Creative writing: 'My Son the Fanatic' 

by Romina Garnero and Melisa Lecuona

Working process

It was quite simple for us to make a decision with regard to the tool we were going to employ as we wanted to work with one that we had never used before, in order to learn about its use and acquire another tool into our repertoire. Besides, we thought that using a comic strip lent itself to the use of irony, and the fact that we could express the characters’ thoughts and recreate the dialogues easily made us reach the final decision. We have chosen the short story ‘My Son the Fanatic’ by Hanif Kureishi because we found it really interesting and despite its short length it addresses important subjects such as: identity, hybridity, migration, religion, family bonds and roles, loss, assimilation, segregation, among others. After settling the tool (ToonDoo) and the text, we selected four scenes which are determining to the understanding of the plot, though we decided to focus on the thoughts the characters might be having at that moment. The first strip depicts an untold scene, which could be thought of through Parvez’s dialogues with Bettina and his work colleagues. Ali is praying on his mat with all his possessions packed to be given away. We imagined that he could be asking Allah for his father’s salvation. At this point we depicted him as letting his beard grow but not fully and without a taqiyah (the Muslim cap), as he has not revealed his choice yet. The second scene is not told by the narrator but is mentioned in Ali’s dialogue with his father. We focalized our attention on the thoughts each character could be having at that moment, contrasted with what they could be saying. The actual speech was recreated by us. We decided to include Ali’s mother and the divergence between her thoughts and actual speech, though she does not have a voice in the story at all, and she is just mentioned twice as if she had nothing to offer to the story. Thus, this led us to include her to make her a participant, showing in her actual words her submission to her husband while using irony to reveal her thoughts.  

The third and fourth strips show events mentioned by the third person narrator which also include direct speech. In both we have recreated the dialogue except for the final utterance which is taken from the story and is therefore highlighted in a different colour. We decided to keep it as it is because it represents the name of the story and besides changing it would have caused a different effect probably. In these strips Ali’s appearance is changed representing his choice for the Muslim religion and culture and his rejection towards his father’s way of living.

Tool description and conclusion

The use of ToonDoo has proved to be quite simple, even though we faced technical issues when trying to download and see our final product. We believe it is a very useful tool and despite the problems we encountered, everything was solved eventually and we are proud of our achievement. After learning how it is used by clicking and trying different options, we are going to consider this tool for future use in the classroom with our students. 

Reference: Kureishi, Hanif. My Son, the Fanatic. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.