Contentious community: the figure of the insider-outsider in The Permanent Resident by Roanna Gonsalves

Against a backdrop of increasing migration from Asia to Australia, the experience of Asian visitors and immigrants coming into Australia has changed over time; rather than disorientation, Asian migrants coming to Australia may experience a relatively more comfortable ‘settling in’. Drawing on existing networks and connections with established Australian residents (occasionally facilitated by family networks back home), new visitors and migrants can foster a sense of community fairly quickly and use support networks to gather information, manage the logistics of travel or settlement and participate in social events. The traditional pressures that attend physical relocation may thus feel less urgent and onerous, and the affective impacts of cultural adjustment may be less significant. Communities of settled migrants can provide a potentially helpful safety net or point of reference for newly arrived migrants, making these people feel like a part of an existing community and thus helping to reduce the anxiety associated with migration. 

When crises arise, the importance of finding solace in community becomes abundantly clear. The message that community is important is reinforced widely by the media and the sense that one needs to connect with community is pervasive. Community is a concept that assumes greater symbolic meaning, practical significance and power during a crisis. In fact, in many ways, it is during a crisis that people can consciously and meaningfully grapple with the concept of community. Confronted with a complex and difficult situation, people looking for connection and perhaps even material support will contemplate what it is that they mean when they say that they belong to a particular community, and what it is that that community may mean when they say that you are one of them. 

It is in the light of this peculiar negotiation of the meaning of community that I revisited Permanent Resident by Indian-Australian writer Roanna Gonsalves. An anthology of short stories published in 2016, Permanent Resident deals with the complexities of migrant subjectivity in Australia. Most of the characters in the short stories are Sydney-based Goan or Mangalorean Christians. The latter are communities of south-western Indians who trace their heritage to the Konkan coast, a part of the western coastline of southern India. Many adopted Christianity (mainly Catholicism) under the influence of the Portuguese, who colonised parts of the Konkan coast from 1505 to 1961. The book presents intricately carved stories of first- and second-generation Konkani migrants in Sydney, sympathetically and insightfully depicting the challenges and complexities of migrating to a new country and settling into a new life. 

One critical aspect of the work that I found myself thinking about recently is its negotiation of the concept of cultural community from the perspective of an ‘insider-outsider’, and, related to this, its depiction of tensions within a community during a moment of crisis. How do people who – for various reasons, including their marital status, worldview and more – don’t necessarily ‘fit in’ with the community think about their place within that community? How do migrants (within a cultural community) with different value systems engage, debate, disagree and coexist with one another? What do different members of a community think about their place in the community during a crisis? Gonsalves’ stories offer a glimpse into how some migrants may negotiate this terrain. Most of the stories in Permanent Resident deal with how migration can affect and change people’s relationships, friendships, and career and creative aspirations. These stories can’t be compartmentalised under a single theme. But one aspect of the collection that stood out to me was its exploration of the perspective of the insider-outsider, a person who belongs but doesn’t fully fit in. 

This essay focuses on one story in the collection, ‘In the beginning was the word’, in which Angelina (Angie), a Goan Catholic woman in Sydney, decides, after a heated debate with a group of Indian Catholic friends and acquaintances from St. Mary’s Church (the church that she was inducted into when she first arrived in Sydney), to publicly confront their parish priest about recent revelations of historical child abuse in the local parish. 

Angie is a divorcee and does not have children. This is what makes her stand out from her mostly conservative Indian Catholic friends. She is both pitied and treated disdainfully by this group of friends, from whom she has gradually become estranged over the years. When Angie first arrived in Sydney, Bibi (a childhood friend from Bombay) and her husband, Martin, let her stay with them for 6 months, helping her settle in. Bibi and Martin are conservative and religious. They are keen to emulate Australian ways but they remain culturally and socially insular. Their social circle comprises Indian Catholics who go to the same church and with whom they share similar values. One such is an expectation that one should definitely marry, ‘settle down’ and have kids in order to be seen as a respectable member of society. They share a suspicion of (and lack of empathy for) people who choose not to do this. This has strained Angie’s friendship with them, and, in addition to her lack of interest in attending church and remaining a part of the church community, has rendered her an insider-outsider, someone who belongs but doesn’t truly fit in. Their former friendship has now become some sort of a nominal association, still held together by an old sense of obligation to at least remain in touch (‘Perhaps they felt obliged [to invite her], as she felt obliged to turn up.’). 

The key thing that drives a wedge between them is their ideological and political differences. For example, while Bibi, Martin and their Indian Catholic friends look upon other migrants (particularly Muslim refugees) with some disdain, Angie, through her exposure to progressive ideas at her university, is much more sympathetic towards other migrants. Indeed, she now finds the animosity and lack of empathy of this group of people quite disturbing. 

