#author south asian

[thebookbin]

The Spear Cuts Through Water

Simon Jimenez

Publisher: Del Rey Genre: fantasy Year: 2022

Do you ever pick up a book for casual reading, and then get hit directly in the face with the rawness of the human experience? It was just supposed to be a casual read, and now you're contemplating the entirety of the human condition?

The Spear Cuts Through Water is one of the best books I've ever read. It might even be the best. I don't even know right now, I need a minute to collect my thoughts.

What makes this book so great is not only what it's about, but how it's told. The book is almost epistolary in nature, but instead of written letters, it's framed by stories. You embody the narrator, as he is told grand stories about the Old Country by his sharp-tounged lola. When I say embody, I mean this framing is written in the second person. You are the narrator, and he is the immigrant son of a merchant with nine brothers and a grandjo that never dies. As you grow up, and listen to these stories and sometimes tell them yourself, you are invited to the Inverted Theater in your dreams, a place your lola spoke of so wistfully. A place where stories are told, time is fluid, and the dream-selves from everywhere and everywhen commune. As you sit to watch the tale unfold, the five-day odyssey across the Old Country, you do so in the company of thousands of other dreamers.

This book is not written in chapters, but is instead separated into the Five Days of the journey, as well as a Before and After section. But because it is also framed as a story being watched on a stage told by spirits, the spirits are a part of the story. When a character dies, usually their spirit will comment on their thoughts in their last moments—sometimes profound, painful, sometimes mundane. But you never really forget this is a story you are watching from the Inverted Theater, even as you become absorbed in the tale. It adds such an ethereal quality to the story, to hear the thoughts of the spirits about their lives as the story goes on... it's unreal. You really start to feel like you are in the Inverted Theater.

As far as main characters go, I really loved both Jun and Keema, although I will admit Keema was my favorite. Both men are complicated, flawed, even contradictory at times, but oh-so-compelling to read. Their relationship to the world and to each other was so profound to watch unravel. Keema, with his missing arm, branded as a man of poor fortune discriminated against his whole life, is the last of his people. Jun, son of the Prince, has committed untold horrors in the name of the Moon Throne, has had his eyes opened to the error of his ways by the Moon Herself. Together, they must help the escaped empress reclaim Her place in the sky.

As a staunch believer in populism, I really enjoyed Jimenez's perspective on religion and monarchy. Although this is a fantastical tale, it isn't necessarily religious. It takes the form of the familial stories that get passed down for generations. And yet the criticism is integral to the story. Even the "good" gods are harmful in all their actions. It's critical of power in all it's forms, and I enjoyed this, as most fantasy revolves around installing the "true king" or worshipping the "benevolent god" but Jiminez's narrative is focused on the People as a collective, and their wellbeing, and this I appreciated.

This book is very close to indescribable, and honestly, I could probably keep trying forever. But just know, you should read this book. It is just that fucking good.

storygraph | bookshop.org | local houston

★★★★★ holy fuck what did I just read I need a minute to compose myself stars

[higherentity]

[inkcurlsandknives]

Working on a new short story. A sapphic retelling of a Filipino myth about dugong. Been dreaming of the Pacific and the sensation of floating on the surf, limbs tangling in seagrass. Kisses under coconut palms, swimming in the moonlight, the sound of the surf a lover's whisper

[inkliinng]

Currently reading. (Amongst many others.)

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Bapsi Sidhwa

Bapsi Sidhwa was born in 1938 in what is now Karachi, Pakistan. Sidhwa is best known for her 1988 novel, Cracking India (also known as Ice Candy Man), which drew on her experiences as a child in Lahore during the 1947 partition of India. The novel brought her international fame, and is regarded as an essential book on the Indian partition. Sidhwa, who emigrated to the US in 1983, has also written about American culture and the immigrant experience, such as in her novel An American Brat. She has won several awards, including the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan's highest honor in the arts. Sidhwa's other honors include the David Higham Award and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award.

[hussyknee]

Litmus test for a believable brown immigrant OC: what is their family WhatsApp group like? If they're not in one, what was the political fallout of them leaving?

[demigod-of-the-agni]

While I believe that everyone can write what they want, I think people should really take a step back before posting the stuff that they write. Because lads, the Pavitr tag is filled with the most questionable things I have ever seen. Even after filtering out most of the bothersome things, I still come across fics that are absolutely DRIPPING with racism and feminisation, and sometimes even misogyny and casteism??

I know most of the time it's unintentional, it's just a sentence or two, but by god, there are hundreds of these fics. hundreds. I and others like myself can't search through all of them - and a hundred lines of racism is still fuckin horrible

[rrcraft-and-lore]

You can check out my episode of Anjali's podcast, Arcx, here!

[runwithskizzers]

LOOK AT THIS COVER

I'm so excited to be a part of this anthology of South Asian stories written by South Asian (incl all aspects of diasporic) writers.

You can preorder here: https://www.littleshopofstories.com/book/9780063208261

A pair of star-crossed lovers search for a way back to one another against all odds . . .

A girl fights for her life against a malignant, generations-old evil . . .

A peri seeks to reclaim her lost powers . . .

A warrior rebels against her foretold destiny . . .

From chudails and peris to jinn and goddesses, this lush collection of South Asian folklore, legends, and epics reimagines stories of old for a modern audience. This fantasy and science fiction teen anthology edited by Samira Ahmed and Sona Charaipotra contains a wide range of stories from fourteen bestselling, award-winning, and emerging writers from the South Asian diaspora that will surprise, delight, and move you. So read on, for after all, magic has no borders.

