The issue’s themes and cover art by truck artist Islam Gull is brought to life in this cool short video

I’m still working my way through the issue, but How to write about Pakistan, an online collaboration between Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Daniyal Muennudin, and Kamila Shamsie caught my eye. Inspired by Granta’s most popular feature Binyavanga Wainaina’s satirical piece, How to write about Africa (“Always use the word “Africa” or “Darkness” or “Safari” in your title’,” it begins), here are the the top ten rules for novices keen to write about Pakistan:

1. Must have mangoes.
2. Must have maids who serve mangoes.
3. Maids must have affairs with man servants who should occasionally steal mangoes.
4. Masters must lecture on history of mangoes and forgive the thieving servant.
5. Calls to prayer must be rendered to capture the mood of a nation disappointed by the failing crop of mangoes.
6. The mango flavour must linger for a few paragraphs.
7. And turn into a flashback to Partition.
8. Characters originating in rural areas must fight to prove that their mango is bigger than yours.
9. Fundamentalist mangoes must have more texture; secular mangoes should have artificial flavouring.
10. Mangoes that ripen in creative writing workshops must be rushed to the market before they go bad.

[Don't stop here. Do read the whole piece.]

Those of you who have been long-time SM followers will surely remember Manish’s Anatomy of a Genre from back in the day.

Here’s my question: If you were amending this list into an “How to write about India” or “How to write about Sri Lanka” or “How to write about Bangladesh” what would you change? What would you keep the same?

My mother became certified as a Billings Ovulation teacher. And her job was to go and teach this to women. … Part of the problem was that her Igbo wasn’t good enough to discuss people’s uterus. She needed an interpreter and mother decided to ask me to interpret for her. I was eight years old. So we would set off, the two of us, and I would have a backpack. … We would go door to door. Everything starts with a greeting … It would be followed by an apology from me because I was about to discuss something sacred, taboo.

These women would never discuss [their period] with their husbands and here’s this eight-year-old boy … [See full transcript.]

The image of a young boy accompanying his mother to strangers’ homes and acting as a middleman stayed with me for several days, and when I recently heard Marina Budhos reading from her new, terrific young adult novel Tell Us We’re Home, I was reminded of it again.

In Budhos’s novel, we meet three young girls, Jaya, Lola, and Maria, all immigrants, who find themselves in a different kind of countryside than Abani — American suburbia — where they act as their mothers’ interpreters and translators.

Their mothers are nannies and housekeepers in Meadowbrook, a picturesque New Jersey town off the commuter rail, and these girls are the invisible teens who help their parents navigate a new culture while struggling to find their own place within it. They go to school with the same kids whose families their mothers work for.

Jaya is West Indian, from Guyana. She assumes the responsibility to help absolve her mother of the accusation of a theft that in her employer’s home. Maria is Mexican. She accompanies her mother on job interviews and acts as a conduit for her employment searches. And Lola is a Slovakian self-appointed revolutionary whose mother is a housekeeper at her classmate’s home and whose father is a depressed former engineer. Each girl’s story–and the story of their friendship–allows us to peer into the hidden world of working class immigrants. Until they meet, each girl lives in a lonely bubble of invisibility, but chance brings them together and their friendship saves each of them in some way. Though they are outsiders, they are outsiders together.

I was a fan of Budhos’s first YA novel, Ask Me No Questions, and am glad that this book more than lived up to my expectations. Even if you’re not one of those keen readers drawn to nanny novels, there are a few good reasons to pick up this one.Reason 1: It’s a vivid and layered portrayal of contemporary suburban life. Budhos brings alive the town and many characters of Meadowbrook without making her narrative mucky or over-complicated.

Meadowbrook, New Jersey, looks like it’s right out of an old-time postcard. It has a big town hall, with huge columns and a neat border of red tulips. There’s a quaint little Main Street, its wrought-iron lampposts twined with evergreen sprigs at Christmas; a big green park, where the kids trace ice-skating loops on the frozen pond.

The town is nestled in a valley, and on one side is a steep incline that thrusts up into the ravine, where some of the expensive modern houses are perched like wood and glass boxes. On the other side the larger homes slowly give way to two-family houses and apartments on gritty Haley Avenue and to the big box stores of Route 12. More and more, shiny new condos have sprung up in the open gaps of land, a grove of pale brick McMansions standing where an old horse stable used to be.

Halfway up the hill, in the old section of town, is Mrs. Abigail Harmon’s house. It isn’t much of a house, as far as Meadowbrook houses go. More it’s a cottage, with a steep gabled roof and low exposed beams. The garden is a froth of eccentric tastes: pinwheels and tangled raspberry bushes, a crumbling slate wall and herb garden with chipped zigzagging paths. Mrs. Harmon inherited the place from her mother, who’d been born in the pink-wallpaper nursery, and whose grandfather once owned the hundred acres of farmland that makes up what is Meadowbrook today.

Around the time Mrs. Harmon was born, her family’s apple orchard was sold off to build the train station. Nowadays, when the early train draws up, a stream of women, mostly from the Caribbean or Latin America, step down in their rubber-soled shoes, cradling their Dunkin’ Donuts coffees, and make their way to the pretty clapboard houses. A few minutes later, up and down the streets, comes a chiming of voices, good-byes, slammed doors, cars backing down driveways, mothers and fathers rushing across town with their briefcases and still-wet hair to catch the next train to the city.

Reason 2: It’s timely. Budhos digs into class and ethnic dynamics that are quietly bubbling and brewing trouble in communities all over the country and informing the current immigration debate. One of the subplots is about the tensions between immigrants, including day laborers, and rooted, homogeneous communities who find themselves threatened.

” I’m Genine. …” Without asking, she slid into the chair opposite Maria. The girl was a study in black: worn messenger bag stretched across a faded black T-shirt with a silk screen image of Che Guevera … “So I heard about some stuff going down at the park. What’s up with your cousin and the other guys?”

“It’s … it’s not good,” Maria paused. “My cousin’s got a court date in a few weeks. And … he lost his job. He says it’s harassment.” …

“There’s a lot of talk in town. People are saying they should ban those guys who stand on the corner. Even crazy stuff. Ticket the soccer players if they don’t live here. Put a cap on how many renters there can be in town. Get rid of the ELL classes in the schools.”

A nauseous surge rolled through Maria. She hated this. More trouble.

