Creative Lives
Описание книги
South Asian Diasporic Writing—poetry, fiction literary theory, and drama by writers from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka now living in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA—is one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary world literature. In this volume, twelve acclaimed writers from this tradition are interviewed by experts in the field about their political, thematic, and personal concerns as well as their working methods and the publishing scene. The book also includes an authoritative introduction to the field, and essays on each writer and interviewer.
The interviewers and interviewees are: Alexandra Watkins, Michelle de Kretser, Homi Bhabha, Klaus Stierstorfer, Amit Chaudhuri, Pavan Malreddy, Rukhsana Ahmad, Maryam Mirza, Shankari Chandran, Birte Heidemann, Neel Mukherjee, Anjali Joseph, Chris Ringrose, Michelle Cahill, Rajith Savanadasa, Mariam Pirbhai, Maryam Mirza, Mridula Koshy, Sehba Sarwar, Dr Angela Savage, Sulari Gentill.
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Группа авторов. Creative Lives
Foreword
Bibliography
Introduction. The Act of Inter-viewing: A Network of Creative Lives in the South Asian Diaspora
A note on the introductions
Bibliography
Genres, Languages, Voices: Rukhsana Ahmad in Conversation with Maryam Mirza
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
The Aesthetics of Fragmentation: Michelle Cahill in Conversation with Chris Ringrose
Bibliography
Writing One Reality, Returning to Another: Shankari Chandran in Conversation with Birte Heidemann
Bibliography
In a State of Indifference: Amit Chaudhuri in Conversation with Pavan Kumar Malreddy
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Poetry as Radical Resistance: R. Cheran in Conversation with Aparna Halpé
Bibliography
An Infinity of Traces: Suneeta Peres da Costa in Conversation with Reshmi Lahiri-Roy
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
The Delicious Indulgences of Writing: Sulari Gentill in Conversation with Angela Savage
Bibliography
“An Island is a World”: Romesh Gunesekera in Conversation with Susheila Nasta
Bibliography
A Highbrow “Hijra”: Kaiser Haq in Conversation with Mohammad A. Quayum
Bibliography
Nomadic Thinking: Tabish Khair in Conversation with Pavan Kumar Malreddy
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Reading, Writing and the Contours of Power: Mridula Koshy in Conversation with Maryam Mirza
Bibliography
“To want to know the world, to look outward”: Neel Mukherjee in Conversation with Anjali Joseph
Bibliography
Before the Battle: Karthika Naïr in Conversation with Laetitia Zecchini
Bibliography
Remapping Canada: Mariam Pirbhai in Conversation with Maryam Mirza
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
“I Ground Myself in Multiple Spaces”: Sehba Sarwar in Conversation with Maryam Mirza
Bibliography
The Processes of Fiction, Theatre and Life: Rajith Savanadasa in Conversation with Alexandra Watkins
Bibliography
Where Politics and Climate Meet: Sungchuk Kyi in Conversation with Ruth Gamble
From the Grasslands to Melbourne
When Politics Isn’t a Choice: Being Tibetan
Climate Change: Losing Home Again
Poem Two: The Earth’s Lament
Bibliography
Places and Proximities: Samrat Upadhyay in Conversation with Prakash Subedi
Bibliography
About the Editors
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Foreword by Janet Wilson
Introduction
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Khair also acknowledges the ways in which a creative tradition may gain by contrapuntally borrowing from other cultures and writing across national borders.
Diasporic voices share common ground in issues relating to connectedness to the homeland. However, they also draw inspiration from world literature, which, as David Damrosch (2003) theorizes, stems from “widely disparate societies, with very different histories, frames of cultural reference and poetics” (4). It is not surprising, then, that the writers interviewed here are reinventing, appropriating, recycling and translating stories and languages as new points of contact generate cross-cultural fertilisation and result in surprising transformations. A notable example of this is Sulari Gentill (“I’m Australian. I was born in Sri Lanka, learned to speak English in Zambia and grew up in Brisbane”), who adapts the detective fiction genre to produce a highly successful series of nine politically and historically acute crime novels set in the 1930s in Sydney, Shanghai and elsewhere. Anyone interested in the circulation, reading and rewriting of texts as part of “world literature” will find acknowledgement in these interviews of a rich and complex network of writers and material that undergirds South Asian diasporic writing. Here, forms such as the bhakti poetry of Mira Bai are cited by Suneeta Peres da Costa alongside an inspiring series of later writers from Marguerite Yourcenar to Shashi Deshpande and Perumal Murugan, as well as Ingeborg Bachmann, William H. Gass, W.G. Sebald and Eunice de Souza. Lydia Davis is discussed here, as are Roberto Bolaño, and Antonio Tabucchi. Michelle Cahill talks about her inventive “Letter to [Fernando] Pessoa”. Unexpected and creative collisions occur, such as Kaiser Haq’s homage to Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Walt Whitman—just one of the fruits of his residence in the US. Or Amit Chaudhuri’s recollections of the profound effect of his first reading of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers. One comes away from these conversations wondering if Franco Moretti’s (2000) notion of world literature as “one and unequal” (56), where he highlights the engagements between “cultures that belong to the periphery of the literary system” and the European (and Eurocentric) literary canon (58) really takes account of South Asian creativity and eclecticism, and its challenge to western canons.
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