SAWCC Conference Highlights and Links (Updated with pictures)

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Amitav Ghosh

The SAWCC conference that Anna mentioned last week ended up being a lot of fun. One thing that really stands out at a conference like this is the way the South Asian writers and artists in the U.S. across a number of different media are using the internet. So instead of writing a gossip-columnish summary, for this post I’ve collected links to sites by people who were on panels, or who were involved in the conference in some way.

First off, photos! Preston Merchant is, we established, definitely no relation to Ismail Merchant, but he did take lots of beautiful pictures of the conference here. He’s also working on a book of photography of the South Asian diaspora.

Amba, who I don’t think I’ve met in person, blogged about Friday night’s event with Amitav Ghosh and Vijay Seshadri (Sara Suleri Goodyear couldn’t make it); it’s a pretty detailed and accurate description of the conversation. Also check out Mitali Perkins’ report here. The highlight might be this sentence: “And in ten years, Pooja Makhijani and Anna John of Sepia Mutiny will both be famous.” Nice prediction! (Try: sooner.) Incidentally, Mitali has written a couple of young adult novels that look like they might be fun: The Not-So Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen just came out last year on Little, Brown & Co.

On the young adult novel tip, I was also quite impressed by the excerpt Marina Budhos read from her new book Ask Me No Questions. Given the fluffiness of Opal Mehta (and most of the books KV plagiarized from), it’s refreshing to see a work of young adult fiction that makes a serious political point about the experience of South Asian immigrants in the U.S. This novel addresses the ‘dark’ turn for civil liberties since 9/11, and is partly based on Budhos’ own firsthand experience talking to undocumented (or “overstayed”) Bangladeshis in the U.S. (Manish profiled Marina Budhos here)

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While we’re on young adult literature Monika Jain, the editor of the spiffy desi-oriented children’s magazine Kahani, mentioned a couple of times that they actually sometimes have trouble getting short stories submitted that have boy protagonists. So if anyone out there writes children’s stories about desi boys — either abroad or in India — you know where to submit it. (Incidentally, Pooja Makhijani maintains a pretty thorough bibliography of South Asia-oriented Young Adult literature.)

On two different panels, Ravi Shankar is a poet and the editor of DrunkenBoat.com. You can see a number of his poems on the web. At DrunkenBoat, check out the poems and prose (some by desi writers), audio clips, video, and web-based interactive art. See, for instance, Prema Murthy’s “Mythic Hybrid” project.

Bloggers in the back

From the same “new media” panel, the Mutiny’s own priestess of blog Anna John represented, no surprise there. She had the room riveted with one of her most moving early posts (pre-SM) about the death of her father. (I would also make a comment about Anna’s shoes on Saturday, which had to be the fashion “statement” of the weekend, but as I said, I’m not doing a gossip column.)

Yesha Naik podcasts at PodBazaar. She is going to put up podcasts of the SAWCC panels at some point soon. She also read part of a spoken word monologue Saturday evening, which I thought had some quite funny bits.

As they say in hip hop, Amitava Kumar brings the ruckus. He added some brilliant insights and a lot of ‘presence’ to the panel on SA Lit and New Media, all the while claiming that he had no right to be there! Amitava is too modest; his own blog is quite charming. If there had been time enough, I would have asked him about his documentary film projects.

It was fun chatting about literature and politics with the highly knowledgeable Mahmud Rahman (who I’ve linked to before on my personal blog). Mahmud has published a number of things in recent months, including “War Stories,” in India Currents. He also has a blog. Go check him out.

Sejal Kukadia on Tabla

Sejal Kukadia. She plays traditional tabla something fierce. She studies at the Taalim School of Indian Music in New Jersey, and has been studying and performing in the U.S. and India for more than nine years. Some of her stuff has been released on a CD called Tabla Upaj, which I am thinking of ordering.

At the same performance Saturday evening, I was also impressed by George Mathew’s western classical piano. It’s not every day that you get to have pizza with a Malayalee piano virtuoso who has conducted Beethoven’s Ninth in Carnegie Hall.

Hippocrene Books had two editors in the house. They do a number of books oriented to South Asia, including dictionaries (Telegu/English and Tamil/English coming soon!), cookbooks, phrasebooks, and travel guides.

I was sorry I wasn’t able to stay to hear Sejal Shah read Sunday night, but I was happy to find this personal memoir by her at the Massachusetts Review this morning. There are some formatting problems on the site, but it’s worth checking out.