Reason 3: It’s my one of my favorite kinds of love story–it depicts the complex and beautiful bond of friendship that can form between adolescent girls who are struggling to fit in (something that many of us can well identify with).

Being the daughter of a maid or nanny, it wasn’t like everyone was so bad or mean or stupid. It was just weird. You knew your mother put extra bleach in the underwear of some girl who was walking up the aisle at assembly in her best corduroy jumper dress. Or those shoes you wore were hand-me-downs from the kid in the grade above you, and you just prayed she didn’t notice. Or how you hated Monday mornings, when half the class came in sporting sweatshirts with big letters that said I ROCKED AT JONAH’S BAR MITZVAH! Which of course you were never invited to.

That’s why it was so amazing that the three girls found each other. It was a kind of miracle. … In the beginning they laughed hard, swapping stories and hurts, amazed there could be anyone else who understood. … The best part, though, was the bits of advice the three of them would share. Lying about what you were doing for spring break, or making up a story about scoliosis, which is why you couldn’t go on the school ski trip, which cost too much.

Before I give too much of the plot away, let me leave you with this video of Marina Budhos reflecting on her inspiration for this book.

On a personal note: As a part-time stay at home mom, I’ve been hanging out with a lot of nannies lately, whether it’s my own, or it’s those who take care of the children of friends of mine and their nanny friends. It makes me happy to see a book out there that is written with their experiences and point of view in mind.

Mehta is the owner and executive chef of Graffiti, a Lower East Side NYC restaurant that serves “international small plates that feature his trademark affinity for bold flavors and spices such as chillies, sambhar, turmeric, and star anise.” In cook off after cook off, Mehta–who trained as a pastry chef at the Culinary Institute of America, but who hails from a Parsi family in Bombay — has been impressing the judges with unusual and original dishes such as pickled ginger scallops, bitter melon fritters, and apple and soy caramel skewers. His preparations are like miniature paintings; each one a carefully choreographed mouthful of flavor.

Tonight at 9 PM EST is the season finale where Mehta will battle against the Philadelphia-based Chef Jose Garces. Two very qualified chefs from two ethnic backgrounds with rich culinary traditions; it’s bound to be a close match.

Below the fold is a brief Q&A with Chef Mehta, including his thoughts about reality TV, his take on a South Asian Thanksgiving, and his recipe for his favorite comfort food.

Will Mehta be the next Iron Chef? We’ll soon find out.Q. You’re from a family of accountants in Bombay, came to the US to attend CIA and have since made your mark as a pastry chef in various highly rated establishments, then opened your own restaurant Graffiti. What is it about cooking that appealed to you in the first place? Who was your first inspiration?
A. The health and medical properties of food always fascinated me as I had grown up that way. When I was young and had a cold, my grandfather made a concoction of one tablespoon of honey, lemon juice and brandy. This was the only medicine I was given. For a sore throat there was tea with ginger and lemongrass. Even when I fell and hurt myself, fresh turmeric was ground and applied as it is an antiseptic and has anti inflammatory properties. It was this that sparked my interest in the culinary field.

Q. Are you surprised you’ve made it this far on The Next Iron Chef?
A. No. I had gone with a positive attitude, but from what I have been told, some of my fellow contestants sure were.

*Q. How does your Indian background influence your approach to cooking? I’d love to hear your thoughts and comparisons about the culinary world in Bombay, your hometown, and New York. *
A. Growing up food at home on a daily basis was simple. A lot of it being Parsi Zorastrian style cooked. Yet my parents would go out of their way to expose my sister and me to different proteins. So I had partridges (now banned), rabbit legs, veal and various offals amongst other food. Also once a week they would take us out to dinner at a fine dining establishment. In college I discovered street food. However after coming to New York I was exposed to even more global cuisines. In New York one can eat out all the time and yet not cover all that the city has to offer.

Q. Your restaurant Graffiti serves an eclectic menu that has hints of Indian and Asian influences. How did you come up with the menu? Have you experienced resistance to your use of spices, herbs, flowers in your food? Or, is America ready for a new kind of food?
A. My style of cooking is personal and ingredient based. At Graffiti we explain each dish while serving mentioning the different tastes it will invoke. I guess the clients who visit Graffiti have done their research and are ones who are interested in experimenting with new flavors. They are very appreciative of the food and the dining experience and for me that is very satisfying.

Q. You have a reputation as a tough cookie, sometimes heartless on the current season of the Next Iron Chef. And yet, in the last episode, you prepared a five course meal which described your personality as “happy.” Does reality TV magnify one’s flaws in surprising ways?
A. That is one big downside of reality TV. Things are edited for drama. Comments are taken out of contest and time lines are exaggerated. However I have no control over this and therefore I just take it in my stride. I am a happy person and everyone who knows me including my guests know that too. That is all that matters.

Q. The dishes you have prepared on Iron Chef have been viewed as risky, excessive, and in the last episode, where you paired fish with flowers, one of your fellow contestants described your display as reminiscent of a funeral procession. Throughout it all, you’ve come across as poised and extremely self-confident, not seeming to care what other people think and doing what you like to do and feel you do best. What is that?
A. That is my philosophy. I want to win on my own strength. I am not affected by what others say or do. Nor will I ever run others down for I see no need to do that. When I am criticized I listen to what is being said and learn to better myself the next time. Yes I do take a lot of risks. Most are calculated risks but I am also ready to face the consequences of my actions. Sometimes when I take a risk I could fall but I also have the strength to get back on my feet.

Q. I enjoyed watching the Indian food cook off on The Next Iron Chef. What was that challenge like for you, given your familiarity with Indian food? More challenging? Frustrating? It seemed as though the judges held you up to a higher standard than the others.
A. Well I cannot speak for the judges. I am definitely familiar with Indian food and love it although I do not cook traditional Indian food. In terms of pressure, it was far less stressful than other challenges but it was also a double elimination and that was a constant threat. Thankfully it all went off well.

Q. You love sweets and desserts. That is obvious from the sweet items you’ve placed on your menus, your repeated use of the ice-cream machine on the show, your culinary experience with Candy Camp and your training as a pastry chef. What is it about desserts and you?
A. I worked as a pastry chef for over ten years. The ice-cream machine in the kitchen stadium was jinxed for me I guess. Unfortunately when sugar is not frozen it tastes even sweeter. Now when guests come into the restaurant they joke about it constantly when I serve ice-cream with the desserts.
* Q. What cooking ingredient have you recently discovered that most excites you?*
A. With nine and a half month old twins in the house, it’s just baby formula!

