Buzzfeed Announces Its Emerging Writers Fellows

“After having received more than 500 applications, we’re thrilled to announce the four writers who will join BuzzFeed in January for the Emerging Writers Fellowship. With an emphasis on personal essays, profiles, and cultural criticism, each fellow will receive $12,000 over the course of four months, along with mentorship and personal development designed to help them take a transformative leap in their careers.  Their names are Chaya Babu, Niela Orr, Esther Wang, and Tomi Obaro.”

read more here

But I don’t remember him: The making of a CEO

Five days ago, P. Sundararajan sprang forth like Brahma the Creator on a thousand-petalled lotus from the navel of Vishnu the Supreme Being. He emerged as Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google. Even Brahma and Vishnu would be hard pressed to dive into the “Alphabet” (pun intended) soup and produce Sundar Pichai from P. Sundararajan.

How absolutely wonderful for a young lad to have his teachers say, years later, “but I don’t remember him”. Growing up most of us wished our teachers didn’t know us and didn’t remember the things we did and did not do. More recently, children wish this thing called e-mail had never been invented; this tentacled creature that allows teachers to tell parents in real-time what their offspring are up to – definitely not springing forth from the navel of Vishnu, but close enough.

P. Sundararajan’s idyllic childhood (and what little is known of it to his teachers) is one that every child should have. Notice that there has been no mention of a mother shuttling him from one after-school activity to another – Debate team, Math Counts, Forensics, piano lessons, and on and on – another alphabet soup that spells “MY child MUST excel” – no quotes around excel because that would mean MY child must WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT and ACCESS – sorry, couldn’t resist that one! But back to the point – his mother sounds ideal. And a father who spoke to his children about his work – not bitching about his boss or how he hated going in to work, but about what he did at work that made him valuable.

We are told that P. Sundararajan was quiet and shy. And obviously his teachers and parents left him alone. They didn’t try to figure out if he was an extrovert trapped in an introvert’s mind (or is it the other way around? I’m not sure). He was allowed to be what children these days long to be – just be themselves.

It is hard to fly under the radar when you have been accepted into IIT, the holy grail of engineering schools in India. But P. Sundararajan seems to have succeeded in that too, since his teachers did not remember that fact about him. Since the announcement, I’m sure the schools he attended in Madras (or Chennai, as it is called now) will have wait lists extending for miles. And all teachers will be tasked with producing a Sundar Pichai out of every P. Sundararajan in their classes. But I still maintain that the best thing that could have happened to the Google CEO in his childhood was to have teachers who were not trying to produce a Sundar Pichai.

Jabeen Akhtar lists the 17 tropes that immigrant fiction need to stop writing about including an arranged marriage, a dead grandmother, a journey to the homeland to discover ‘oneself’ and fabrics “swirled, bellowed and dangled’ at regular intervals. While her piece is funny (and an excellent way to generate controversy which sometimes seems the only way for authors to get any attention in today’s increasingly difficult market for all books ), most writers write what they need to write instead of what an editor might certainly buy in which case we’d all be writing thrillers, mysteries and sci-fi. Akhtar seems to write about terrorism which in itself is becoming another over-done sub-genre and perhaps a cliche crisis in itself. But then what is one to write about: Use the tropes but give a fresh angle. Such as an article on why you must not use the tropes.

Binywayna got it. He wrote about what the publishing industry expectations rather than chastise authors for the choices they make. An author herself Akhtar surely knows that most writers take at least a year or two before producing a book and so choose a topic that interests them, Often the topic chooses them.

But do authors really use their ‘brown, otherness’ to get published? Is it fair to say an author stuck Shiva and Lakshmi in a novel, because you know, dem publishers sure do like their Hindu Gods.

Writers, Jealousy and Lack of Room at the Table.

I suppose all of us at some point or the other even, if  just for a single moment, have felt the bite of jealousy, the teeth sinking into the thought of ‘well there goes that chance for me’.  Writers of Color  are often up against agents and editors who say ‘ we’ve already got an author from (fill in your South Asian, or other, country of choice), a book just like yours because there’s only one story that readers will be willing to read about this group, or can you set this novel in Iraq (or area of interest du jour). The following article is on jealousy when  there are limited  seats at the table (whether true or artificially sustained, I don’t know).

There’s an email waiting in my inbox from a friend. It has a simple one word title and an exclamation point. It reads: they’ve gotten a fellowship/are going on a writer’s retreat/are heading to a conference for rad activist folk! They’re excited, and there’s already a trail of ‘reply all’ responses saying “congratulations, you deserve it!” I half-smile, maybe even fire an email back, then navigate away. I’ll click through Facebook and see others have similar news – some putting the #humblebrag tactic to use and others open-faced. I finally stop scrolling and close my laptop to pick up my notebook. I feel the little tick in my brain, just a little one. It makes it harder to focus on my sentences. By then, I know it’s already too late. I tap my foot and clench my pen. The monster’s caught up with me. read rest here. 

