ANALYZING URBANIZATION, IDENTITY, AND CULTURAL CONSTRUCTS IN MOHSIN HAMID'S HOW TO GET FILTHY RICH IN RISING ASIA THROUGH THE LENS OF EDWARD SAID'S ORIENTALISM

Abstract

In the book How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013), Mohsin Hamid offers the complex story of urbanization, neoliberal aspiration, and identity construction in the postcolonial South Asian space. This paper is a qualitative discussion of the novel, using the concept of orientalism as developed by Edward Said to explore the socio-cultural and economic forces that have created the postcolonial subject. The study examines the role of urban environment, material aspirations and inherited colonial legacies in shaping the individual agency, identity and social mobility. The paper has emphasized the critique of neoliberal modernity and paradoxes of the self-help ideology through the intensive discussion of the narrative style, addressed to the second person, metafictional device, and has argued that Hamid engages with both the text and mode of writing. As the discoveries indicate, the pillar of the storyline, the escapades of the heroine of the slum to the riches of the city, serves both as an expression of the postcolonial urbanity and the ethical and moral lesson about the psychological aftermath of unhealthy ambitions. Finally, the paper places Hamid work in the context of postcolonial literary discourse, and shows how historical awareness, urbanization, and hybridity creation of new identity in modern South Asia interact.