Q. What is your comfort food?
A. An easy to prepare dish called Thyme Roasted Potatoes. The recipe is here.

Q. The holidays are coming up, and with them, people start thinking about family and food. What are your personal favorite holiday foods? Why?
A. A traditional Zoroastrian dish called Than Dar Patio. Which is yellow lentil, white rice and a thick spicy tomato, onion gravy with shrimp. Its eaten on all auspicious days akin to holiday food here in the US. Other than that I like a traditional Christmas Pudding.

*Q. If you were making a meal for a South Asian Thanksgiving dinner, what would you include? *
A. I would use idli instead of corn bread. Dosas stuffed with potato and turkey.

Q. Pastry chef. Party planner. Cookbook author. Teacher. Reality show contestant. What’s next on your plate?
A. LOL waiting for a call for dancing with the stars!

Q. You write in your introduction that you wrote this book to “find whatever fragments remain here, to trace the shape of our past and learn how it shadows or illuminates our present.” Was there an experience, an event, or some defining moment when you knew that an interest of yours had to become 7 years of your working life?

A. Not at all, it was a slowly growing awareness that somewhere in the midst of my dozens of cousins spread over nine countries was an untold story. The vague ideas swirling in my brain about migration, family, and the new visibility of Indianness in popular culture crystallized when I took a book proposal class with Sam Freedman at Columbia University, who gave me amazing guidance and editing, and asked a lot of smart questions. As I shaped it into a narrative spanning a hundred years, I became more and more curious about how all this happened, and then the questions themselves shaped my journey.

I was also naive; I thought I could research the book in a year and write it in another year. If I had thought it would be a seven-year process, I might have gotten cold feet at the beginning.

The rest of the Q&A follows below the fold. You interviewed dozens of relatives in 5 continents, and narrowed down the story you would tell to eight. Were your choices shaped by the type of historical narrative you wanted to create?

A.The narrative was shaped by the compelling personal stories I heard as I interviewed more than 75 members of my extended, and also by my growing understanding of the arcs of history that shaped the diaspora. The book is roughly chronological, so I knew it would start in the past and come up to the present. After interviewing everybody, I made a kind of grid with the decades across the top, all the way from 1900 to 2000, and a list of countries down the lefthand side. Then I listed each person in his or her appropriate time/space box — very mathematical! And then I chose representative people, so that I could cover the temporal and geographic breadth that I needed in order to convey the epic scope of the narrative. I also wanted to have a range of male and female, different socioeconomic classes, etc., within my family, so that all got factored into the equation.

And most of all I chose people who were willing to be very open with me, who were able to share all or most of their own story, no holds barred, and who had a kind of emotional transparency that made it possible to convey them as meaningful “characters” on the page.

Q. Who is the reader you imagined while working on this project, which is obviously a labor of love?

A.I didn’t have a single imagined reader, but there was a lot of love. I thought often of myself as a young girl growing up in suburban Michigan, without any access to or understanding of the historical forces that had brought me there, and in a way I suppose I wrote the book for her as much as for anyone else. I also hoped the book would resonate with readers from many backgrounds, and I’m glad that it has been. People have told me that different parts of the book are “just like my family” even if their relatives came from Jamaica or Poland rather than India. Although I don’t believe there is a “universal” narrative, I know that stories of exile, displacement, migration, opportunity, hope, fear, starting over are common for all of us in this globalized world, so in that sense I was always imagining it as part of the stream of stories written and told by women of color.

Q. What were the challenges of collecting quantitative information about the Indian diaspora? (You had discussed your process at the Columbia reading and I think readers of this interview would find that fascinating, including the “diaspora” section on your website.)

A.I kept hoping to come across comprehensive data on the diaspora, and alas, there was none, so I had to create it. I became very fluent in using spreadsheets! Basically, anytime I found a list of numbers of Indians living overseas, I plugged it into a spreadsheet. The British kept pretty decent records, and there were a couple of independent reports, and then in 2001, as part of an attempt to attract Non-Resident Indian investment, the Indian government compiled a census. So after a while I had a series of columns that gave a numerical picture of the impressive growth of the diaspora over time. Often the names and borders of countries changed and so on, so it was quite a puzzle to compile, but also very satisfying to the left-brain part of me. And it really showed me the importance of our stories: In 1900, fewer than 400,000 people of Indian ancestry lived outside India, and today that figure is estimated at 19 million to 30 million. How did that happen? It’s an amazing tale.

I’ve also made the data available here on my website for other researchers, so that others don’t have to reinvent the wheel; I’m interested to see what applications and uses it might have.

You put yourself into this narrative toward the end. Was that a difficult choice to make or was it clear to you that this was a direction that was necessary to the book?

A.At first I resisted doing so. I didn’t want to make the book all about me; I wanted to respect the other stories and let them breathe on their own, without all having to be entirely filtered through or overshadowed by my own experience.

But everyone who read the book proposal was very clear that the story needed me in it, and that to leave myself out would be to create a gaping hole in the book. So once I reconciled myself to that need, I resolved to be as honest and clear as possible. My chapter, though it ended up being Chapter 8 in the book, was one of the first chapters I wrote, because I wanted to be sure I was approaching the other stories with integrity. I wanted to make myself be as naked as I was asking my family members to be.

What were your literary inspirations that influenced and shaped “Leaving India”?

A.I’ve always loved books and I’ve been reading for more than 30 years, so it’s very hard to say. But here are some of the specific books I looked at again and again while I was writing Leaving India, to see how the authors handled matters of craft with grace, clarity, and poignance:

Susan Griffin’s A Chorus of Stones

Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family

Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera

Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants

Cynthia Gorney’s Articles of Faith

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

I think of all of these writers as masters of the art of narrative nonfiction or semi-fiction, so they were helpful with this project, though of course there are many books in other genres that I love.

As a former newspaper reporter, how did your training as a journalist shape your writing process?

A.Daily journalism trains you to work fast, think fast, and move words around fast, without being too precious about your prose. In my newspaper career I was mostly an editor, which means that my job was almost entirely revision: fixing articles and sentences to make them clearer, tighter, and usually shorter. And I wrote a lot of transitions: A newspaper article is mostly transition sentences, with quotes and facts slipped in between. In writing the book, that meant that I worked through draft after draft after draft. I was never precious about my first drafts, I was always willing to revise, which I think served me well. People have said they are enjoying the layered quality of the narrative, and I think that’s due to two things: First, the fact that I wrote multiple drafts which allowed me to layer ideas and stories on top of one another, and second, the transition sentences that enable the narrative to leap from one idea or place or scene to the next.

Your book is divided into three sections: coolies, subjects, and citizens. Do you see this as the evolution of diaspora, and if so, what do you imagine the next stage might be?

A.It’s a very rough sketch, yes, of the evolution of diaspora, though it’s important to note that there are exceptions: Even today, for example, Indian laborers are treated much like the “coolies” of old in places like Kuwait. I think the next stage depends on us. Indians in diaspora always stand at a kind of crossroads and there are multiple possible directions: assimilate into white society (Bobby Jindal), lead progressive panracial causes (Vanita Gupta), return to India to have an impact there (Shashi Tharoor) … and those are just examples from the political sphere, not even looking at cultural production and the business world and other spheres of activity. So maybe it will be all of these, and things we haven’t imagined yet. I don’t think there is one word for what we are becoming.

What were some of the key discoveries you made during the writing of this book? Things that surprised you? Things that challenged how you used to think?

A.The #1 thing I gained was a deep understanding of how amazing and difficult it is to be a migrant — even when it’s by choice and when it’s accompanied by some class or educational privilege. I really gained a new respect for what my parents and other members of my family, and even myself as a small child, went through in remaking our lives again and again in new places. Opportunity, trauma, excitement, dread — it’s such a rollercoaster of emotions and situations we’ve all navigated. Placing myself, as a writer, in the traveling shoes of my kinsmen and kinswomen over and over for seven years gave me a sense of reliving those experiences in a way that I never would have entered as deeply otherwise.

The ICC is run by Geetika Khanna, a former psychologist and graduate of the French Culinary Institute who has been charting a path in the food industry for the past 10+ years. I really felt like I was walking into another world when I rang the buzzer of 131 W. 23rd St., which turned out to be the Chelsea Inn, a cosy bed and breakfast whose ground floor industrial kitchen turned out to be the cooking school of the now-defunct culinary arts program of The New School, where it turns out, Khanna used to be an instructor.

On this particular Tuesday night, nine of us had signed up to spend the evening learning how to cook with Khanna, a tall, relaxed, and skilled instructor who weaves anecdotes about her family in with technique tips and practical approaches on how to make Indian cooking a part of your culinary repertoire, instead of something exotic and inaccessible. For those like me, who generally cook at least one or two Indian meals a week, it was the practical tips like how to clean your spice grinder — run a piece of bread through it — and the ease and humor with which Khanna made cooking a six-course meal seem doable (from scratch, using mostly fresh ingredients) that was the tipping point. Plus, I enjoyed her running commentary on colonialism, the evolution of the Indian “curry,” and the Food Network –and she gave me the courage to fry my first pooris, a big deal for a gal who has always had a fear of deep frying. There were also a few surprises along the way, like the fact that she uses cayenne pepper in her masala dhaba. [Click on the narrated slideshow above for a walk-through of the class and a look at our full menu.]

The three and a half hour class cost $55, and was followed by a delicious six-course meal. A pretty good deal for an evening out in NYC where you’re learning, eating, and meeting a bunch of interesting people. (Other NYC cooking classes range from $100 to $200 per person).

At present, Khanna offers classes every month, and has plans to invite other chefs of Indian cuisine to teach at the ICC. With all the regional variations of Indian food (Indian Chinese, West Indian, and Indo-French, as well as the wealth of Indian chefs in the New York area, I’m sure there are many more yummy lessons and treats to return to at the ICC. I’ll definitely be going back.

Oh, and if anyone is interested in interning with Khanna, she’s looking. Drop her a line.

While playing golf in Buenos Aires recently, R. Viswanathan, the Indian ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, had an interesting experience: the Argentinian players asked him where they could buy a turban and how to wear it. When the ambassador probed the reason for their interest, they pointed to a home within the country club complex and said:

‘Here lives an Indian maharaja. He looks handsome with his turban. When he goes to the night clubs, he gets premium service and gets it free because they think he is a maharaja.’

When Viswanathan tried to explain that turbans do not equal maharaja status, the Argentinians asked him to shut up and not reveal this secret at the night clubs.

Turns out the “maharaja” they were speaking of is Simmarpal Singh, the “peanut prince of Argentina,” an employee of Olam, a 5.6 – billion dollar NRI company and a leading global supply chain manager of agricultural products and food ingredients!

Singh cultivates 12,000 hectares of peanut farms and another 5000 hectares of soya and corn in Rio Cuarto area in Cordoba province, about one thousand kms from Buenos Aires. His target is to take his company Olam among Argentina´s top three peanut players in the next few years. When he came to Argentina in 2005, his company was 28th in ranking in peanuts and he has already made it as sixth this year.

Viswanathan’s story, which profiles Singh’s work, ran in various Indian papers, including the Hindustan Times Punjab and The Asian Age, this past week. It examines the farming industry in Argentina and its potential to assist agriculture in India which is going to face shortage of land and water in coming years. Read it in full here.

Below the fold is a listing of a few of the South Asia-related events coming up over the next fortnight. Don’t let your exploration stop there. There’s tons more on the calendar worth checking out.

But first, I want to tell you about a book that I’ve been reading which ties in well to the theme of this festival: Kavitha Rajagopalan’s Muslims of Metropolis which was published by Rutgers University Press late last year.

Muslims of Metropolis is a sensitive and thoughtful examination of international migration and the social construct of identity. Rajagopalan spent nearly 7 years researching and writing her first book which tells the stories of the journeys of three families from majority-Muslim countries to three major Western metropolises. In London, she follows a Palestinian man from Jerusalem and his Syrian wife. In Berlin, a Turkish Kurdish community. And, in post 9/11 New York, and a Bangladeshi man and his daughter who married an undocumented Pakistani man.

As Rajagopalan puts it in her introduction:

These families come from different socioeconomic, political, and ethnic backgrounds, but they are all Muslim. It should be noted, however, that this is not a book on theology or Islamic history. Although the stories in this book will refer to the ways in which characters relate to Islam as they construct their identities, cope with adversity, or understand their roles in the world, this is not ultimately a book about Muslims but about immigrants … I have chosen to write about Muslim immigrants because I believe that the social identity of Muslim immigrants stands under the greatest pressure of misunderstanding and mistrust throughout the world.

