A response to The Namesake for my Asian American Theologies class

The first time I read The Namesake, I finally felt like someone understood my story as living between worlds, or not quite fitting into worlds at all. I spent much of my life wandering around thinking that there wasn’t anyone that really shared in my story. When I read the book, I felt like a light switch went off in my life. Here was an author who somehow knew my story and turned it into a bestselling novel.

Reading the book years later through the lens of a seminary student, I saw new things. I very much related this reading of The Namesake to Peter Phan’s idea of "betwixt and between" (Peter C. Phan, "The Dragon and the Eagle: Toward a Vietnamese-American Theology" in Realizing the America of Our Hearts: Theological Voices of Asian Americans, 164). Living between worlds is further highlighted with the unfortunate incident of Gogol receiving his given name at the hospital. Gogol’s name amplifies his inability to fit into the country of his birth, the United States of America, as well as the inability to fit into the country of his ancestry, India. Gogol, as a teenager and young adult, laments that his name is of an ill-fated Russian writer. He claims his name sounds peculiar, and is further embarrassed when he discovers that the writer Nikolai Gogol led a tortured and conflicted life. Part of the irony is that Gogol himself is in a sense tortured and conflicted. He cannot communicate with or understand his parents; his parents are from a different land and a different culture from which Gogol is so far removed. He blames his parents for much of his young adult life concerning the awkwardness of his name; it is only later that Gogol discovers that his name has incredible significance, as the name Gogol is related to Ashoke’s second chance at life, a resurrection of sorts, to create himself as something new and to travel to a new land.

A life of betwixt and between is also reflected in Ashoke and Ashima’s relationship with each other, and their life as husband and wife in the United States. Ashima has constant thoughts of wanting to return home to Calcutta. She carries around mementos of her family and former life in India; she reads and rereads letters from her family, Bengali magazines, and Bengali books. She longs for her family to help her raise her children. Ashima and Ashoke live a life in exile from their home country. Much of Ashima’s thoughts are lamentations, missing her home country and her family. She finds substitutions within the Indian and Bengali community in the United States, but Ashima reflects that these are but mere substitutes for a reality that she once knew. She laments that she does not feel a connection with or understand her American-born children. In this life led in exile, Ashoke and Ashima do not make outrageous attempts to assimilate to the culture. They do eventually have to give Gogol a legal name, they purchase a home in a suburb, Ashoke has a professorship at a university, and accommodations are made to make by Gogol’s and Sonia’s request, such as celebrating a secular form of Christmas, and inevitably having to give in to the wishes of a five-year old Gogol to use his pet name in place of his good name.

Ultimately, in reading The Namesake through a theological lens, I continued to think of Jesus Christ as the immigrant par excellence. Gogol had no one to relate to throughout the novel. Part of the distance was through his parents’ mistakes; they were not prepared to give him a good name, and instead used a family name in place of his proper name. Gogol’s name ostracized him from everyone. When Gogol legally changed his name to Nikhil, there was still a sense of ostracism. He could not connect to his “former” identity as Gogol; ironically, using a proper Bengali name seemed to further separate him from his family prior to Ashoke’s sudden death. As Nikhil, Gogol seemed to live a different life but could not connect to his parents, his status of living between worlds and cultures, but could not connect to American culture. In reading, I think of Jesus as the mestizo and as the "Immigrant par excellence, the Marginalized One living in the both-and and beyond situation" (Phan, 174). While The Namesake does not mention religion, there is something particularly Christ-like in the character of Gogol. Gogol wanders through his life with a mixed identity of being neither Indian nor American, or being too Indian or too American; Jesus walked this earth as truly human and truly divine. Gogol is the child of immigrants trying to find his identity in a land where he doesn’t fit; Jesus is the immigrant par excellence in a world where he perfectly fits and a world he does not fit at all.