Their most important political and ideological difference relates, inevitably, to religion. Angie is curious about what the church group thinks about recent revelations about child abuse in their local parish. She wonders at their lack of acknowledgement of these revelations and willingness to overlook criticisms of their priest. She challenges them to explain the church’s reluctance to accept responsibility for past misdeeds. Bibi, Martin and their friends vociferously defend the priest and church, obfuscate the issues, and belittle her for her ‘progressive’ views and outrage. Angie’s criticisms provoke them to pour scorn on her and embarrass her about the fact that she has chosen to remain a single woman (and thus forsake respectability), further consolidating her outsider status within this community.  

‘Yes, of course,’ said Bibi and turned her back to Angie, who was sitting in the sun. But then she turned around again and faced Angie like the Book of Revelations. ‘Why don’t you come to church next Sunday? Our church. See for yourself what you’re missing.’

Angie laughed humourlessly. 

‘Come and make your peace. Give your parents something to be happy about after… the divorce.’
There it was again, that cat-o’-nine-tails that had long since lost its power. 

‘My parents are happy.’

‘That’s not what they tell me. Prayer can move mountains, Angie. You’re all alone in this country. Don’t reject the only people who can help you.’
 
The pull of community in a new and initially unfamiliar setting can be strong, and responding to this pull may induce some level of cultural self-regulation. To be welcomed into a cultural community, one usually needs to demonstrate some degree of conformity with a (usually loosely defined) identity. This conformity – whether enacted in terms of dutiful attendance at community events and places of worship, for example, or in other ways – is needed for the creation of a sense of belonging together. It is also sometimes needed for the assertion of identity-based claims in the public domain, and for these claims to be viewed as having legitimacy and support within the given community. The situation of a newly arrived migrant is such that the anxiety associated with migration can induce a need to identify with a culture that previously might not have been so strongly present in that person’s life, and this identification may become consolidated and reinforced over time. The predicament of people who, for whatever reason, don’t ‘fit in’ can thus become quite complex. Such a person may find themselves grappling with reinscribed unfavourable cultural norms and judgements that make it harder for them to feel a sense of belonging with their community. 

In this story, during a crisis, the faithful reinforce their fortifications around the church, dismissing concerns about stories of abuse and displacing blame onto others. The church community digs its heels in and ferociously deflects all criticism. The protagonist – an insider-outsider who, after years of forbearance, is frustrated and appalled by the hypocrisies, pettiness and small-mindedness of this community – finds herself adopting the position of the community’s nemesis. Angie persuades herself to confront the priest and force him, and, by extension, the whole community, to acknowledge the church’s sins. But at the critical moment of confrontation during a church service, she is overpowered and rendered pliant by the force of the communal spirit around her. Her protest is deflated.  

The deflation begins when Bibi performs a private ritual of welcome when she sees that Angie has returned to St. Mary’s Church: 

The first person she sees is… Bibi, smug like cheese in a rat-trap. 

Bibi walks up to Angie. They embrace.

Bibi says, ‘This is your home, Angie.’

‘Bibi…’

‘Family comes first, Angie. This is your faith family. Here. In this country where no one else cares about you.’  

There it is – the power of the community to both offer refuge to you and make you conform. 

Gonsalves’ stories about migrants are varied and textured, and there are layers of complexity in Permanent Resident. Some of the other standout stories are: ‘The teller in the tale’, in which a woman writing a dissertation reconciles with her fiercely protective but demanding mother – a reconciliation that feels like the crescendo of a lifetime of muted acrimony; ‘Cutting corners’, a story about a woman (a nurse and artist), who, straddling two different organisations representing South Asian Catholics, whose members generally have little or no time for the arts, finally meets someone who recognises and appreciates the artist in her; ‘The dignity of labour’, in which the pressures of migration, exacerbated by a seeming incompatibility with established migrants, destroy an already strained marriage and culminate in horrific violence; and ‘Permanent resident’, a story about a woman who, having lost her child in a swimming pool accident, finally steels herself to learn how to swim. 

‘Community’ can be a particularly fraught concept for migrants to grapple with, and there is a peculiar richness and tenderness in Gonsalves’ stories about migrants’ negotiation of the concept of community during a moment of crisis. In Gonsalves’ work, there is a tension between two conceptions of the community – the community as a welcoming and comfortable refuge for newly arrived migrants and the community as the conservative arbiter of values and beliefs. While the newly arrived migrants in Gonsalves’ stories often find themselves appreciating (and needing) the relaxed friendliness and intimacy with which established migrants treat them and bring them into their social circles, they also soon feel constrained by (and displeased about) the mores, prejudices, vanities and expectations of conformity that pervade their insular social world. Community is a double-edged sword to insider-outsiders, who can neither fully embrace nor fully escape the community. Even in the face of serious ideological and moral disagreement, they can’t forsake the community, and the community doesn’t forsake them. They are all migrants here in Australia, and, no matter how divergent their paths in life may be, they are still bound together by a tenuous sense of having something significant in common. The immutable fact of their common origin, and of their arrival in Australia, still binds them together and prevents them from ever fully severing relations. Gonsalves understands and depicts this tension well.