Absence of Feminist Postcolonial Resistance in the Third World

In Meatless Days, Suleri ends chapter one with a statement, Ў§there are no women in the third worldЎЁ, showing the absence of an intimate connection between the women and postcolonial resistance (20). Such point of view can be identified from different part of the novel.

It is very true to say that it is absence of the concept of Ў§womenЎЁ which contributes to SuleriЎ¦s writing of the statement. She describes Islamis Pakistan at the very beginning of the book as

a place where the concept of woman was not really a part of an available vocabulary: we were too busy for that, just living, and conducting precise negotiations with what it meant to be a sister or a child or a wife or a mother or a servant (1).

Even the women themselves consider themselves as nothing, let alone men.

Suleri has actually formed a very strong contrast between herself and Dadi to bring out the point of the absence of feminist postcolonial resistance contributed by the lack of education and vision of the world. Suleri contrasted herself, an educated figure, with her grandma, Dadi, who is trapped in her own Ў§third worldЎЁ throughout her whole life. At the very moment when Suleri decided to start writing this novel, she has already categorized herself as educated and civilized with the idea of postcolonial resistance. Regarding her background, she is half Caucasian, which implies a higher chance of exposure to knowledge and education; she is more open towards the outside world and in some way belongs to the first world. Meatless Day is a very effective evidence for her postcolonial resistance. Dadi, on the other hand, is a character that forms a total opposite to Suleri. Dadi is portrayed as a woman who exists outside of any possible Western feminist terminology; she spent all her life in the third world. Suleri has also deepened the sense of DadiЎ¦s lacking in education by showing her stubbornness. Ў§But Dadi had different plans. She lived through her sojourn at the hospital; she weathered her return. Then after six