World Next Door: South Asian American Literature (Asian American History & Cultu) - Softcover

Rajini Srikanth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159213081X ISBN 13: 9781592130818

Publisher: Temple University Press, 2006

Synopsis

This book grows out of the question, 'What is South Asian American writing and what insights can it offer us about living in the world at this particular moment of tense geopolitics and inter-linked economies?' South Asian American literature, with its focus on the multiple geographies and histories of the global dispersal of South Asians, pulls back from a close-up view of the United States to reveal a wider landscape of many nations and peoples. Drawing on the cosmopolitan sensibility of scholars like Anthony Appiah, Vinay Dharwadker, Martha Nussbaum, Bruce Robbins, and Amartya Sen, this book argues that to read the body of South Asian American literature justly, one must engage with the urgencies of places as diverse as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Burma, Pakistan, and Trinidad.Poets, novelists, and playwrights like Indran Amirthanayagam, Meena Alexander, Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje, Shani Mootoo, Amitava Kumar, Tahira Naqvi, and Sharbari Ahmed exhort North American residents to envision connectedness with inhabitants of other lands. These writers' significant contribution to American literature and to the American imagination is to depict the nation as simultaneously discrete and entwined within the fold of other nations. The world out there arrives next door.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Literature that takes us beyond identity to empathy

From the Inside Flap:

"Rajini Srikanth's The World Next Door is a beautiful and thoughtful exploration of the imagination of South Asian America. We are laid bare by her perceptiveness. Desi texts for her are not just about themselves, but they are also a riposte against the stereotypes of citizenship that engulf us."
—Vijay Prashad, author of Karma of Brown Folk and Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses

"A pioneering study of the unique contributions of South Asian American writers, both prominent and marginal, situating their vision locally, globally, and within 'the idea of America.' Asian American studies is enriched by Srikanth's timely engagement as much with literary representations of ethnicity, immigrant relocation, transnationalism, [and] sexuality, as with her astute concern with geopolitical dynamics and struggles for social justice in the world today."
—Ketu H. Katrak, Chair, Department of Asian American Studies, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

About this edition

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 159213081X
• ISBN 13: 9781592130818
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304