KITH

by Divya Victor

kith [noun] one's friends, acquaintances, neighbours, or relations.In Kith, award-winning writer Divya Victor engages Indian-American diasporic culture in the twentieth century, via an autobiographical account that explores what 'kith' might mean outside of the national boundaries of those people belonging to the Indian and South East Asian diasporas.Through an engagement with the effects of globalization on identity formation, cultural and linguistic exchange, and demographic difference, Kith explores questions about race and ethnic How do 'brownness' and 'blackness' emerge as traded commodities in the transactions of globalization? What are the symptoms of belonging? How and why does 'kith' diverge from 'kin,' and what are the affects and politics of this divergence? Historically-placed and well-researched, Kith is an unflinching and simultaneous account of both systemic and interpersonal forms of violence and wounding in the world today.

Genres: Poetry

249 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 27, 2017

About the author

Divya Victor is the author of Natural Subjects (Trembling Pillow, 2014, winner of the Bob Kaufman Award), UNSUB (Insert Blanc, 2015), Things to Do with Your Mouth (Les Figues, 2014), Swift Taxidermies 1919–1922 (GaussPDF, 2014), Goodbye John! On John Baldessari (GaussPDF, 2012), PUNCH (GaussPDF, 2011), and the Partial trilogy (Troll Thread, 2011-2012). Her chapbooks include Hellocasts by Charles Reznikoff by Divya Victor by Vanessa Place (2011) and SUTURES (2009). Her criticism and commentary have appeared in Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Jacket2, and the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet. Her work has been collected in the New Museum’s The Animated Reader, the reedition of bpNichol’s Translating Translating Apollinaire, Crux: Journal of Conceptual Writing, Hobo, VLAK, The Best American Experimental Writing, and boundary2, among other venues. Her poetry has been translated into French and Czech. She has been a Mark Diamond Research Fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, a Riverrun Fellow at the Mandeville Poetry Collections at University of California San Diego, and a writer in residence at the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibit (LACE). She lives in the United States and Singapore, where she is assistant professor of poetry and writing at Nanyang Technological University.

Reviews

[Mike Good]

this book might risk obscurity as it blurs genre, its author is maybe not tremendously well-known (yet), and it appears lengthy, but I found KITH to be really excellent. a sort of tour de force in dominant essayistic and poetic modes--reminiscent of WG Sebald and others.

[navu]

I'd forgotten that diaspora poetry doesn't have to be insincere and politically hollow? anyway thank u divya victor, this book is the antidote to rupi kaur et al

[Samidha; समिधा]

4.5 stars
Loved it, but wish that some parts were a bit less post modern-y!

[Maria]

"SECOND ATTEMPT: TO COLLECT ALL MY MOLES TO MAKE A MOLEHILL ON NO MAN'S LAND"

"... I take this letter opener and slip its tip under the corner of my eye where my first mole sits like a grain of dark gram or a long lentil sheltered by lashes and behind glasses | I take that letter opener to snap it up from my skin like a red waxen seal pressed on my eye as viscous black bitumen or the pus-beige of beeswax colored with vermilion doused in shellac bathed in turpentine and pressed onto the corner of my eye with a signet ring worn on the wrinkled knuckles of some so-and-so and so I slip the ivory sliver under the mole to split it from my skin and open this envelope..."

[Isabella]

There were a number of poems I bookmarked that were really powerful and beautiful. There were also a number of poems that I just couldn’t wrap my head around due to the writing style—I think a fellow reviewer called these too “post-moderny.” I never expect to understand every poem in a collection, but it happened more than usual in the first half of this book. However, I’d still recommend the book, because you’re bound to find at least a couple poems in here that speak to you and expand your perspective.

[Jillian]

An impressive and gorgeously constructed poetry collection, Victor delves into the intersection of place and migration on family and the self. She makes no apologies for being nostalgic. In fact it is in those details of home and childhood, her own and 'Kith's', where the language is at its finest.

[Vahni]

Phenomenal! If you're South Indian/Indian-American, you absolutely have to read this, and if you're not, you still do.

[Patrick Al-de Lange]

A bundle of poetry that often doesn't look like poetry, most of it is prose poetry but you can't evade it touching you with its raw emotion and honest portay