A Real Harlem New York Story- Critique

This is a critique of the story called "Kavita Through Glass" by Emily Ishem Raboteau. It is found in The Best American Short Stories 2003, edited by Walter Mosley. Here it is:

This is a funny and sweet story, definitely a New York City story. Hassan is from Iran, a loosely practicing Muslim and has been, I guess, a graduate student in Mathematics at Columbia University in Harlem New York. (Yes, it really is Harlem). He has been married to a woman named Kavita who is a Hindu from New Jersey. He met this woman on one of his graduation days (this seems like a lifetime student) at a restaurant and despite his father’s warnings, got to know her and marry her.



This story has a series of amusing bagatelles. Kavita is an architect who likes glass. The couple goes up to the Corning, NY glassworks and Hassan through the mail finds out that he won a “lifetime supply” of colored beads. Kavita is also nine-months pregnant. This story is told from the third person, though a rather intimate third-person, including Hassan’s thoughts. The dialogue is sparse and mostly internal. The reader is told that Kavita has not talked to Hassan for nine days.



The story has a lot of props that are standard in international New York. Hassan “dreams” that Kavita says she married him to give him a green card. Though he is sort of religious, in contrast, she revels in her nudity. Hassan fears infidelity, but it turns out to be a simple case of her looking for reasons to exhibit her body, like for an art class. Kavita likes the apartment painted in white and with minimalist décor, just like she enjoys working and cooking in the nude.


She doesn’t talk to Hassan for nine days, because he followed her three times, and finally walked in on the art class where she was posing and disrupts it. At the end, the couple sort of make up. It’s like the typical international New York couple, they can get things back together if the people don’t wait too long to make up or let things get too out of control.



The other funny bagatelle is the use of mathematical language for Hassan to describe his and Kavita’s relationship. For example- the equation of longing and desire, but the variables are too related, the triangle of He, Kavita and the pregnancy. I think is it good work.