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Asian/Other: Life, Poems, and the Problem of Memoir
A perceptive, discursive exploration of poetry, race, and otherness from one of our most promising new voices in criticism.
Vidyan Ravinthiran, a Sri Lankan Tamil English poet and second-generation immigrant, explores the feeling of being an outsider both on the page and in life. Discussing the civil rights history of South Asians within the UK as well as their placelessness in the US, Ravinthiran leaps adventurously between memoir and criticism, offering astute close readings of poets such as Tennyson, the Tamil poet Cheran, Solmaz Sharif, and Sharon Olds. He writes about Sri Lanka; 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 speech lessons; and the relative invisibility of South Asians in Western television and film. This electric, compelling hybrid memoir examines the wider relationships among culture, race, and the self.
“Written in soaring, exhilarating prose, with the sentences impatient to pack in more—more ideas, more thought, more life—this book will come to be seen as a turning point in writing about literature, race, identity, and otherness.”—Neel Mukherjee, author of Choice
Vidyan Ravinthiran, a Sri Lankan Tamil English poet and second-generation immigrant, explores the feeling of being an outsider both on the page and in life. Discussing the civil rights history of South Asians within the UK as well as their placelessness in the US, Ravinthiran leaps adventurously between memoir and criticism, offering astute close readings of poets such as Tennyson, the Tamil poet Cheran, Solmaz Sharif, and Sharon Olds. He writes about Sri Lanka; 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 speech lessons; and the relative invisibility of South Asians in Western television and film. This electric, compelling hybrid memoir examines the wider relationships among culture, race, and the self.
“Written in soaring, exhilarating prose, with the sentences impatient to pack in more—more ideas, more thought, more life—this book will come to be seen as a turning point in writing about literature, race, identity, and otherness.”—Neel Mukherjee, author of Choice
272 pages, Paperback
Published January 21, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 18, 2025
Ravinthiran writes about what poems have done for his life, his world view and the way he understands language. He does this by connecting poems to his immigrant experience to the UK, to the US, his Indian Tamil identity and identity of being a father of an autistic child, lover, child, student. It is beautifully written and reminds me a little of Reading Lolita in Tehran, in that it is half memoir/ the authors experience and half analysis of poems.
At times his writing feels precise and revalatory, at times exploring the granularity of nothing.
My favourite chapters were: Because you were there, Pandemic, To be Frank and Impediment.
Quotes:
“The fading light trembles like something alive-shy. shifting—on the wall abutting my childhood bed. I hear my son crashing down the stairs, and sounds of delight from my parents, for whom he can do no wrong. This is the room in which I grew up, in Leeds, in the north of England; 1 the very wall to which I turned my head, rejecting conver- a sation with family and refusing for years to attend school— studying at home, instead, alone, and achieving, like the precocious brown child I have never ceased to be, the grades required to flee to Oxford and reinvent myself.”
“Since my teens, I've read poetry more or less continu-ously. In every spare moment, I pick some up. This is so instinctive it may be neurotic: a coping mechanism that has morphed into a vocation. In short, books have been for me what smartphones are for others.”
“-But I was speaking of poems. Unlike prose, short lyrics can be read quickly. Don't worry about failing to understand.
This isn't school, there's no test to pass. It's an adventure.
In a world of language debased and manipulated, a poem is a reprieve. A tactical, guerrilla reclamation of your powers of attention. Poetry restores to you the texture and taste of time, reminding you that the music of words needn't further the powers that be:”
“A poem is a tiny kingdom you can step into, anytime, and return from—readier to hold your own, no matter what comes.”
At times his writing feels precise and revalatory, at times exploring the granularity of nothing.
My favourite chapters were: Because you were there, Pandemic, To be Frank and Impediment.
Quotes:
“The fading light trembles like something alive-shy. shifting—on the wall abutting my childhood bed. I hear my son crashing down the stairs, and sounds of delight from my parents, for whom he can do no wrong. This is the room in which I grew up, in Leeds, in the north of England; 1 the very wall to which I turned my head, rejecting conver- a sation with family and refusing for years to attend school— studying at home, instead, alone, and achieving, like the precocious brown child I have never ceased to be, the grades required to flee to Oxford and reinvent myself.”
“Since my teens, I've read poetry more or less continu-ously. In every spare moment, I pick some up. This is so instinctive it may be neurotic: a coping mechanism that has morphed into a vocation. In short, books have been for me what smartphones are for others.”
“-But I was speaking of poems. Unlike prose, short lyrics can be read quickly. Don't worry about failing to understand.
This isn't school, there's no test to pass. It's an adventure.
In a world of language debased and manipulated, a poem is a reprieve. A tactical, guerrilla reclamation of your powers of attention. Poetry restores to you the texture and taste of time, reminding you that the music of words needn't further the powers that be:”
“A poem is a tiny kingdom you can step into, anytime, and return from—readier to hold your own, no matter what comes.”
June 6, 2025
Admittedly I picked up this book because the author is a friend, but really am so glad I read it. It probably has more poetry and close reading/analysis than many memoir readers might be interested in, but I felt like I learned so much about poetry, England, Sri Lanka, ideas of race and "Asian-ness" in the US and UK, Vidyan's life, and - selfishly - I especially loved reading Vidyan's thoughts on parenting the wonderful Frank, of whom I am quite fond.
February 18, 2025
Thank you to Net Galley and W.W. Norton for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This book had interesting moments around otherness and being South Asian in the UK. The title comes from census type forms that list Asian with options for East Asian ethnicities and Indian from India but does not explicitly give an option for his Sri Lankan/Tamil ethnicity thus he falls in the "Asian/Other" category. The author also delves into otherness in poetry and literature and interweaves various criticism around the subject of otherness. I enjoyed the first third of the book but when it focused on literary criticism and it went too deep for my interest. Yet, the book is well written and gained certain insights and perspective.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews