Via Laura Taflinger

Project IMPACT, Philadelphia, is proud to present its first South Asian literary event, In Ink: A Celebration of South Asian Writing on Saturday, October 23, 2004 at The School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, Meyerson Hall 210 South 34th Street, Philadelphia. PA.

Keynote Speaker: Shashi Tharoor at 9:00 a.m.

In Ink promises to create a dynamic forum in which participants can engage in discussions with a diverse group of extraordinary South Asian writers. Participants will interact through panel discussions and book readings highlighting Diaspora literature. This all day event begins at 9:00 a.m. The registration fee is $25.00 for adults and $15.00 for students. This includes access to the keynote address, all panels and readings, and a full lunch. Go here.

Participating Authors:

Meena Alexander
Asra Nomani
Samina Ali
Vijay Prashad
Anjana Appachana
Shona Ramaya
Carmit Delman
Bapsi Sidhwa
Zia Jaffrey
Rajini Srikanth
S. Mitra Kalita
Tahira Naqvi
Shashi Tharoor
Pireeni Sundaralingam
Maryann Mohanraj
Indu Sundaresen

For more information, please contact Anita Thakkar at (215) 545-5039 and or Julie Rajan at (215) 266-8022.

The Asian American Writers' Workshop announced today that Vijay Vaitheeswaran is one of the three winners of The Seventh Annual Asian American Literary Awards.

From Vaitheeswaran's web site: “Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran is The Economist’s Environment and Energy Correspondent, covering developments in politics, economics, business, and technology as they relate to energy issues.”

Vaitheeswaran's book Power to the People discusses the coming environmental revolution and claims that it is larger than the Internt revolution.

A ceremony honoring Vaitheeswaran and the other winners will take place on Monday, December 6, 7PM @ The Asia Society, 70th/Park Ave, New York City.

The Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia will host Photography Speaks, from September 4, 2004 through February 27, 2005.

The show which is named after Photography Speaks and Photography Speaks II, two amazing books that you must have in your possession, will showcase photography by Thomas Struth, Gabriel Orozco, Adolphe Braun, Ilse Bing, and Andre Kertész.

The books are by Brooks Johnson, the Chrysler's curator for photography exhibits. Look for a new book to be published by The Aperture Foundation and The Chrysler Museum also gracing the title – PHOTOGRAPHY SPEAKS.

“Not intended as simply a picture book on the history of photography or on one museum’s collection, the new Photography Speaks follows the same biography-statement-photograph format established in the first book. Each photog¬raph is accompanied on the opposite page by a statement from the artist and a brief biography placing that artist within an historical context. Some of the texts deal with the specific image reproduced, while others take a broader approach, commenting on the art of photography in general. A few texts are technically oriented, and some consider the intricacies of art creation. Taken as a whole, this collection of statements provides a wide range of thinking on photography.”

A country or a region's vernacular is a crucial factor in studying its culture. When I arrived in the US, now almost 21 years ago, I had some difficulty understanding high-school banter and they in turn had a beast of a time figuring out my accent and use of the English language. But I was hooked on one thing – slang. “Wicked, awesome.” “No, Kidding.” “What the f^(&!”

You get my drift (now).

Out in bookstores now is the Hippie Dictionary. It was compiled by John McCleary and published by Berkeley, California based Ten Speed Press. “Far out, man!”

Champa Bilwakesh is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Andover Townsman, INDIA New England and Sawnet.

Her February 1, 2004 article in India New England spoke of South Asian women writers having a “formula” for publishing books that often receive critical acclaim. I am curious to know if women have muses too?

Today's South Asian women writers fill bookstore shelves
By Champa Bilwakesh

Lalithambika Antherjanam, the fearless and prolific Malayalam writer who lived from 1909 to 1985, was once asked why Indian women have figured so poorly as writers.

It was not, she said, because “women have no talent, but because it is considered a great sin for women to speak their mind. … A woman's reputation is a matter of life and death for the whole extended family. Under the circumstances, no woman will be courageous enough to hurl herself into literature.”

Today, her sentiment has been turned on its head. South Asian women have arrived like storm troopers into the diasporic English literary scene. Titles by South Asian women dominate shelf space at bookstores in a way South Asian men's never did.

These writers can thank their foremothers, who decades ago began risking their reputations to tell their stories. They told them in Marathi and in Punjabi, in Tamil and in Kannada, in Bengali and in all their various mother tongues.

All this telling indeed came with a price for some. In 1941 Ismat Chugtai's Urdu-language “Lihaaf” dealt with lesbian desire and earned her a trial on an obscenity charge.

While Chugtai won her case, Taslima Nasrin has paid dearly for writing her story. Reminiscent of the banning of Salman Rushdie's “Satanic Verses,” the West Bengal government has banned and seized all copies of the exiled writer's book “Dwikhandita.” The autobiography details her physical relationships with several noted writers, some of whom accused her of lying.

Kamala Markandeya, who migrated to the United Kingdom in 1948, became perhaps the pioneer among South Asian women writers to use English as her medium.

While her very first novel “Nectar in the Sieve” (1954) was about the struggles of Indian peasants, her last book, “The Nowhere Man” (1972), could be the original diasporic novel of Indian immigrants struggling with perennial racism in the country they have adopted.

Since then there has followed a steady stream of women who tell story after story in English. Anita Desai, born in India to a German mother and Indian father, wrote of India from the angle of an observer as well as the object, much like the way many South Asian diasporic writers are writing today.

Writing about the malady in the strangely negotiated relationships of immigrants in America won Jhumpa Lahiri's “Interpreter of Maladies” a Pulitzer Prize.

Others tell of journeys back to the land of their mothers that reveal mine-filled emotional landscapes, such as Indira Ganesan's “The Journey.” Reaching farther back into women's history has driven Indu Sundaresan to write about Nur Jahan in “The Twentieth Wife.”

When Arundati Roy bagged the Booker for “The God of Small Things,” the first Indian woman writer to do so, she garnered not only a splash on Time magazine but also a glam-shot in People.

Last year, when Monica Ali was short-listed for the same award for “Brick Lane,” it was newsworthy but not because of her gender and national origin.

But what is the surprise at this prolific outpouring? There is, after all, a rich source to mine: a storehouse of pain and resentment against the forces that controlled and continue to control Indian women's lives – tradition, culture, men, and marriage.

Nothing works in fiction better than good old masala grinding. Add this to the fact that women read more than men do in America and we have a formula that makes cash registers ring.

In addition to this perennial source that drives South Asian women's writing, there is also this fact that women are better equipped with the tools to write fiction.

More women than men choose a liberal arts education. While not a guarantee of excellence in writing, such programs not only provide a broad-based knowledge of human history to draw from, but also the space and time to write.

The men, bless their hearts, opt for the gods of Wall Street and Technology, where the obsession to play with words is replaced by the fetish to play with numbers.

While there are splendid exceptions, such as Akhil Sharma who made his mark on Wall Street as well as in literature with “An Obedient Father,” the plethora of books filling shelves at Barnes & Noble authored by South Asian women is disproving Lalithambika yet again.