23 thoughts on “SAWCC Conference Highlights and Links (Updated with pictures)”

  2. I didn’t take any — and I don’t know if I have permission to use Preston Merchant’s. Check this link. (There is a great pic of Anna checking her cell phone!)

  3. Yes, Amardeep. You can post embeeded pictures. Register at my archive and I’ll grant you download permissions. Cheers, Preston

  4. Hi Amardeep. The only reason I gave Pooja and Anna a decade is because truncating the process to fame seems to endager the potentially famous. Have you read Naomi Shihab Nye’s wonderful poem “Famous?” That’s the kind of fame I’m talking about. Mitali.

  5. Hi Mitali, I was just having a little fun with your prediction! I agree about not taking any shortcuts. Anyway, I think certain recent events in the young adult fiction world probably underlines that for us all too clearly.

  6. Agreed, this weekend was fun… even with the thousand mile trek to the Daksin! 🙂 Pleased to meet some of the bloggers behind Sepia Mutiny(Looking forward to meeting the rest!) By the way, you were too modest to talk about the awesome job you did moderating the discussion between Vijay Seshadri and Amitav Ghosh…

  7. hey DesiD, is that you on your web site.
    hey, i’ve always wanted to become a bollywood leading man. i think i have nice hair and i can lean back into the wind on a rocky cliff, open my arms wide and go “Hay Hay!!! ” . i need to buy some bright yellow shirts and torn jeans, but i think i can do ok. can you help me?

  8. even with the thousand mile trek to the Daksin!

    and lo, like the Israelites, we were left to roam in the desert. let my people GO! and EAT!

  9. hey amardeep – care to add some deet’s (to borrow off the lingus) on the forum you hosted – any issue that came to the front that you could share with us.

  10. I want to know who Anna was text messaging on her cell phone sneakily behind Amardeep’s back 😉

  11. Self-promoting FYI:

    Hippocrene Books is creating a new website, to be ready this July-August. This one is out-of-date and should have an ‘under construction’ sign. You can still order books though, so please do so! We carry dictionaries in over 120 languages and plan to publish language books in every single South Asian language, from Punjabi to Marathi to Kannada.

  12. Thanks for the link to my work, Amardeep! It was great to meet you and Anna. I didn’t really know about sepia mutiny except for the name, which I’d seen referenced. I’ve got to get up to speed.

    Nice photos from Preston. And a great event all around.

  13. care to add some deet’s (to borrow off the lingus) on the forum you hosted – any issue that came to the front that you could share with us.

    Amba (at the link I gave above) summarized some of the main issues pretty well. My first question for them was on form:

    Vijay felt forms were culturally determined and were specific to each culture. He gave an example of the Ghazal. . . Forms adapt to circumstances and ones that are irrelevant are discarded. Amitav felt form was free flowing in a novel. But he felt free to explore non-fiction and essays as well. He was not limited by form.

    I thought Amitav was interesting here: he’s basically saying that he doesn’t think about form when he writes — and later in the conversation, he went on to say that fiction and nonfiction are more or less the same for him in terms of the writing process.

    More Amba:

    The second question was on the role of events and how they shaped a writer. Was it a responsibility of a writer to write [about politics, current events, etc] ? Amitav said he came of age in Calcutta, which had a strong leftist tradition. He was shaped politically by the anti-Sikh riots after Indira GandhiÂ’s death in 1984. He belonged to a group P.U.C.L (peoples union for civil liberties) and they prepared a white paper on who the guilty were during the 1984 riots. . . . The distinction between action and contemplation for writers is spurious. He also gave another example, where he had written an article for Outlook criticizing a company Sahara, who were planning to commercialize the Sunderbans. His article was read by the chief minister of Bengal, and the company was not granted permission to build and develop the area.

    Amitav is referring here to issues he talked about in essays like “The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi” (about the anti-Sikh riots of ’84). He also wrote aboutdevelopment in the Sunderban islands in the Bay of Bengal around the time he wrote The Hungry Tide.

