By Audrey Fong
As someone who has spent much of their life in an English department, I’ve been force-fed a steady stream of theory for almost a sixth of my life. Some theories I quickly forget like Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage (sorry to every professor who taught me this), while others I hold onto like Judith Butler’s explanation of gender as performance or Frank B. Wilderson’s contributions to Afropessimism. While this work has helped me understand the world around me, I often wonder: how much impact does theory have outside of academia? And even if bestselling novels like Torrey Peter’s Detransition, Baby lean heavily into queer theory and outright name theorists, does the theory or idea linger in readers’ minds past their reading of the novel?
This is not to say that theory never makes it out of the academy nor to say it never has an impact. Poet Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel, Martyr!, is a compelling example of the way theory and academia can make it out into the “real world” in a way that is both digestible and memorable.
Martyr! largely focuses on Cyrus Shams, a Persian American poet who moved to the U.S. with his father as a child after his mother’s plane was shot down by U.S. armed forces. For much of his life, he has struggled with addiction, insomnia, and grief. By the time the reader meets Cyrus, his father has also passed away. Grappling with his grief and depression, Cyrus attempts to understand death and to find a way to make his own death meaningful, to possibly transcend himself to martyrdom: “He felt ready to join [the martyrs], to enter the ranks of the honorable dead. He even felt ready to carry himself to that end. Most of the time. He was ready, then he wasn’t.”
In his quest for understanding, Cyrus is working on a book about martyrs, a journey that leads him to New York to meet a dying Persian American artist, Orkideh, who is spending her last days talking to the public and dying in front of an audience at the New Museum. While talking to her, Cyrus delves deeper into his own fascination with death and learns information about his mother that makes him realize she wasn’t the woman he believed her to be.
After being informed of Cyrus’ book on martyrdom, Orkideh jokes, “I’m afraid you’ve added us both to all the CIA lists!” and “Oh my God, so you’re a poet too! All the Persian checkboxes.” To these jokes, Cyrus tells her about sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois’ double consciousness, explaining “how black people in America always have to be mindful of how racist white people see them. And how that applies to a lot of marginalized people, always having to see themselves through the eyes of folks who hate them.” He then applies this to his experience of being “an Iranian vaguely Muslim man” in the U.S. writing on martyrdom.
This mention of Du Bois reminded me of how Peters’ Detransition, Baby would outright name theory and academics that I’m familiar with because of my time in the English department, but that I wonder how many people outside of the humanities and social sciences are aware of. In this instance, Akbar makes a smart rhetorical move by preceding this introduction to DuBois’ double consciousness with a joke from Orkideh. As a Persian American, she can make this type of joke with Cyrus, pointing to the difference between the first and third person when discussing stereotypes. However, for non-Persian readers, Akbar’s use of a joke lets them know that they’re aware of what we may be thinking while reading a book about a Persian American man fascinated with death and martyrdom without outright calling the reader out.
Through Orkideh and Cyrus’ conversation on martyrdom, Akbar is able to demonstrate how double consciousness works in real life. By doing so, Akbar provides a digestible example for readers, who may not experience double consciousness in their own lives, of how it impacts an individual’s actions. When Orkideh learns of the subject of Cyrus’ project, Cyrus attempts to explain his project both to her and the reader, saying, “But there’s no escaping it, the Iranian cult of martyr stuff,” and “I just want to write an epic. A book. Something about secular, pacifist martyrs. People who gave their lives to something larger than themselves.” From these explanations, the reader sees how Cyrus is on the defensive, immediately put in the position of explaining himself and his interest in death and martyrdom. To this, Orkideh asks him, “Do you worry about becoming a cliche?”
Due to his Persian and Muslim identities, Cyrus is forced to be “mindful of how racist white people see them” and how his interest in martyrdom could be perceived in an Islamaphobic society that is all too ready to label someone like him a terrorist. While his focus on death and martyrdom is likely impacted by what he perceives as meaningless deaths for both of his parents, society is ready to explain away this fascination and his desire to die a meaningful death with racist stereotypes, explaining Cyrus’ defensive stance when explaining the book’s topic. But how many of us haven’t thought about death or fantasized about our own deaths being meaningful? The difference, though, is that many of us don’t live with the weight of martyr/terrorist stereotypes and therefore do not have to worry about how society could misperceive our interest in death. Thus, Akbar demonstrates double consciousness in an easy to understand way that readers can hopefully take with them long after finishing Martyr!
Martyr! is largely a reflection on grief, death, and relationships. It asks: What will our deaths mean? Is our life still worth something even if we die without meaning? How well do we know our parents as humans, beyond their ties to us as caregivers? Ultimately, what I took away from Martyr! though is one way in which theory can make it out of the classroom and how Akbar was able to softly teach the reader critical frameworks or ideas. Given that the average American only reads 12 books per year, I’m still left with questions about the impact of theory outside of academia and how many people outside of the humanities and social sciences would pick up books like Martyr! and therefore be introduced to new ideas. Even so, Akbar did an admirable job introducing academic frameworks to his novel in a way that was easy to understand and natural, making an argument for how these ideas help explain the way we navigate the world.
Audrey Fong is your stereotypical Southern Californian. She loves the beach, drinks more boba than the doctor recommends, and has an Insta-famous dog. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.