How can I apply New Historicism to "My son the Fanatic?"

In the broadest terms, New Historicism, often associated with the Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt, uses literature to try to reconstruct or understand the social or intellectual history or "feel" of a particular period. This can be applied to "My Son the Fanatic," published in the New Yorker in 1994, to understand what it was like to be a Pakistani immigrant or child of immigrants in England in the 1980s and early 1990s. What we learn...

In the broadest terms, New Historicism, often associated with the Shakespearean scholar Stephen Greenblatt, uses literature to try to reconstruct or understand the social or intellectual history or "feel" of a particular period. This can be applied to "My Son the Fanatic," published in the New Yorker in 1994, to understand what it was like to be a Pakistani immigrant or child of immigrants in England in the 1980s and early 1990s. What we learn from this story is that the older generation, the people who actually experienced life in Pakistan, represented by the father, Parvez, exhibit a strong and uncritical appreciation of the freedom and opportunities offered by British culture and show a fervent desire to assimilate into Western life. Parvez very much appreciates England's "good life" as he understands it: the freedom to have a drink, to eat pork, to befriend a prostitute. He works very hard as a cab driver so his son can pursue higher education, have a computer and, Parvez hopes, rise to a higher level in society as an accountant.

His son, Ali, on the other hand, has never witnessed the degradations and humiliations of living in Pakistan. He has, however, felt what it is to be despised in his parents' adopted country and has a strong belief that he will never gain acceptance from the traditional "white" English. He idealizes and embraces a radical form of Islam as purer and more disciplined than the "decadent" way of life his father pursues. 

The story thus captures the particular flavor of a moment of English history in which Pakistani immigrants balance on a knife's edge between embrace and rejection of their new culture. Details such as Pakistanis as London cab drivers, owning a desktop computer and worrying about the younger generation using drugs are the kind of particularities of the historical moment that New Historicism would identify along with the cultural fissure between the generations.