Happy New Year– books, streets, censorship and social media

Happy New Year Jaggery Readers. What a wonderful year this has been for books.  The end of books has long been predicted only to be unpredicted. The end of the year saw many Best of listicles: adult novels, YA and Middle grade, and non-fiction. And of course lots of essays and blog posts on reading, the state of reading, and why reading is the best think in the world year in and year out.

“Calcutta, my once and always city of books.”

Arunava Sinha takes the reader on a lovely journey through Calcutta, books and memory.

At the shop, the kindly, bespectacled, salesman pulls out picture books, ignoring my uncle’s instructions to produce fiction suitable for ten-year-olds. I’m eyeing the shiny new volumes of Elinor M. Brent Dyer’s Chalet School novels, the world’s most marvellous school because it doesn’t even stay in the same place, moving around Europe from one year to the next. When the man behind the counter thrusts his choice beneath my nose, I look upwards at him and say, “Show me the books that my uncle asked you for.”  My personal history of Calcutta is a history of books. Browsing, buying, being. And, therefore, of bookshops. Calcutta, to me, is its bookshops. These are my memories as I time-travel through this Calcutta. I remember nothing but books and bookshops. read rest here

 

“Girls from Good Families Do Not Write Such Stories” 

Yours truly wrote an essay about being South Asian and writing about sexuality and overcoming, or not, societal and self-censorship.

I don’t know how or from where Iqbal’s books were acquired, but it was on those haphazardly stocked shelves that I discovered Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, Sandra Harris’ The Nice Girl’s Handbook, and Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl. As I flipped through Sex and the Single Girl, I tried to ignore Iqbal’s genie’s glare, but the deeper his frown grew, the greater grew my fright that my mother would walk in and the genie would get me into trouble. When my mother did pop in to say it was time to leave, I hastily replaced the book and scuttled out without daring to look back.
read rest here

 

And in shop talk, Karen Karbo talks about the differences in success in ‘The World of Publishing: 1991 versus 2014′ 

 

…in 1991, the main job of a writer was to just write the next one. Publicity-wise, you were expected to be able to show up to a reading (arranged by your more charming publicist) and read from your own work in a manner that didn’t put people to sleep. You were expected to be socially awkward,possibly unkempt, and a little wild-eyed — bonus points awarded for not being falling down drunk.You were expected to be socially awkward, possibly unkempt, and a little wild-eyed — bonus points awarded for not being falling down drunk. After your book tour, whether large or small, you were expected to disappear into your scribe-cave.  read rest here

 

Three Op-Eds on Ferguson, Race and America

Sharbari Zohra Ahmed in The Daily Star

Michael was black and Darren Wilson is white, a baby faced cop, not much older probably than the person he killed. Wilson was questioned about his actions on that August day and made himself out to be the victim, even though he was the only one armed. He insisted he was the one in imminent danger at all times. He described Michael as a “demon”. He shot him six times and then left the body on the street for hours. There is a picture of Wilson standing over Michael’s dead body, looking down at him. Wilson has said in his official statement that he never stood over the body. The authorities have yet to ask him about the picture, or if they have, they have ascertained that this lie is not a big one. That this lie does not indicate that Officer Wilson is capable of telling other lies or spinning a yarn that places the blame squarely on Michael’s shoulders. Which is what he has appeared to have done, convincing a jury of his peers, nine white, three black (and all you need is nine jurors to make a final decision), that he should not be indicted. read rest here

Sonora Jha in The Seattle Times

WATCHING the nonstop coverage of Ferguson, Mo., after the news of a grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown — and now a Staten Island grand jury’s non-indictment in the chokehold of Eric Garner — I couldn’t help thinking one thing over and over again. If even half as many black people were featured as commentators and experts on television the rest of the year the way they were being asked to comment on the riots last month, we might not have killings of people like Brown and Garner in the first place. read rest here

Jaya Sunderesh in The Aerogram

Though our struggles aren’t the same, we, as South Asian Americans, have every reason Though our struggles aren’t the same, we, as South Asian Americans, have every reason to support the African-American community at this time.to support the African-American community at this time. We must work towards change, so that no black person ever again faces the experience of Michael Brown, gunned down by the police with their hands up, begging for their lives. This involves a commitment, by progressive South Asian Americans, to work towards change in our own communities so that we do not inadvertently work to reinforce antiblack racism in this country, which is at the root of the police brutality which murdered Michael Brown. read rest here