Sara Suleri

Sara Suleri Goodyear ( June 12, 1953 – March 20, 2022) was a Pakistan-born American author
and professor of English at Yale University, where her fields of study and teaching included
Romantic and Victorian poetry and an interest in Edmund Burke. Her special concerns included
postcolonial literature and theory, contemporary cultural criticism, literature, and law. She was
a founding editor of the Yale Journal of Criticism, and served on the editorial boards of YJC, The
Yale Review, and Transition.

Early life and education

Suleri was born in Karachi, Dominion of Pakistan (now Pakistan), one of six children, to a Welsh
mother, Mair Jones, an English professor, and a Pakistani father, Z. A. Suleri (1913–1999), a
notable political journalist, conservative writer, author, and the Pakistan Movement activist
regarded as one of the pioneers of print journalism in Pakistan, and authored various history
and political books on Pakistan as well as Islam in the Indian subcontinent.

She had her early education in London and attended secondary school in Lahore. She received
her B.A. at Kinnaird College, also in Lahore, in 1974. Two years later, she was awarded an M.A.
from Punjab University, and went on to graduate with a PhD from Indiana University in 1983.

Published works

1. Meatless Days. 1989

Meatless Days
Sara Suleri is a prominent writer of sub continent, Pakistan. Her style of writing is very
impressive and nostalgic. She has written on different topics in a very forceful and appealing
way. "Meatless Days' ' is her unique, novel and catchypiece of writing. In this book, she
explores the various aspects of life and describes them in the color of criticism on life. Her
illustration and description of events is realist. Most of her descriptions revolve around her
family members,her liking and disliking of different edible things related to meat and
vegetables. From the book's title to its countless descriptions of meals, cooking, consumption,
and food figures are a prominent motif in Meatless Days. She also throws light on the political
condition of that time as an observer. In this finely written memoir of life in postcolonial
Pakistan, Suleri links the violent history of Pakistan's independence with her own most
intimate memories of her Welsh mother;of her Pakistani father who was a prominent political
journalist Z.A. Suleri; of her tenacious (obstinate) grandmother Dadi and five siblings; and of
her own passage to the west:

"There are nine autobiographical tales that move easily back and forth among Pakistan, Britain,
and the United States..She forays lightly into Pakistani history, and deeply into the history of
her family and friends. ... Suleri, a woman at home in Pakistan, makes this book sing.""Meatless
Days" is based on the childhood memories of Sara Suleri. She narrates different stories of her

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childhood and associates them with her brothers and other family members. The title of the
book also relates to the events and contents of the book.

Meatless Days Introduction

Meatless Days is a book that encompasses person memoir, the history of the development

of Pakistan, and female position within Pakistani culture. Suleri jumps from the present to

the past, from the United States to Pakistan, and from the privileged world of Yale to the

traditional realm of cultural traditions. Both the clash of modern and traditional cultures as

well as the exile versus the homeland is addressed in her beautiful prose.

Is meatless days a novel or autobiography?

In this finely wrought memoir of life in postcolonial Pakistan, Suleri intertwines the

violent history of Pakistan's independence with her own most intimate memories—of her

Welsh mother, Mair (Jones) Suleri, taught English at Punjab University in Lahore. Her

father, Z.A. Suleri, was a prominent journalist who was often critical of Pakistan’s

government; there were suggestions that the hit-and-run death of Ifat was ordered by her

father’s enemies.The book is full of loss, including the deaths of the author’s mother and sister
Ifat, killed when she was hit by a car under mysterious circumstances. It also ponders the
search for identity that comes with being born in such a young country, and with being the
child of a Pakistani father and Welsh mother, as Ms. Suleri Goodyear was.

Meatless Days Title?

“Meatless Days” took its title from the decision by the government of Pakistan, shortly

after the country was formed in 1947, to declare two days a week as “meatless” to

conserve the country’s supply of cattle and goats. The book is an unconventional memoir,

with Professor Suleri Goodyear telling the story of her own life in Pakistan, Britain and the

United States through chapters focused on other family members, including her father’s

mother, Dadi.

Meatless Days: a Feminist Perspective Analysis

Meatless Days by Sara Suleri is a brilliant piece of writing as it engages the reader in all the
aspects of society. This novel shows the position of females in the society, the political aspects
such as the status of Pakistani females and their position in this set up. She very artistically
intermingles the culture of two lands and shows the diversity in the modern values and the
traditional cultures.In this book the writer presents the American Pakistani community and

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portrays the development in contemporary modern society. In an interview she, herself says
about this novel that, “the novel is not about getting inside but is about showing what
happened, without explanations, with no introductions” Females in the novel are portrayed in
a unique way such as the mother is associated with Jane Austen and Mrs. Ramsay (153). Then
we see, female characters are always busy in story telling or in doing domestic chores.

In the very first chapter the story revolves around dadi and in the chapter, “What Mamma
Knew” and “The Immoderation of Ifat” revolves around her mother and her sister Ifat. This
shows that she consciously or unconsciously gives importance to the women. She disrupted all
the myths about women and talked about all the stereotypical notions that women are equally
important as men and they are not at all inferior or weaker than the man. It is considered that
men are more wise and brilliant but Suleri in her work negates this idea and says women also
need an equal chance to learn and are able to perform all the tasks that men think women
cannot do.

