#diaspora lit

[metamatar]

Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland (2013) and Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others (2014), that embody this tendency: a universalization that, in fact, neither comprehends nor sympathizes with the social and political contradictions in contemporary South Asia.

Both novels place at the center of their narrative what is commonly referred to as the Naxalite movement, which began in 1967 with a peasant uprising in Naxalbari, a village in northern Bengal near the Nepal border. Initially led by armed members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the movement later broke away to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and has largely followed Mao’s doctrine of “people’s war.” Begun in the countryside, it spread to the cities during the 1970s, attracting significant numbers of educated, unemployed youth energized by the peasants’ struggle for rights and recognition. A brutal counteroffensive, empowered by draconian anti-terrorist laws, brought the first phase of the movement to an end. In both novels, the central figures are Naxalite militants. Their immersion in the movement, together with the fallout of their decisions on the lives of those around them, largely propels the narrative in both.

By placing an emancipatory movement at the core of their novels, Lahiri and Mukherjee also place the politics of resistance front and center. And yet, even though both novels are structured by the political actions of key characters, neither author is able to muster an empathetic understanding of their characters’ actions. Moreover, the very idea of a life of struggle is made to appear at best quaint, at worst objectionable. In both novels, politics remains something imposed on the characters, an external, impinging force—but never a source of self-actualization. Instead it serves as a source of dislocation, self-doubt, broken relationships and disrupted lives. Each novel exposes its author’s inability to perceive the political as an intrinsic aspect of the individual being.

Hence, while each of the authors locates a politics of resistance at their novel’s center and views that politics through a universalizing prism, neither can fathom its attraction. Such an approach to emancipatory politics reinforces the neoliberal view that all resistance is doomed because there are no possible alternatives to the current order. And although both authors seem to want to escape an ethos where resistance is viewed as futile, neither is able to do so. As a result, neither is able to engage, much less express, the internal lives of their own central characters. Because of this, they remain limited, not just as post-colonial novels but simply as novels.

The World In a Grain of Sand, Nivedita Majumdar (emphasis mine)

[soracities]

Dunya Mikhail, from Diary of a wave outside the sea (trans. Elizabeth Winslow and Dunya Mikhail) [ID'd]

[thebluesthour]

While the Greek root of the word nostalgia, 'nostos', means 'the return home' — anyone who has been there knows that the return home is never without pain. Nostalgia feels like getting the blues. According to the Oxford English dictionary, 'nostalgia' is 'a form of melancholia caused by prolonged absence from one's home or country; severe homesickness'. Indeed, 'Nostos might hold out the promise that, yes, you can return whence you came, but nostalgia happens because you can't go home again.'

Carol Mavor, “A Bolt From the Blue”, Blue Mythologies

[kafka-bug]

Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

[fantasy-costco]

I just turned in my last assignment for my first semester of grad school and was it good? Absolutely not but good God at least I'm done

[khizuo]

it's funny how even among chinese people my mom is a particular nerd about chinese history and literature. like i think when i was a kid i thought it was normal for chinese ppl of her generation to have read literally all the chinese classics and have an encyclopedic knowledge of chinese classical poetry and also know a shit ton about early 20th century chinese history and vernacular lit on top of that. but nah my mom is just autistic lol

[roobylavender]

i feel really mean sometimes with the way i critique diaspora literature but personally i just feel like you have no excuse to write a book while riding on your identity to sell it and then it’s not even good or worth anything analytically. like you’re making serious bank writing like a fraud meanwhile real storytellers who actually care about the intricacies of culture bc they live in it intimately every day barely make a dent outside of their local entertainment industry

[runwithskizzers]

LOOK AT THIS COVER

I'm so excited to be a part of this anthology of South Asian stories written by South Asian (incl all aspects of diasporic) writers.

You can preorder here: https://www.littleshopofstories.com/book/9780063208261

A pair of star-crossed lovers search for a way back to one another against all odds . . .

A girl fights for her life against a malignant, generations-old evil . . .

A peri seeks to reclaim her lost powers . . .

A warrior rebels against her foretold destiny . . .

From chudails and peris to jinn and goddesses, this lush collection of South Asian folklore, legends, and epics reimagines stories of old for a modern audience. This fantasy and science fiction teen anthology edited by Samira Ahmed and Sona Charaipotra contains a wide range of stories from fourteen bestselling, award-winning, and emerging writers from the South Asian diaspora that will surprise, delight, and move you. So read on, for after all, magic has no borders.

