http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4600589-99930,00.html

http://www.powells.com/fromtheauthor/ali.html

Although it was six years ago, on top of it, even the movie based on this novel came out two years ago, Brick Lane did cause trouble in Muslim communities in England and everywhere else. As a novel, it was only one of those that rushed out after September 11 by female authors of the kind. One of the reason that the novel, and the movie later on, were opted out with the strong aversion was, as I was analyzing, Ali herself was not really the insider of the community; most of what was written was based on her research on the community with her own outsider’s point of view, which would not get to justify its exploitative nature when it was pointed out. This would not have raised an argument that much had it not for the time and the subject. Consequently, the real people from the real community Ali deicted took offense of her representation of gender and political struggle as unfolded in the novel. Although Ali is half Desi herself, her sense of belonging was not one of those as the people who objected her take on their ethnic and religious identities; they saw her as an invader and someone who exploited them as she was masking with her Muslim name. I guess she just wrote it as one of novels she would theoretically get to write, and it hit the spot: Brick Lane became the literally success for it responded to the mainstream’s curiosity to peek in the Muslim wold in England, especially seen and narrated by a female point of view. That does not mean Ali had meant to represent the community of Bangladeshi, or Muslim women etc. unlike people thoughtlessly expected her to. The Bangladeshi /Muslim community was one subject she tried out to write on, and no more intention than that. Her next book was not anything even remotely related to it. I personally believe this is more crucial point to take care of than an author’s initial success based rather on the situational judgement beyond what he/she has written, in other words, the literary tokenism. This might be the very predicament that any minority author is destined to face, and struggle to get away with provided that the literature industry today no longer employs the view and the attitude that 19th centry literature held to evaluate one’s work. I remember how the movie version of Brick Lane stirred the negative sentiments even more recently among the Muslim communities. I am coming to understand why when I read those guardian archives that I have retrieved above.