First, a wee bit o’ liveblogging:
Amardeep’s panel: “Politics of writing- act of writing as political”
Who is your audience?
Amardeep: I’ve written for mags/lit crit…very fixed idea of those readers, they’re like me…left, progressive, academic…on SM, I have no idea who is reading, there are so many types, many armchair warriors. Hindu natl’ists tend to respond to me. Even if these are people you don’t like/detest for their views…you have to be willing to work w/them to define what history is, @ this particular juncture. I find it invigorating, even though it’s rancorous/unpleasant. In a sense, I find it more interesting to talk to more conservative people to work out consensus vision, if consensus is possible.
As a Sikh, do you separate your identity…or is it subjective?
People don’t really seem to care about what I think of mainstream authors, in that sense my identity comes through. They want to hear about E M Forster, instead of my thoughts on Graham Greene…enven though thoughts on Greene more relevant/interesting.
On SM, people see my pic and are expecting a certain perspective to inform what I do.
Mira Kamdar (author of Planet India): On internet, there are multiple audiences and things are instantaneous. Rxns rarely come back to me, they come to the blog sites, in comments. Had to create a sep email add for editorial on India lobby, on recommendation of papers editors…ended up needing it. Internet has complicated audience.
As for authorial identification- it’s always strange, my name is very Indian and my physical appearance isn’t. Am I really a desi person, am I not? As a child, I asked “Mommy which way am I half-n-half, up and down or sideways?” I just write whatever I want to, sometimes I put out my ethnic identity. I felt the need to speak out about Gujurat riots…still get death threats and hate mail for my pains.
I’m one of the only women writing about nuke deal…can you think of many others?
(Mod is adorable and so funny. 😉 Especially when she’s revising her questions.)
Sita Bhaskar (author of Shielding Her Modesty): (after discussing her short stories) I was told by my brothers, “don’t mess with Jayalalitha!”
Even though I wrote fiction, I was told by my family not to visit India, b/c of (controversial themes).
I’m a computer consultant and project manager, everything we say while working is very right (pc)…my friends say, “you literally take off your skin when you go to work”…so I put a little message/identity in stories.
Audience question: Is there a space where writers and artists can use to put out their work, where they don’t have to comply…commodify…
Moderat: If I can answer that…the internet…publishing is facing what music industry did, where the way artists distribute work has changed…there’s also self-publishing…it’s a negotiated process right now.
Mira Kamdar: I think the internet/blogs are so popular because they are free spaces where people can get around things and say whatever the hell they want…if your book is published by a smaller press…academic press, you’re going to have a totally different experience than if you go through a big house.
Random, confusing, now-forgotten-b/c-I-was-commenting-below question:
Amardeep: On internet, you have to marshal your facts, b/c if you don’t, you’ll hear about it immediately, from everyone, that you were wrong. You’ll hear that it was “okay that 500 people died in this conflict, because of this factor”…you have to be prepared.
Mod: …same with Sri Lanka…the conflict. Your subjective experience on the ground and your ethnic identity you’re bringing to this colors every (news) report…there’s just no way to know.
SALMAGUNDI:
Viagra as recurring joke:
Mira’s new email, the one she created for the India Lobby article– she got lots of viagra offers among the hate and “strong” reactions.
Sita Bhaskar has a short story involving an older couple who come to America– the husband decides he wants viagra, the wife blames this on U.S. Sita sends this tale to her brother, who is one of her “editors”, he said, “No 50-year old Indian male is like that!” Also, in Pakistan, Bhaskar’s cover is criticized but they LOVE the viagra story!
Mira Kamdar: It was Baton Rouge, LA, I was 30 yrs old, a woman with a PhD…I had such a social life let me tell you– there was no need for viagra.
::
Yes, yes drama is coming, please to be patient, it’s HILARIOUS.
::
GETTING KICKED OUT OF BUILDING. 😀 i.e. no more net! Speaking of…
I was able to do this thanks to the highly awesome Corinne, who helped me get online! THANKS CORINNE. 🙂
Is this drama worthy of warming up a bag of popcorn?
Inquiring minds want to know!
YES! Especially b/c it involves girl-on-girl… 😉
But don’t pop just yet– am mid-conf, trying to type quietly, so can’t type enough/quickly! 😀
Bastards!!
Yeah, if it’s not clear, Mira is half Guju…she was talking about that just before what you quoted.
I can’t type fast enough! Gah!
Well, still this is awesome. Though it would be so cool if you could, we could actually have questions off SM that you could relay to the panelists 🙂
And thanks for clarifying about Mira’s background, was wondering about that.
Whoa there is a filter? I’ve never had my comment text not allowed.
But I don’t anything is offensive.
Girl on girl? Perhaps I should start hanging on around blogs fests…
However, I fear my lack of a blog would be a non-starter. I can imagine it now being in a circle of people and everyone handing out cards with the blog addresses and annual web statistics. Myself reciprocating with the feeble offer of just an email address or the awkwardness of 24/7 availability via a skype account. Then everyone just silently typing into their blackberries and iPhones updating their blogs with the comment “…sadly some luddite was amongst us today. I felt bad for him, but now I know even Desi(s) have mildly less intellectually developed people”
I would bow my head down in shame and quickly leave the circle.
I see nothing of merit in this post. Posting these obvious cultural issues repeatedly in different formats and from different venues undermines the already flimsy bamboo foundations of this blog. You should pray your audience is bored or waxing amnestic.
Do delete this post upon receipt. It will help to further the myth that success is just another overblogged issue away.
apparently, the saucy clitfest is living up to its name.
That is very sad and makes me angry. It gives you a measure of those ‘men’ though, what kind of ‘men’ they are. I have read Mira’s book Motiba’s Tattoos and urge everyone to read it too.
I <3 Mira Kamdar. I’m popped and ready 🙂 thanks anna…i’m sad i missed the sawcc panels but this is a close second! I just read Motiba’s Tatoos – it is so clear that she has devoted her life to analyzing India past and future (Planet India). Ugh, who is anybody to question her authority?
All I can say is this new SM design is to high contrast for me— ouch!!!!
Too high contrast. Bring back the brown, please.
It’s hard to see anything of merit in your comment. Perhaps you are confused as to what “liveblogging” consists of; it involves documenting an event, and in this case, one which involved authors/writers who are often mentioned here, discussing themes which are also mentioned here, for the benefit of those who could not attend.
If you’re not interested, perhaps a different post would be to your liking. Then again, if you liked something here, that would undermine your forced, synthetic disdain, and you wouldn’t have any reason to troll, so that wouldn’t work either, right?
Hope this doesn’t sound like trollish nitpickery, but shouldn’t it be E M For
rester?who was the moderator?
Amardeep has a doctorate in English literature and yet, as he says, people want his thoughts not on Graham Greene, whom he finds more interesting, but on E.M. Forster, because the latter’s best novel is “Passage to India” (which does deserve its iconic staus) and Amardeep is an individual of Indian origin. This stereotyping is less likely in the scientific disciplines because these do not have a significant national component, if any. I imagine Indian economists in America find themselves choosing between specializing in Developmental Economics and Economics without such a national connection. Some, like Amartya Sen, do both.
Not nitpickery at all– someone was typing a little too quickly. I’ll amend it.