Many of the characters in Foreign Soil’s stories experience prejudice or ridicule, whether due to their race, class, gender, age, or immigration status. But the collection shows that all characters, even those who have themselves experienced prejudice, can hold—and act on—prejudices against others. In “Shu Yi,” a young Black girl named Ava refuses to stick up for Shu Yi, a Chinese student new to their majority-white, suburban Australian elementary school. Prior to Shu Yi’s arrival, Ava was often the target of her white classmates’ ridicule. Though Ava’s mother insists that Ava do the right thing and stick up for Shu Yi—especially since Ava can empathize with what Shu Yi is going through—Ava wants to maintain the relative peace she’s enjoyed since her classmates have stopped bullying her to bully Shu Yi. So, Ava refuses to look out for Shu Yi, reasoning that “Shu Yi [isn’t] a problem [she] want[s] to take on.” When Shu Yi tries to sit next to Ava during recess, Ava responds with malice, refusing to let Shu Yi sit with her and calling her a racial slur—much to the approval of her racist classmates. Ava, in other words, uses her relative privilege to hurt rather than empower someone less privileged than herself, thus perpetuating the very bigotry that used to hurt her.
“Aviation” is about a young woman named Mirabel whose husband died in the September 11 terrorist attacks. The trauma and grief Mirabel experiences in the aftermath of her husband’s recent death causes her to form prejudiced views of Muslim people (and anyone who “looks” Muslim—i.e., people of Middle Eastern origin). So, when Mirabel is asked to provide emergency foster care to a young Sikh boy named Sunni, she struggles to move beyond her prejudiced view of Middle Eastern people to provide care for a blameless, innocent child. In other words, Mirabel’s own trauma and hurt propels her to hurt rather than help someone who has himself experienced trauma and hurt. In these stories and in others, Foreign Soil shows how prejudice perpetuates prejudice. Determined to maintain (or increase) the relative privilege they’ve achieved within an unjust society or community, characters opt to look out for themselves rather than those with less privilege; in other words, they side with—and therefore strengthen—the very systems that once oppressed them. And while seeking solidarity with other marginalized people is, as some characters suggest, the morally correct thing to do, Foreign Soil nevertheless shows how easy it is to instead choose to look out for oneself.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Solidarity vs. Prejudice ThemeTracker
Solidarity vs. Prejudice Quotes in Foreign Soil
These children, born in this country, do you think they feed their babies the aseeda for breakfast? Do they drop it on the little one’s tongue to show them where is it they come from? Do you think they have learned to cook shorba soup? I tell you: no! They feeding them all kinds of rubbish. McDonald’s, even. They spit on their grandmothers’ ways. They spit in our bowls, in our kitchens.
I felt awkward, had no idea what she was talking about, but felt like I was somehow supposed to. Auntie took up her grocery bag from the ground, smoothed some dirt from her skirt, walked away slowly, down toward West Footscray Station.
I stood there for a minute, staring after her. The rain had stopped. A small puddle of water had settled in the baby seat. Nile would be getting testy. It was half an hour past when I usually collected him. I threw my leg over the bike, started pedaling down the street. The Barkly Star was a dream to maneuver—smooth gliding, killer suspension, sharp brakes. Felt like I was hovering above the wet tar, flying. Like there was nothing else in the world except me and my wheels. David. I slowly rolled her brand-new name around in my mouth.
Harlem can’t look at her. She makes him too fuckin’ irate. She always dumps on his dad whenever Harlem does anything wrong. Ten years since the man pissed off, and she still can’t stop slagging on him. Harlem flexes his trembling fingers. He wants to fuckin’ strangle her, his own mother, who gave birth to him. Really strangle the woman. He wants to wrap his fingers firmly around that fat neck and squeeze until her face goes purple.
Harlem flicks the lighter on with his thumb, holds the flame up in front of his face. “My name,” he says, “is not son. My name, my fuckin’ name, is Harlem fuckin’ Jones.” Holding the neck of the Molotov, he touches the flame to it and quickly pulls back his arm.
