How often are we rendered strange and unmappable to ourselves by the very cultures that seek to classify and contain us? And yet, as Vidyan Ravinthiran writes, "how hard it seems, for many of us, to even begin to escape the face in the mirror!" With<b> fearless honesty and a stunning lyric imagination</b>, <i>Asian/Other</i> disrupts the silence and dispels the darkness into which so much vital testimony has been huddled. This is<b> a bold, borderless, breathtaking memoir</b> about race, language, inheritance, and love's many forms and outposts.

Tracy K. Smith, poet

Written in<b> soaring, exhilarating prose</b>, with the sentences impatient to pack in more ? more ideas, more thought, more life ? this book will come to be seen as a turning point in writing about literature, race, identity, and otherness.

Neel Mukherjee, author of Choice

There's nothing like <i>Asian/Other</i> ... I received an education I didn't know I needed until I had found it. <b>Read it</b>.

Stephanie Burt, author of We Are Mermaids

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A moving love story to fathers and sons who endure with dignity despite the misunderstandings they encounter. This is a<b> persistently illuminating and inspiring</b> memoir that somehow transforms the aesthetics of literature into a guide for good living. <b>Original, wise, witty and exciting!</b>

Daljit Nagra, author of Look We Having Coming to Dover!

Ravinthiran <b>brilliantly blends the poetic, the personal and the political</b> as he skilfully explores 'the problem of memoir'. A poet I've long admired, who makes a true success of the journey into prose.

Andrew McMillan, author of Pity

<b>Beautifully written</b> and impeccably argued.

Kirkus

To witness Vidyan Ravinthiran thinking is a privilege. In this<b> generous, vulnerable memoir </b>he takes on cultural flashpoints - race, identity, neurodiversity, cultural appropriation - with a stubborn compassion, refusing to simplify arguments or monster others. One of the best critics of our generation. Ravinthiran is <b>a writer of uncommon brilliance</b>, and it is a pleasure to follow the lucid wanderings of his mind.

Clare Pollard, author of Delphi

<i>Asian/Other </i>is a <b>beautifully written and beautifully vulnerable</b> work in praise of uncertainty, curiosity and the quiet satisfaction of living a life <i>because </i>of poetry.

Shash Trevett, author of The Naming of Names and co-editor of Out of Sri Lanka

<i>Asian / Other</i> is <b>an extraordinary book</b>, full of wisdom, deep thinking, hard truths and gentle hilarity, all couched in the most gorgeously pyrotechnic prose. Plunging the wells of identity, creativity, and intercultural strife, Ravinthiran's sentences carry us between distant shores - from there to here, from then to now - with the strange vividness of dream. The transatlantic experience of otherness, belonging and parenthood he lovingly anatomises here is one I will return to for years to come. With this unique work, a creature entirely its own, <b>Ravinthiran has invented a new genre</b>. More than that, he gives me hope.

Sarah Howe, author of Loop of Jade

A perceptive exploration of poetry, race, and otherness from one of our most promising voices in criticism.Vidyan Ravinthiran was born in the north of England to Sri Lankan Tamils, and moved to the United States five years ago. Considering identity in both its political and psychological senses - as these concepts fuse, or fail to, at different times and in different places - he leaps adventurously between memoir and criticism, understanding his life through poetry, and vice versa. Ranging from Andrew Marvell to Divya Victor, he writes both about and through poems, discussing Sri Lanka; experiences of racism and resilience; intergenerational trauma; pandemic parenting in an autism family; relationships shaped by the internet; growing up with a speech impediment and being sent by one's aspirational brown parents to elocution lessons; and the relative invisibility of South Asians in Western television and film. This electric, compelling hybrid memoir discovers a new way of writing about the self and also literature.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781785788628
Publisert
2025-01-16
Utgiver
Vendor
Icon Books
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
153 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
272

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Vidyan Ravinthiran was born in Leeds, England, to Sri Lankan Tamils. He now teaches at Harvard University. He writes both poetry and literary criticism.