    Amba again:

    The third question dealt with the issue of identity, Indian or America? Vijay thought that India and America had a dialectical relationship. Current situation for him was India being seen in an interesting and compelling way by the US. The US he felt was being run by an adolescent leader, and an adolescent government with infantile polices. Amitav had arrived in the US only 13 years ago, and he found the US a pleasurable discovery. But after Sept 11th, 2001 he felt America is not what he thought it to be. . . He felt in India you know stupidity when you see it, here in the US there was a plain lack of common sense. He felt a country thatÂ’s known defeat, like India is able to be more realistic of its abilities and is wiser than the US. He felt the dialogue in India was much more informed, eloquent, articulate and aware of ground realities than here.

    Amitav has been very critical of the direction the U.S. has taken politically since 9/11. Not just the policies (the whole misguided war in Iraq), but the way the mainstream media and journalistic outlets carry on debates. I get the feeling he’s a bit nostalgic for the more aggressive to-and-fro you see in the English language media in India. Not only are people more “real,” those public debates can actually have an effect on policy. In the U.S., you get the feeling that politicians are too busy constantly campaigning to bother to read anything.

  14. hey DesiD, is that you on your web site.

    dhavaak, I wish! If you behave mail me some eggplant, perhaps soon there will be a picture. In the meantime, a bright yellow cotton button-down shirt and some high-waisted ripped jeans would be fabulous. I’ll meet you in Winnepeg and we can run around trees!

  15. what a great conference. i was there for a few things, but vijay seshadri and amitav ghosh blew me away.

  16. some time back there was a reviewer in a canadian paper who mused openly if rohinton mistry could genuinely be considered a true great canadian novelist… since none of his novels were set in canada and reflected his life experiences in another land… the discussion might even have beenm part of the lead-up to the national book award… it may have been mistry or another author who responded that it takes some time for ideas to stew in one’s brain, a typical period of 10 years or so… so.. where am i going with this… in the statement below, … i am surprised people let that last comment pass… it just seems so blinkered… or maybe that reflects the ‘where the heart is’ loyalties of the audience

    He felt in India you know stupidity when you see it, here in the US there was a plain lack of common sense. He felt a country thatÂ’s known defeat, like India is able to be more realistic of its abilities and is wiser than the US. He felt the dialogue in India was much more informed, eloquent, articulate and aware of ground realities than here.

    interestingly the year i read that exchange was the year that three of the four award finalists were born outside canada… a casual coincidence or maybe not… i came across the following poem on a plaque in a walk through high park. it was authored by a Japanese Canadian and presented to Emperor Hirohito in 67. i hope you enjoy it as much as i did today. A long way from home
    They have been brought
    And yet these goldfish
    Already seem to enjoy
    Swimming in Canadian waters. funny… I normally dont read poetry, but sometimes when i get it, it’s a complete experience

  17. dhavaak, I wish! If you behave mail me some eggplant, perhaps soon there will be a picture. In the meantime, a bright yellow cotton button-down shirt and some high-waisted ripped jeans would be fabulous. I’ll meet you in Winnepeg and we can run around trees!

    no, not you? that lady looked a little older than i thought you’d be… now youre just teasing me about my cooking… but my bharta/ratatouille doesnt come out half-bad.. come on over to toronto for bumbai dreams and i’ll make you some.

  19. Thanks Preston.

    Incidentally, Elizabeth of Verbal Privilege has also given her impressions of the panel here.

    She objects to one thing Amitav Ghosh said:

    (One bizarre moment, though: in an otherwise thoughtful digression on the tenacity of South Asian diasporas, he said something like ‘take an Indian and put them anywhere, and they’ll be fine; if you took an American and dropped them into India they wouldn’t last ten minutes.’ Perhaps that was just snark, but still, WTF? I lasted plenty longer than that, thankyouverymuch. Downright flourished, as a matter of fact. Though it’s hard not to, in Kerala, where everything seems to blossom: even jetlagged wide-eyed white girls). Overall, though, a rewarding evening–and a sadly underattended one (no idea why).

    That’s true, now that I think about it. Not only are there many culturally flexible/open-minded Americans, there are plenty of Indians who reach the U.S. and completely fail to flourish.

  21. dhavaak, dude, that’s Aishwarya Rai.

    wow! really? i see you’ve changed the pic. that wasnt a flattering shot – looked rather vaxy even. so i take it you’ve started your own gig… awesome and good luck!!

  22. Dhaavak,

    Yes that was Aishwarya — it was a photo from “Taal”…..DesiDancer refuses to show us what she looks like because she thinks it would be too much for a poor sheltered desi boy like me to handle without passing out or having a stroke 😉

    She may well be right…..