Meatless Days exposes Pakistani patriarchy wherein women are othered by men’s ruthless
exploitation. Man snatches a woman's identity, name, home, social status, right of personal
decision, and even children who are derivatives from her body. She is reduced to a mere
biological phenomenon functioning before and for man in his hands from childhood to
girlhood, to womanhood and to old age. Suleri occupies a unique position as a feminist writer.
She has dexterously presented her sense of woman’s miseries and deprivations in Pakistani
patriarchy.

She uses her own family as a microcosm of Pakistan. Suleri reveals what happens to women
and what it means to be a woman in Pakistan. Women are subjected to sexual subjection
through institutionalization of marriage. patriarchal set-up of Pakistan and the ways women
strive to survive in an unaccommodating atmosphere where men grow up with expectation
and understanding that women must be obedient in whatever social capacity they exist and
work. Suleri is an eco feminist as she shows that her mother takes a leaf or a twig and enjoys
the beauty of that leaf.

Dadi also makes a stick from a branch and this makes her realize that “her son could provide
her the whole of his life”. Her sister Ifat is following Mary Daly’s advice, ‘wieldiest’ herself
against her father. The incidents like the marriage of her grandfather and grandmother shows
that in male dominating society, no importance is given to the wishes of women. Her father
suppressed her mother who shows a typical Pakistani male dominating man and shows that
men in Pakistani patriarchy can never understand the feeling of women.

Another approach that can be applied to this novel is psychoanalytical approach, such as the
text of this novel talks about the body and it reduces the existence of women to nothing rather
than mere bodies. In the novel her mother is shown as a typical Pakistani mother who is
always worried as if her daughter is beautiful and then she has to pay for her beauty she says
that, “a beautiful body has to pay heavily for this i'll-affordable luxury and Mamma’s fears
prove prophetic”. So, she colludes or gives an opinion that it is a truth that men live in houses
and women live in bodies.

The character of Ifat is shown in a very dramatic way. She was the one who was ahead like her
father and always walks in an erect style but soon after her marriage rather elopement she
was totally different she had to behave or act like her husband’s demand and change her way
of living. Even the greatest freedom of Ifat pushes her into inviolable matrimonial embrace
with Javed deceptively termed as love. It is a woman's inability to survive as a woman that she
has to take refuge in relationships. Dadi’s social context does not allow her to think of herself
as a woman.

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She can be a mother, a khala, a daughter and a sister. These are actually social positions meant
for service-cum-servitude and therefore are valid to get respect. Dadi’s pathetic
communication with the other ladies of the family is one way of compensation for the loss of
standing she is burning for. Each time Dadi is given “alu ka bhurta” she asks in complete
innocent ignorance as if she were going to taste this dish first time in life: ‘What is it, what is it
called? ’ (p. 3). her wailing request to God for tea is again an effort to make herself listened to
by the ladies.

But this request for tea has implications for the company. She finds comfort in the family
gatherings where she is like a bride, a centre of attention of the marginalized members of the
family, the women and the children. Papa is too grand to pay any attention to the unsuitable
behavior of the second class members of the family. Dadi mistakenly expected any serious
attention from her son too grand for a woman whether she is a mother, a wife or a daughter.
Dadi’s love for her son is a one sided relationship.

She keeps writing letters to her son, always ending them with her phrase of endearment ‘keep
on living’, but these letters were never even read, not to speak of writing answers to them. On
certain levels it seems as if this work of Suleri is an autobiography. In her work she presents
the imbalance between the relationship of both the men and women, she gives women a
significant treatment in the first chapter the title is, “Excellent Things in Women” revolves
around her dadi and the two chapters, “The Moderation of Ifat” and “What Manna Knew”
revolves around her mother and sister.

Sulheri challenges the stereotypical notion about the eastern women that they are physically
and mentally inferior and not able to do things as the man can do. Domestic life is showing
that male is dominating and power over all in society. Whatever man can not practice in the
world he can practice in his home. Suleri embodies man’s dictatorial position in Pakistani
patriarchy and as such his attitude towards women in all her social roles is unaccommodating,
uncaring and exploitative.

As a son, he never gave due respect to his mother. Even when he was with his mother living in
the same house, there was an unbridgeable gap between the mother and the son. Mr. Suleri
towards the end of his middle years stopped speaking to his mother (Dadi) and Suleri (Sara)
ironically points out that ‘the atmosphere at home appreciably improved’. Women as women
have no place in Pakistani patriarchy. She can survive only as a grandmother, a mother, a
sister, a daughter, a wife or a Khala.

She has to be a caring mother, or a docile wife or a submissive daughter. Motherhood is the
most prestigious and privileged status that Dadi can think of though her own experience
refutes any illusion even about motherhood. Suleri uses a metaphor by concluding the first
chapter that ‘… there are no women in the third world’ presents the predicament of women in
Pakistani patriarchy.