Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir

Ravinthiran, Vidyan

ISBN 10: 1324021322 / ISBN 13: 9781324021322

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2025

About this Item

Seller Inventory # IN-475015

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1324021322
• ISBN 13: 9781324021322
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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, he leaps adventurously between memoir and criticism, understanding his life through poetry, and vice versa. Ranging from Andrew Marvell to Divya Victor, Ravinthiran 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.

About the Author

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