Millie had heard stories about the root of Aunt Willemina’s wealth. About the wealthy Haitian man with a wife and children who had set her up on the strip with her own sewing shop in her own name when she had been feisty and beautiful. She took the older woman’s speech for half a lifetime of regret.
My blackness was the hulking beast crouched in the corner of every room, and absolutely nothing was going to make it seem cool.
Wondrous as she seemed, Shu Yi wasn’t a problem I wanted to take on. Besides, with her arrival my own life had become easier: Melinda and the others hadn’t come looking for me in months. At home, my thankful mother had finally taken the plastic undersheet off my bed.
Solomon hated her, and he hated himself. He wanted that key in his pocket. De Frankie was right about him. Much as the thirst kept rising in him, it lulled and peaked, dipped and climbed. And when Solomon’s commitment wavered, Babylon came a-calling.
Denver ain’t her no more. He jus the man her best friend Izzy married then split from. He jus somebody she used-a know, long time ago. The real her was born when she came to Orleans. Real her is Delores.
When Carter wriggle into the top, his whole body get to singin’. He stand up straight, look in the mirror. His mind unfog itself.
Delores put a hand on Ella’s shoulder, pull her back into the living room. “Quiet, chile. You gon scare him away! That pickney don’t know us from Adam.” But even as Delores say it, she know it ain’t true. Minute that chile an her lay eyes on each other, they gon know they kin. It’s gon feel like they finally home.
The head doctor said there was no blood, that he would never be locked in a chest or a fish hold again. But then the head doctor had walked out of here, left him behind, in the chest.
Tears stream down her face as she watches the cameras flashing and microphones jostling at the other end of the parking lot, where the razor-wire fence adjoins the visiting area. The Mazda windows are closed, but she can still get the gist of the press conference spin. Hopelessness burrows into her chest again, its fingernails digging into her lungs, slowly squeezing the air out.
Fuck Sam, fuck having a baby, fuck her new job, and fuck this stupid fucking car. Loretta doesn’t even know who her husband is anymore. She’s even more uncertain of why she’s sitting here, crying about her husband, in this of all places.
The kid’s bottom lip is quivering. He raises his hand to the front rim of the faded blue Knicks cap, slowly removes it from his head, and rests it in his lap. His face is cherubic: cheeks rounder than Mirabel’s ever seen on a child his age. Wound tightly over his head is a piece of black, stretchy material. The material conceals the boy’s hair and twists around at the top to form a kind of covered-up bun.
Mirabel takes a sharp breath in, fear rising in her throat.
Sunni used to climb over from their apartment’s balcony to the balcony of Bill and Susie’s place. It was a cheeky thing he did: surprising them with a visit, sneaking in through the sliding balcony door to leave a drawing he’d done of them, or some cookies he and his maa had baked. After the bad men in planes, Bill and Susie had stopped looking after him, stopped looking at him with kindness in their old-person eyes. […]
The next week, old Bill and Susie had put plants up against the concrete divide where their balconies joined Sunni’s place. Sunni pointed the beautiful pink flowers out to his mother.
“You can’t climb over and visit anymore,” she’d said, her voice shaking. “They’re poisonous flowers. That’s oleander.”
Markie’s prep class performed the song for their school assembly item last year. The teacher taught them to sing it jovially, with an upbeat tempo, swaying with joy. “Sukiyaki,” his teacher had called it, the easier name the song was given when it reached Western shores. Even after we did the research on the history of the song and Markie presented it for Tuesday Show and Tell, the teacher still insisted on having the kids smile through it, as if they were singing “Happy Birthday”: a song about a man overwhelmed with despair.
This story is not going to be sent out, in any case. Most likely never even completed. Certainly not published and read. Because Avery is hanging upside down, and it will all end in tragedy. The only way down is for a scared little girl to hurt herself. I do not know how to rescue Avery gently.