Over the past several months, Rajagopalan has been touring the country doing multimedia presentations and readings from her book. I attended one reading right here in NYC and was struck by her ability to weave together multiple human narratives with solid research in a manner that was penetrating and insightful, at once literary, journalistic, and accessibly academic.When I met Rajagopalan recently, I asked her whether she had felt slack from any sectors of the non-Muslim communities for writing this book. “Do Hindus ask you why you would choose to write about Muslims?” I asked. A grandchild of partition, I am well aware of the bruises and cuts that sadly still exist among our communities.

“Yes,” was her answer. “There is an expectation among South Asians that we should only write about our own identities; this pressure to be an ambassador instead of a person interested in examining and understanding society and being capable of empathy,” she said.

Kudos to her for breaking those barriers. Indeed, though she’s tackling complicated and specific themes, Rajagopalan’s writing and the structure of the book yield a book that offers insight into the personal experiences and emotional lives of three real families and on a larger level, the universal immigrant experience. Hindu or Muslim, Indian or Bangladeshi or Senegalese, we’re not all so different after all.

If I were one of the conference organizers, I would have certainly featured this work prominently in this month’s Muslim Voices Festival. Never mind. Here are some of the other Muslim Voices Festival South Asia related events:

“Women, Art and Islam”: This exhibit opens on June 5th at the Museum for African Art. It features five female artists whose major connection is their personal relationship with Islam. Among the artists featured are Fariba Alam (Pakistan) and Mahwish Chisty (Bangladesh). On sale at the opening will Kavitha Rajagopalan’s Muslims of Metropolis.

Dastangoi: The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Magic, sorcery, warriors, and tricksters come together in a theater production of poetry and acting about the trials and triumphs of the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle Amir Hamza. with Naseeruddin Shah

Qawwali Gospel Creation: Pakistani singer Faiz Ali Faiz and his ensemble join forces with African American gospel music through pianist/singer Craig Adams and the Voices of New Orleans.

The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, A Torch For Peace: Documentary about Muslim peacemaker Badshah Khan who managed to raise a nonviolent army of 100,000 men, women, and youngsters as he struggled for India’s independence alongside Gandhi.

Muslim Voices at BAMcafé: Spotlight on the Brooklyn-based zerobridge, whose lead singer Mubashir “Din” Mohi-ud-Din is Kashmiri-American

At the heart of this story is the chaotic household of Rakesh Ahuja, a hard of hearing, America returned engineer who holds a prestigious position as New Delhi’s Minister of Urban Development. Apart from the bureaucratic and political challenges that face him at work (he’s in charge of a laborious flyover construction project and part of a political party that sponsors intolerable bills such as the Diversity of the Motherland Act which calls for the compulsory registration of all Muslims “for reasons of diversity and national security”), Rakesh is beset by his own personal dramas at home.

The father of 13 children (and one more en route), he must deal with the trauma of having had his teenage son Arjun walk in on him having sex with his wife in the baby nursery. Understandably, Arjun asks, “Papa, I don’t understand–why do you and Mama keep having babies?”

While he has to figure out a way to explain himself to his son (“Obviously, Mr. Ahuja couldn’t tell his son that he was only attracted to Mrs. Ahuja when she was pregnant” reads the first line of the novel), this is not the only secret Mr. Ahuja has been keeping from his son, master babysitter and eldest of 12 younger siblings and darling of his mother, Mrs. Ahuja, an unattractive woman whose days are spent changing diapers, managing her vast household, knitting, and recovering from the loss of her favorite TV character Mohan Bedi from Zee-TV soap opera, “The Vengeful Daughter-in-Law.” There’s also the bit of information about Rakesh’s first wife, Arjun’s mother, who suffered a tragic death and who continues to haunt his unhappy existence. Meanwhile there’s Arjun, an awkward teen so madly in love with Aarti, a Catholic school beauty who rides the morning bus with him that he’ll do anything to get her attention–even start a rock band with a bunch of classmates.

Yes, there’s a great deal happening in Mahajan’s novel; many competing heartbreaks and dramas. And yet, as a reader, I was pulled in just as much by Mahajan’s observant and sensitive eye as I was by his ability to create satirical scenarios that reflect some of the complexities and paradoxes of social and political life in today’s India.

Read the rest of this review and a Q&A with Mahajan, whose sense of humor is as refreshing in the interview format as it is in his prose, below the fold. None of the Ahuja family’s plans go quite right during the course of this tale. When Minister Ahuja writes his resignation letter to protest the “Diversity of the Motherland Act,” he expects to be supplicated to stay in his position. Quite the opposite. He discovers that his authority means little in a system wrought with personal power struggles. As for Arjun, his rock band has its own set of challenges, not the least of which is the fact that none of its members can really carry a tune. And, Mrs. Ahuja watches as her eldest son assumes the persona of a “stepson” and distances himself from the rest of the family.

If you’re in the midst of stocking your summer bookshelves (or perhaps are looking for something to read during the ongoing Indian elections?) and want a book that manages to be both humorous and insightful, “Family Planning” may well be for you. While offering us a charming comic tale of crossed wires and family drama, Mahajan simultaneously (and subtly) examines the theme of power — the power that is wielded in the outside world versus what is wielded at home; the power parents wield against children versus what children wield against parents; and the power politicians wield against citizens versus the power wielded by politicians against their very own.

Q&A with Karan Mahajan

Q. You describe the experience of discovering a school of Indian authors once you came to college in the US and describe your childhood reading as a “fairly standard colonial diet of Enid Blytons, P.G. Wodehouses, and Agatha Cristies.” What was it like to come upon novels by Indian voices when you did? How did that shape or inspire you as a writer?

I only began reading Indian writers after I went to the US for college, and my approach to them was very argumentative: I saw in their way of relating to western readers–whether through cultural exposition, exoticism, Indian-isms, or a complete denial of the issue of audience altogether–strains of my own (initial) discomfort about being a foreigner in the US. Which is why it was thrilling to read Rushdie, Narayan, and Naipaul in close succession. These writers had solved the problem of audience by being utterly singular, and pouring their self-consciousness into style and story, and the lessons I learned from them are invaluable. I read them now as I did then because they are brilliant writers, not because they have Indian surnames.

Q. Would you describe the literary scene in India today as different than what you were exposed to during your childhood? What are your observations about your generation of Indian writers?

Great question. There are just so many Indian writers in English now. It drives me crazy. I want to be special again.

But in all seriousness, Indian writing in English is much more of a homegrown phenomenon than it was in the past, and this means that we’re going to see fresh writing come out of the provinces in addition to the metropolises. Many of these writers will be writing for an Indian audience, and this will mean that they can be far more topical and contextual in their subject matter. But I can’t make any guesses about the quality or universality of these books.

Q. The novel is about the English-speaking middle class (of which you are a part), but from what I understand you have no connection to political life. What were the opportunities and challenges of writing a novel about a political figure, set in a subculture of which you were not a part?

The main challenge was being authentic about the milieu without being constrained by reality. I find among Indian writers and editors a complete mania for authenticity: they’d rather describe with painful exactitude a religious ritual or the passage of a Parliamentary bill rather than alter details to suit their story, and I wanted to know enough about politics to take liberties with it. So I took the usual steps: I researched, I interviewed, I eavesdropped, I Googled, and then I threw it all away and did exactly what I pleased. I write fiction, not documentary, and I want to keep the world safe for fabricators.

Q. American educated, Indian returned administrative official and politicians like Rakesh Ahuja are rare, are they not? Do you know any?

I wish I knew some! But a lot of politicians—Nehru, Manmohan Singh, even the aspiring Shashi Tharoor—have had stints abroad and there’s the recent trend of IIT graduates starting their own idealistic political parties, and so the idea of the America-returned political animal didn’t seem totally implausible. That was my point from the outset: to insert a man with the qualifications of a Rajiv-Gandhi-crony into present-day Parliament, and to see how he’d use his “outsider” status effectively, or, as in the case, of Mr. Ahuja, ineffectively, by descending into hubris and trying to impose an upper-middle-class idea of order on a crazed city.

Q. The book, you say, “began with the question: what in the world would prompt a middle-class couple in contemporary, urban India to have a large family?” Though you were aiming not to perpetrate stereotypes, isn’t the stereotype of the large Indian family and lack of family planning in India is one that exists in the West?

I’d disagree that it’s a stereotype, but even if it is one, I go to great lengths to paint the family as unique in its strangeness and dysfunction.

Q. Writing about sex and sexual dysfunction: Was that something you consciously set out to do? What do you anticipate the response will be to these themes in India when your book is published there? Were editors in India open or skeptical?

It’s difficult to say, but I do think people will have a hard time with the book, and many will dismiss it as unsavory. Uncles and aunties will talk about me behind my back, and say, “Look what happens when you people send your children to US.” Offers of arranged marriage will be withdrawn. My mother and father, ever supportive, will be mercilessly interrogated. Eventually I hope there will be book-burnings.

There are things about my book, looking back, that I would perhaps do differently–I started writing it when I was twenty–but the sexual content is not one of those things. I am drawn to writing about the private lives of individuals; I want to burst through their doors and into their bedrooms. And that desire is enhanced by the fact that there is almost no serious discourse about sex or sexual dysfunction or gender dynamics in middle-class Indian media, and that books, written by individuals, free from the snarl of commerce or committees, allow us to say things that TV or film simply cannot.

Whether anyone wants to hear these things is another matter.

One of the offerings from the bilingual publisher Little GuruSkool, “Animals” is what I’d call a Desi equivalent of the immensely popular Baby Einstein series. Combining video footage of the natural world with animated characters, adorable little puppets and Desi babies, and catchy music, it promises to help the diasporic subcontinental parent “introduce their children to the Indian culture in a fun and interactive way.”

Little GuruSkool is a relatively new company, based in Chicago and founded by Pooja Pittie Goel, the mother of a preschooler who “wanted to expose her son to Indian languages, music, art and nature at an early age, but could not find any books or DVDs in the market (either in the US or in India) that were appropriate for pre-schoolers – educational and entertaining at the same time.” When she couldn’t find what she needed in the market place, she decided to create the products (DVDs, audio CDs, and illustrated, high quality board books) herself. The production quality is impressive, and after I finished watching the “Animals” DVD, I couldn’t get the song about “choti choti machliya” (little, tiny fish) out of my head.

If you’re in the market for a gift for that little desi toddler in your life, Little GuruSkool’s line is sure to be a happy discovery for you. It’s a welcome addition to the current offerings of bilingual, multimedia educational lines such as Sonali Herrera’s Meera Masi, Monika Jain’s Kahani, Rashmi Turner’s Global Wonders, and Kavita (Shah) Bafana’s Little Ustaads (Indian classical music classes), all created by moms to fill existing gaps in the Desi educational marketplace. (I certainly did not have any of these options when I was a toddler, and am glad to know my little one will!)

Below the fold: a brief interview with Pooja Pittie Goel for those interested in her story and process. Q. You started a media company without any prior media experience, or at least, so it seems. What was the most challenging part about this and what was the best part (about being new to the industry)?

A. It’s true that I do not have any prior experience in the media industry. But as an Indian mother living abroad, I had a clear vision of what I wanted my son to know about India and its culture. Because I was new to the industry, there was a definite learning curve while producing the videos and books. It was challenging to direct the film production team without the credibility of experience, but the clear vision of what the end result should look like, guided me. I was involved in every aspect of production of the videos and I enjoyed learning hands-on about the production process.

I have created the illustrations for the books myself – I am an amateur painter and this is a great creative outlet for me! Being new to the industry helped me approach production in a fresh way. Since Little GuruSkool videos and books are unique in their category, I think my inexperience worked in my favor!

Q. What products (books, TV shows, DVDs, music) both here and in India shaped your vision of the products that Little GuruSkool would develop?

A. I think we have many products in the US for preschool children that are interactive & fun while being educational. I admire Disney’s Baby Einstein range of products – they are brilliant! Since similar products don’t really exist for this age group in India, I drew inspiration from my childhood memories in India while developing Little GuruSkool. Everyday objects, colors, music and nature that represent India to me – things that I want my son to be aware of and relate to – they inspire me.

I like to think that Little GuruSkool books and DVDs provide a good balance of Indian and American culture – the same balance that I would like my son to have. The material isn’t too “ethnic” – the color sensibility & illustration is quite modern.

Q. The name Little GuruSkool gives the impression that these are books and DVDs about culture and religion, but my impression was that it’s quite different. Do you agree?