With stories by:

Sabaa Tahir, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Ember in the Ashes series, and winner of the National Book Award and Printz Award for All My Rage

Sayantani DasGupta, New York Times bestselling author of the Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond series

Preeti Chhibber, author of Spider-Man’s Social Dilemma

Sona Charaipotra, author of Symptoms of a Heartbreak and How Maya Got Fierce, and coauthor of The Rumor Game and Tiny Pretty Things, now a Netflix original series.

Tanaz Bhathena, award-winning author of Hunted by the Sky and Of Light and Shadow

Sangu Mandanna, bestselling author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and the Celestial Trilogy

Olivia Chadha, author of Rise of the Red Hand

Nafiza Azad, author of William C. Morris Award nominee, The Candle and the Flame

Tracey Baptiste, New York Times bestselling author of The Jumbies series and Minecraft: The Crash

Naz Kutub, author of The Loophole

Nikita Gill, bestselling author of Wild Embers and Fierce Fairytales

Swati Teerdhala, author of the Tiger at Midnight trilogy

Shreya Ila Anasuya, New Voices selection

Tahir Abrar, New Voices selection

Cover credits:

Artist: Jyotirmayee Patra Designer: Joel Tippie

[susansontag]

people will embark on book challenges to only read african authors or asian authors and then most of what they read are books written by black and asian americans etc. or canadians. or british. and like. obviously this is great too but maybe more people should arrange these reading challenges so people won’t solely read diaspora fiction but maybe read some stuff from around the world that wasn’t originally written in their native language by people who may have cultural experiences that could frankly still be similar to their own. I just feel it’d be worth making that distinction

[cosmicrhetoric]

im trying to exit my hater era re: YA like i have better things to do with my time but by simply being brown and following some book accounts i have been getting nonstop press for that book that's being marketed as like desi fantasy watched jodha akbar jashne bahara once enemies to lovers dupatta caught on some white boy's wrist shyamalan era firebending book and let me tell you. you couldn't pay meeeeeeee

[metamatar]

do you have any thoughts on Jhumpa Lahiri?

I've only read the Namesake and The Interpreter of Maladies. She represents a brand of diaspora literature that however technically good I will remain frustrated by. lt is meant mostly for immigrants to whom India is something inexplicable and frustrating, and I have no patience for that. Perhaps it makes me ungenerous, but I do not in general truck much with literary fiction that comes out of like middle class people writing about how difficult it is to be a person mostly from their own experience. Maybe it is because I'm an unsentimental person. Maybe it's because my brain has been fed a diet of too much genre fiction. Maybe because I'm a communist who doesn't like when politics is used only as an aesthetic device by writers.

I googled her and it seems that she moved to Rome and started reading and writing in Italian exclusively? That does sound a lot more interesting to me.

[soracities]

Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, from "Lamps" (trans. Sarah Maguire & Sabry Hafez), My Voice: A Decade of Poems from the Poetry Translation Centre (ed. Sarah Maguire) [ID'd]

[pronouncingitwang]

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[sarahvsalcedo]

What?? Back on Tumblr, David Tennant’s the Doctor again, and economic uncertainty is rampant? Tell me it’s not 2008.

It took two weeks to have Tumblr help me get back into my account, but I’m back. Still on Twitter for now, but so many people have gone already. Twitter was one of my main client referral sources, on top of being a vibrant and active literary community. I feel this oncoming loss like I did when livejournal got bought.

For those who stuck around over the last two years while I was locked out of my account—I’ve been published! I have a lot of short fiction, essays, and art on my website. I also started a Substack newsletter on creativity and joy. I’m finishing up a fantasy novel (less NaNoWriMo than NaFiYoNoMo — National Finish Your Novel Month).

There are more updates, but I wanted to (finally!) get logged back in, say hi, and see who’s still around.

Say hi if you’re still here (or if you’re new and just made the switch from Twitter to Tumblr). I’ll be around a lot more going forward.

[caribbeangirlfolkloring]

The Bocas Academy

If you’re a Caribbean writer who wants to expand your knowledge, skills, and writing community, the Bocas Academy programme, established by Bocas Lit Fest, is available now!

[spock-adoodledoo]

sometimes it feels like it’s just me but then i hear something so painfully ignorant white American that i have to restrain myself from wiping the person who said it out of existence