Nina McConigley
How to Commit a Post-Colonial Murder by Nina McConigley is a coming-of-age story of an Indian American girl in the mid 1980s. It unfolds in a series of brief vignettes told in the first-person-voice of Georgie Ayyar who lives in Wyoming with her American father, Indian mother, and older sister, Agatha Krishna. As a young brown girl growing up in America, Georgie has to contend with racism, childhood sexual assault, mockery, and marginalization.
Newly arrived from India, her uncle Vinny, with his wife and son, move in to Georgie’s home for what is supposed to be a temporary stay. Georgie and Agatha are forced to share a bedroom. With their father’s extended absences working in oil fields, and their mother’s strong attachment to her brother, Vinny, the two girls remain silent when their uncle begins sexually assaulting them. Because the sisters want the abuse to stop and feel they cannot rely on adults to help them, they decide to take matters into their own hands and murder their uncle. When their uncle Vinny dies and is cremated, the girls assume their plan was a success.
Georgie’s voice throughout is irreverent, funny, and honest. She addresses the reader directly, weaving historical facts into her narrative, including the Challenger explosion, the Cold War, and President Reagan. She maintains a conversational tone throughout, peppering her narrative with quizzes readily available in teen magazines for girls. She builds suspense by announcing plans to murder Vinny Uncle before explaining why. Although she doesn’t dwell on describing the sexual assault, she depicts its long-term traumatic impact: it splits her in two with one part of her dissociating from the part experiencing the abuse; it severs her close bond with Agatha after the death of their uncle. Instead of this shared secret bringing the sisters closer together, it drives a wedge between them with Agatha increasingly distancing herself from Georgie. The surprise twist at the conclusion suggests the sisters have re-established their close bond.
Georgie’s interiority and the sisters many conversations about the deleterious impact of colonialism on the colonized suggests they see parallels with the sexual abuse they experienced from Vinny Uncle who “colonized” their bodies. They fight violence with violence. That they have survived the trauma and are shown as resilient adults at the conclusion of the novel suggests that although the scars of colonialism can never be erased, it is possible, nevertheless, to move beyond them.
Unfolding in a witty, confessional narrative voice, the novel takes an innovative approach to exploring the bond between sisters, racism, otherness, child sexual assault, and trauma.