A. I do not wish to promote any particular religion through my products. The word “GuruSkool” is a play on “Gurukul” which, as you know, was the ancient center of learning for young Indian children. My vision is to create a cultural gurukul for parents around the world where their children can learn about all the aspects of Indian culture that make it so interesting and unique.

The products cover educational topics like colors, numbers, animals etc mixed with cultural topics like festivals and musical instruments.

Q. How would you compare your products to those created by companies such as Meera Masi and the India-based Tullika which publishes bilingual books?

A. Little GuruSkool is focused on the preschool age group and provides a more balanced view of Indian culture so that children living abroad can find it easier to relate to – the colors, content and music are not very “ethnic”. The board books contain the same characters, words and objects that are used in the DVDs but they can also be used as stand-alone interactive tools by parents. The DVDs feature playful Indian children, live footage of Indian scenes, everyday Indian objects – they are educational and designed to hold the attention of 1-5 year olds! My products are bilingual (English and Hindi) and I plan to introduce other Indian languages as well. The music CD contains originally composed songs with Hindi lyrics for young children.

Q. What’s next on Little GuruSkool’s plate and your agenda? Are you looking to expand the line by bringing in new writers and illustrators or animators, including those based in the US?

A. Little GuruSkool has a full plate with two new releases planned soon (Numbers 1 to 10 and Festivals of India). I plan to add more languages, more titles and more products like flashcards, toys etc. I am looking at parents out there to give me ideas and suggestions – so they can contact me directly at pooja.goel@littleguruskool.com with any feedback that they might have.

While I already have a production team based in India, I am open to ideas from writers and illustrators based in the US as well.

Q. What surprised you about the response to Little GuruSkool here and in India? Have you discovered a market that you didn’t realize existed?

A. Since Little GuruSkool was born out of a strong personal need, I am glad to find validation of my belief that there is a market for products like this. The response to my products has been thrilling. Parent are often surprised to find that there is something that can make it a little easier for them to raise their children so far away from India while maintaining some basic cultural values!

Q. Much of your production is done in India. How often do you find yourself going back there? And, how do you navigate the demands of both worlds?

A. Before I launched Little GuruSkool in November last year, I traveled to India about 7 times in 14 months to produce the videos and books. Now the travel is less frequent but I expect to go back about 3-4 times a year to continue expanding the product line and introducing fresh content. I enjoy traveling and although it can be demanding, I am lucky to work in a business that takes me back to India and to my family often!

I’ve often thought about this story. There are so many more like it — incidents of mistaken identities, faulty detentions, stereotyping, and violent acts in the wake of September 11th. We’ve read about them in the press and slowly, literature is beginning to tackle this dark period of recent American history as well; a time that unfolded in what Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic artist, Art Spiegelman, described so aptly as “in the shadow of no towers.”

A few years ago, Ask Me No Questions by Marina Budhos was one of the first young adult offerings to address the challenge of growing up South Asian and Muslim in an America altered by 9/11. First time novelist Nisha Meminger takes on a similar theme in her new YA novel Shine, Coconut Moon, just published by Simon & Schuster.

When her turbaned uncle appears at the doorstep of her suburban NJ home just four days after the 9/11 attacks, 16 year old Samar is caught off guard. Raised in a single-parent household by an Indian-American mother who cut off ties with her Sikh family many years before, Samar has no connection to her cultural roots and traditions. She is skeptical of this man, Uncle Sandeep, who claims to want to reconnect with his estranged sister because “we’re living in different times now … and I want to be close to the ones I love. The world is in turmoil–we’re at war. Anything could happen at any moment.”

As Samar gets to know her uncle, she begins to learn about Sikhism and gets to know her grandparents. She even visits a gurdwara for the first time in her life. This prompts her to start questioning her mother’s decision to raise her to think of herself “like everyone else.” She begins to question her identity; wondering whether she is a coconut — someone who is brown on the outside and white on the inside–someone who may physically appear to be Indian but doesn’t know who she really is. At the same time, she is shocked and saddened by a series of troubling events in her community that affect her personally: her uncle is attacked by a bunch of teenage boys who goad him to “Go back home, Osama!” and the local gurdwara is set on fire.

In his compelling Guardian article “The End of Innocence” Pankaj Mishra writes, “‘Post-9/11′ fiction often seems to use the attacks and their aftermath too cheaply, as background for books that would have been written anyway.” Shine, Coconut Moon does not fall into this category. Most definitively shaped by the effect of 9/11 on minority immigrant communities, this is an ambitious coming of age novel for young adults that seeks to demonstrate the effects of fear mongering on the lives of ordinary minority teens who saw themselves as American before 9/11.

Below the fold is an excerpt from the novel, as well as a Q&A with, Neesha Meminger where she talks about her novel writing process and the real-life incidents that inspired it. And, for those in the NYC area, there is a book launch party and reading this Saturday, March 14th at 7 pm at Bluestockings Bookstore. EXCERPT

Shine, Coconut Moon tackles the complicated subject of minority groups defending and distinguishing themselves from the “terrorists” after 9/11. In this particularly poignant scene, Samar finds herself engaged in a conversation with a Sikh student and a Muslim student at her school:

Balvir’s words pour out, like a faucet suddenly turning on. “Sammy, I was just telling Shazia that the temple I go to with my family was set on fire yesterday.” … Her face is tight. “I wasn’t there, but my grandmother was. She said a window was smashed and a burning ball came flying through. It hit the drapes and they burned straight up to the ceiling.”

Shazia shakes her head. “I’m so sorry, Balvir. It’s amazing that whenever there’s social or political unrest, it’s the churches, synagogues, and temples that get targeted first.”

“But why?” I whisper. “Why those places?”

She sighs and shakes her head again. “I don’t know. …”

Balvir continues as if she hasn’t heard a word. “What’s wrong with people?” she demands, her eyes becoming teary. “Sikhs are not Muslims!” She turns quickly to Shazia and says, “No offense.”

Then she continues, spitting words like a machine gun. “Sikhism has only been around for the last five centuries, with over twenty million followers in the world! It has nothing to do with Islam.” She wraps her arms around her bent knees …

After a lengthy pause, Shazia clears her throat. “Balvir, you want to distinguish between Sikhs and Muslims because of .. what? Do you think that the violence will be less if you do?” … Shazia shifts uneasily but continues. “Please don’t be upset by my saying this, but if you think your family is targeted, imagine my brothers Khalel and Ahmed.”

