Hi Penelope,

The landscape is very similar. Allow me to share my friend Muhammad Ali's pictures from his recent trip to the area: <http://www.lahori.net/Pakistan-trip-2017/> (4 or 5 of them are from Germany but the rest are mostly from the Gilgit Baltistan area--the same region, by the way, that Greg Mortenson mentions in his Three Cups of Tea).

Unlike the American West, however, the people in Pakistan's frontier regions have not been displaced by anyone. We don't have a westward expansion here, at least not yet, and there are no racial tensions, though there might be ethnic and sectarian ones.

Naveed.

On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 2:41 PM, Penelope Reedy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

when i edited THE REDNECK REVIEW OF LITERATURE, one of the things i explored was the westward movement thrusting itself beyond the continental borders, alaska, of course, but then hawaii, okinawa, bases in the philippines, the vietnam war, occupying japan after wwii, and now interests in the korean penninsula. . . movement, military, exploration. . .trade. . .

it is more than cowboys, covered wagons and hollywood. like the british empire, the USA is a kind of disease on the planet, a rash that keeps spreading. 

mountains and prairies. photos i've seen of pakistan look like idaho and colorado. . .

don't concepts of "frontier" really mean the desire for one group who spoiled their own houses to start over with a clean slate, and/or stealing the land from under current peoples "for their own good" justification?

On Thu, Jun 1, 2017 at 1:13 AM, Naveed Rehan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Mary,

This is so interesting. I guess there are parallels between the early American West and Pakistan's western frontiers with Afghanistan and Iran. The rugged, weather-beaten frontiersman faced with the harsh terrain is common to both. I'm in the eastern city of Lahore, and the culture here is very different, though we have some idea about how people in the tribal areas, as they are called, think and act. These people still don't have a strong voice in the mainstream and are quite remote, but I think that things will change with the work being done now on the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The northern areas of Gilgit Baltistan, especially, are opening up.

I am most interested in nature writing too. One very important issue that people here need to talk about more is conservation and care for nature.

Regards

Naveed.

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 10:46 PM, Mary Scriver <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Dr. Rehan,

This is going to be quite different from most of the answers you get, I guess.  In fact, I’ll probably develop it for a bit of a polemic on my blog, prairiemary.blogspot.com.
I’m not responding to the request for specific books, but rather to the context.  The “American West” of lit thinking is often concentrated on the colorful century when the genocide of the prairie and coastal indigenous people was clearing the way for whites.  It celebrates the whites and their entitlement by character and power, but tradtional American West writing often pushes the indigenous people off into a separate category of “Native American.”  There is another almost sub-category about what to do if one is stranded between the identities of white and indigenous.  Much of “Native American” writing is by whites, and later by assimilated Native Americans because they are the ones who know how to write.  I don’t mean in literary terms, but in terms of simple English literacy.  Earlier truly authentic indigenous stories are oral.  This is a ground of much controversy over entitlement.

Even if one interprets “WAL” as the story of the frontier and the industrial revolution (railroads, dams, resource development, grain, oil) it was and is, in fact, multi-cultural and multi-racial.  The Chinese built the railroads.  The Mexicans were the first cowboys.  The women and missionaries brought convictions about how to be in the world.  Blacks escaped the Civil War and slavery by going West.  The story of children on the frontier is pretty chilling.  Vulnerable people suffer at the heart of frontier.  When women begin to write, this aspect begins to “daylight.”  Military and explorers are strong aspects that appeal to white males.

The political formation of nations, where the boundaries are drawn, the impact of commerce (fur-trapping, livestock, devising supply towns) is salient, and international impacts like the 19th century wars and famines in Europe driving up the population of the USA, all become important.  This is only beginning to develop in lit terms.

Environmental issues are often vivid in the West which has relatively thin population and therefore is seen as “not being used.”  Some of the most excellent writing is not fiction so much as the exploration of nature and what has come to be both “Deep Time” and “Deep History.”  I’m thinking of people like Loren Eiseley or Ed Abbey or even Theodore Roosevelt.  Those who respond to high skies and long horizons, as the seedbed of freedom and individuality.

With this framework accepted, the potential for books that will appeal to Pakistanis is VAST.  They are now what the American West was once.  Your idea is almost explosively brilliant.

Prairie Mary
Mary Scriver
Valier, MT

--

Dr. Naveed Rehan
PhD English and the Teaching of English, Idaho State University

HEC Approved PhD Supervisor
Pakistan Representative for the D. H. Lawrence Society of North America
Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature (DELL)
University of Management and Technology, Lahore.

--

Dr. Naveed Rehan
PhD English and the Teaching of English, Idaho State University

HEC Approved PhD Supervisor
Pakistan Representative for the D. H. Lawrence Society of North America
Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature (DELL)
University of Management and Technology, Lahore.