Week Six: Writing and Reading from Diverse Positions

Photo by Jessie Cohen and Ramsey Matthews

Reading Assignment: This week's featured novel is Marriage of  a Thousand Lies by Sri Lankan-American author S J Sindu.  It can be purchased through the bookstore, through Amazon either in hard copy or electronic copy. There is also an audible version.  This book is the first novel by Sindu and has received significant notice and acclaim as a important new work in queer literature and Asian-American literature in general. For anyone interested, Sindu will be teaching a course in the Fall in Asian and Asian-American literature at Ringling. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing major and in the Liberal Arts Program. 

In an interview on The Rumpus, Sindu discusses in detail the issues of the novel in relation to Tamil culture and the literary world in general. She also makes some useful recommendations for other books to read that explore LGBT issues in a South-Asian context. Follow this link. 

In the interview Sindu recounts:

" I wanted to explore the things that weren’t really being explored in South Asian American fiction. A lot of South Asians I knew were considering or were in straight marriages—even marriages of convenience. There was a lot of pressure for me to get an arranged marriage and conform. But it never actually occurred to me to do it. There was absolutely no way I wanted to enter into an arranged marriage or a marriage of convenience, so I was also fascinated by the kind of person who would make that decision. As I was writing it, this novel was the anti-me story. Lucky is very different from me as a person, which is why it was an interesting story for me to write. But I also knew that when the novel was published, people would just assume that I was Lucky, that this is my story. Part of this is because people assume that you write what you know, and the assumption is especially enforced for women/non-binary writers, queer writers, and writers of color. This brings up a lot of issues of privilege and power. There’s an assumption of white cisgender heterosexual maleness as the default, so any deviation from that and people question whether you’re just writing a thinly veiled memoir."

In Class: we will be watching the movie, Circumstance (2011) directed by Maryam Keshavarz. The film, like the book, deals with the conflicts between generations in traditional societies, especially in respect to LGBT relationships and identities. After the movie,  Sindu will join us for conversation and a session of questions and answers about her novel and writing in general.

Writing Assignment: Before or after class please post your response to the experience of reading the book. You may want to wait until you see the movie and have a chance to talk with Sindu before you make your post, but please write your post before Wednesday so I can include it in my mid-term evaluation of your blog.