With stories by:

Sabaa Tahir, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Ember in the Ashes series, and winner of the National Book Award and Printz Award for All My Rage

Sayantani DasGupta, New York Times bestselling author of the Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond series

Preeti Chhibber, author of Spider-Man’s Social Dilemma

Sona Charaipotra, author of Symptoms of a Heartbreak and How Maya Got Fierce, and coauthor of The Rumor Game and Tiny Pretty Things, now a Netflix original series.

Tanaz Bhathena, award-winning author of Hunted by the Sky and Of Light and Shadow

Sangu Mandanna, bestselling author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and the Celestial Trilogy

Olivia Chadha, author of Rise of the Red Hand

Nafiza Azad, author of William C. Morris Award nominee, The Candle and the Flame

Tracey Baptiste, New York Times bestselling author of The Jumbies series and Minecraft: The Crash

Naz Kutub, author of The Loophole

Nikita Gill, bestselling author of Wild Embers and Fierce Fairytales

Swati Teerdhala, author of the Tiger at Midnight trilogy

Shreya Ila Anasuya, New Voices selection

Tahir Abrar, New Voices selection

Cover credits:

Artist: Jyotirmayee Patra Designer: Joel Tippie

[isobelleposts]

A Reminder That We Are Human: ‘Human Acts’ by Han Kang Review

by Isobelle Cruz [May 21, 2023]

I’ve been hesitant to open up my laptop lately, afraid that I had lost it in me to write a really good article, not in terms of how many likes I receive, but on how much I enjoy the process of making it. My recent works, I admit, have felt passionless and forced for the sake of keeping my blog alive. But this is different. I devoured “Human Acts” by Han Kang over the course of one weekend—my eyes rarely drifting from its pages.

I’d never encountered an interest in the author’s works before, but once I stepped foot in the bookstore, I was suddenly drawn to its cover; simple and clean, silencing the world that surrounded me into muffled echoes.

“Gwangju Uprising” scene in Saedeuldo Sesangeul Teuneunguna at the Yeongwoo Theatre, 1988 [Image Source: Yeongwoo Mudae]

Her lips move, but no sound comes out. Yet Eun-sook knows exactly what she is saying. She recognizes the lines from the manuscript, where Mr. Seo had written them in with a pen. The manuscripts she’s typed up herself, and proofread three times. 

Page 101 of Human Acts

The book features the perspectives of seven characters, one of them being an editor in 1985. Eun-sook’s chapter shows her struggle against censorship and how the company overcomes this, still able to deliver the crossed-out lines of the censors through chilling imagery. Han Kang’s writing is delivered almost in the same feels as the play tackled in her book; quiet, slow, but enough to tell the story.

Gym turned mortuary in May 1980. [Image Source: Robin Moyer, Korea JoongAng Daily]

Another perspective that drew my attention closer than the others was of The Boy’s Friend, Jeong-dae. The words of the dead were briefly featured in the book; faceless spirits hovering over their bodies and watching as others live on, unable to do anything but watch.

If I could escape the sight of our bodies, that festering flesh now fused into a single mass, like rotting carcass of some many-legged monster. If I could sleep, truly sleep, not this flickering haze of wakefulness. If I could plunge headlong down to the floor of my pitch-dark consciousness.

Page 56 of “Human Acts”

It was depressing, and made me conscious of the body I still have control over—a blessing that I often take for granted.

Students on the streets of Gwangju, 1980 [Image Source: Lee Chang-seong, May 18 Memorial Foundation]

Is it possible to bear witness to the fact that of a foot-long wooden ruler being repeatedly thrust into my vagina, all the way to the back wall of my uterus? To a rifle butt bludgeoning my cervix? To the fact that, when the bleeding wouldn’t stop and I had gone into shock, they had to take me to the hospital for a blood transfusion?

Page 164 of Human Acts

Human Acts is flinchingly explicit and gory. It tells the stories of victims from different angles, some of which I would forget to consider if I had not opened this book.

It disturbs me to display these photos on here, but I believe that if words are not enough to deliver chills to the blinded eyes of people, photographs will.

The kids in the photo aren’t lying side by side because their corpses were lined up like that after they were killed. It’s because they were walking in a line.

Page 133 of Human Acts

Whether you read this in the rain, or at the beach where life is supposed to be happy, a strike of pain will stay in the back of your chest, the images of agony haunting you even in bed. 

Human Acts truly opened my mind much more than the other books I’ve read that spit out facts and statistics, so much so, that I am driven away from what matters most—feeling and sympathizing with the victims. Most books I’ve encountered focus solely on hating the dictator that I finish them feeling sort of empty, that I am the same person as I was when I started the book. But that is not the case with Han Kang’s third novel. It reminded me that I am human, and how much my life should be valued.

[hollowwhisperings]

that thing wherein you're reading something and just KNOW

"this person has completely forgotten that the characters here live in Japan/Korea/China/Russia"

and is, instead, writing like an American.

[andromedasummer]

one thing i love about my uni is even when the subject we are studying is about far away country or ultra specific phenomenon theres always a book in the syllabus, published by the university, by a member of that country and/or culture, by an expert on that special subject, who happened to attend my university too. who's lived in the same cities i have.

[sodrippy]

saw a reel about a fantasy novel thats about south asians and the author is like "i wrote this bc im sick of the stereotypes brown characters are always written into" and all that but then the male romantic lead is a blond guy?? girl cmon now

[hotwraithbones]

untitled art piece from Into Oblivion {@sweatdrenchedpress ‘22} by Ami J. Sanghvi {@HotWraithBones} — the hybrid, multimedia, full-length quest narrative//experimental novel 🪦🔪🌬️

[cupofteajones]

Quote of the Day - November 26, 2022

Quote of the Day – November 26, 2022

[bookaddict24-7]

AUTHOR FEATURE:

﹒Mohsin Hamid﹒

Five Books Written By this Author:

Exit West

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Moth Smoke

The Last White Man

___

Happy reading!