Q & A with Neesha Meminger

Q. How much of this story is semi-autobiographical (sans the 9/11 connection, of course)?

Some parts of SHINE are, indeed, semi-autobiographical. For the parts that are not, I drew upon personal experience to flesh them out and lend them authenticity. The experiences with racism are certainly based on my own clashes as a teen and child as well as those of friends and relatives.

I try to write everything based on Truth as I know it — to get as close to that tiny glowing ember of Truth that is at the center of everything, and use it to guide me through my scenes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But I think readers can tell when that nugget isn’t there. So each of my characters has a bit of me in them; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t breathe on the page.

Q. This is a novel much prompted by the events following 9/11. Was it difficult to write? Did you purposely start out wanting to write a book with this theme, or did you find that a coming of age novel shifted its focus as events started unfolding?

This novel definitely did not start out with a 9/11 theme. It originally was an epic about the relationship between Punjabi, Sikh mothers and daughters weathering the rifts and chasms of migration — both geographical and emotional. But as I wrote and delved deeper into the story I really wanted to tell, the 9/11 theme kept simmering to the surface in the oddest of ways.

I kept having flashbacks to Canada, where I grew up in the early 1970s, when there was a huge backlash against the wave of South Asian immigrants. Then Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, had flung wide the doors of immigration to India and Pakistan and people poured into the the major Canadian cities looking for work. The backlash, of course, was because these new immigrants were taking jobs away from “real” Canadians, and not only that — they couldn’t even speak English.

I was very young then, but scenes from those days have obviously been seared into my memory. The burning gurdwara scene is one from real life. The gurdwara next door to us was set on fire with the words “Pakis Go Home” painted on the sides of the building. A Sikh man was hung from a lamp post with his own turban. Turbaned men were clear targets and beatings were regular occurrences. I remember at least two incidents where South Asians in the apartment building where we lived threw their children out of their balconies and leapt to their own deaths behind them. It was a time of despair, alienation, isolation, and fear. This is a part of history that doesn’t often get exposure in mainstream Canadian media, but it is alive and kicking in the memories of a whole generation of South Asians.

I drew upon those experiences and that time of backlash and hostility as I wrote about the 9/11 experience in the novel. During the 70s, we were all busy trying to make the distinction that we were from India and not Pakistan, or Sri Lanka and not Pakistan and we were, therefore, not Pakis. And those of us who were from Pakistan were busy inventing stories about where our families were really from. It was an immediate response not only to the ignorance around us, but to our fear as well.

During the 9/11 backlash, everyone was busy proclaiming “I am an American!” and American flags were draped around every single South Asian, Middle Eastern, and African shop window. Sikh websites went into “educate” mode, showing what the difference was between Sikhs and Muslims and that Sikhs were not Muslims — again making that distinction that I remember trying to make all those years ago as a child. As if any bat-wielding ignoramus full of rage and hostility would even care, or would pause for a moment to consider, “Oh, crap; I think I have the wrong brown person!” But it’s a natural reaction to living in a brutal or hostile environment. There’s the hope that disassociating yourself from the object of hatred is going to offer some sort of protection.

That same fear that I grew up with was palpable once again after 9/11, and I realized how very rooted SHINE was in that experience.

Q. I don’t know of any other YA books with Sikh protagonists. Do you? Was that part of your impetus in writing this book – to fill a gap?

I know Shauna Singh Baldwin has written beautifully about the Sikh experience during Partition in What The Body Remembers, but I’m not aware of any YA novels with Sikh protagonists. Would love it if there was. I wasn’t really thinking about filling gaps when I was writing, honestly. I wrote about the Sikh experience because it’s what I know; I wanted to tell this particular story and I couldn’t move on to any others until this one was out of me.

Q. Samar’s mother raises her without any knowledge of her religion – not ever taking her to a gurudwara or telling her about the ten gurus. Why did you choose to have your protagonist’s lack of knowledge about her cultural traditions imposed upon her rather than something she was averse to?

That was definitely a conscious choice. I think children rebel against the things that don’t make sense to them, if only to explore the “other side” — what has been kept from them, or hidden. If religion is thrust upon them and is a stifling experience, it would make sense for them to rebel. If anti-religion is thrust upon them, the same thing is true I would imagine. A lesbian friend of mine raised her daughter to be critical and wary of religion, taught her to redefine “family,” and created a very left wing, progressive environment for her children. Her daughter grew up to become a Jehovah’s Witness, had a child early, and began zealously converting “the Gays.”

In SHINE, Samar’s mother rebels against the religion she was raised in, only to have her own daughter rebel against the “anti-religion” she embraced instead. I loved that twist, and the idea that, as parents, we often think we have the answers — only to have those answers unravel into a million new questions.

Q. Uncle Sandeep and his sister (Samar’s mother) were both raised in the US. This, to me, represents a shift from other South Asian YA books which always depict culture clashes between generations of parents and children, where parents are immigrants. I’m curious about your thinking on this.

This was also a very conscious decision. I have cousins and nieces and nephews (not to mention my own children) who are growing up with parents like me — people who grew up here in the west. We have a very different experience than our parents. Some of us are in mixed marriages, some are single parents, some of us are redefining marriage entirely, and we are now raising our own children. I was born in India, but my experiences are deeply rooted in the adjustment. My parents were completely informed by their experiences in India. So I wanted to write a novel for the children of the children of immigrants — the next generation, so to speak.

At the same time, I also wanted to speak to the experience of these parents who are trying so hard to help their kids assimilate (so as to avoid the kind of racism OUTSIDE the home and strict controls INSIDE the home that they, themselves, might have experienced) — well intentioned folks who know the pain of not fitting in and getting wedgies and bullying (or worse), only to go home to expectations of straight As and a certain level of perfection. Though, clearly, the assimilation route has pitfalls of its own.

Q. What was the toughest part of this writing process? Tell us about your path to publication.

The toughest part of this process was getting the durn thing published! LOL. Seriously — I think I am too thin-skinned for this part of the process and have had to develop a far thicker skin in response to the feedback I received from agents and editors as I sent SHINE around.

But it was a great process and one that strengthened me as a writer and as a person, overall. The hardest part is finding an agent and editor who not only “get” your story, but are not afraid to champion it amongst their colleagues and peers.