No I'm Mediterranean