{"id":2542,"date":"2010-08-11T12:26:49","date_gmt":"2010-08-11T19:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2010\/08\/neela-vaswani-the-rumpus\/"},"modified":"2010-08-16T12:32:50","modified_gmt":"2010-08-16T19:32:50","slug":"neela-vaswani-the-rumpus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2010\/08\/11\/neela-vaswani-the-rumpus\/","title":{"rendered":"Neela Vaswani @ The Rumpus"},"content":{"rendered":"

from TheRumpus.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

The Rumpus Interview With Neela Vaswani<\/h1>\n

AIMEE ZARING<\/a><\/span>\u00a0BIO \u2193\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0 August 11th, 2010 \u00a0\u00b7\u00a0 filed under\u00a0BOOKS<\/a>,\u00a0RUMPUS ORIGINAL<\/a><\/p>\n

Neela Vaswani is author of the award-winning short story collectionWhere the Long Grass Bends<\/em>\u00a0(2004). An education activist in India and the U.S., she lives in New York and is the founder of the Storylines Project with the New York Public Library.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her new book,\u00a0You Have Given Me a Country<\/em>, is a blend of history, memory, myth, and Cultural Studies. The memoir blurs borders of genre and identity, exploring what it means to be bicultural in America. The book follows the paths of Vaswani\u2019s Irish-Catholic mother and Sindhi-Indian father on their journey towards each other and the biracial child they create.<\/p>\n

The Rumpus<\/strong>: As a writer of fiction before this book, did you have any misgivings about writing a memoir and sharing your personal narrative and family history?<\/p>\n

Neela Vaswani:<\/strong>\u00a0Definitely. Moving away from the protective mask of fiction was a real adjustment.\u00a0 But oddly enough, the hardest part about writing nonfiction has been reading it in public\u2013standing up at a podium, looking out at the crowd, and thinking \u201cThey know this is true because I just said so!\u201d\u00a0 You feel naked, or like there\u2019s a booger peeking out of one nostril or something.\u00a0 And I think there\u2019s a larger issue of judgment. I worry, with nonfiction, that if people don\u2019t like the work, they don\u2019t like the author.\u00a0 I\u2019m not in the writing business to be liked, but with fiction, there\u2019s a distance between the work and author that allows for a greater sense of safety, I guess you\u2019d call it. Anyway, I\u2019ve gotten used to the feeling now.\u00a0 I have learned to accept the booger.<\/p>\n

Rumpus:\u00a0<\/strong>Before the book\u2019s prologue, you write, \u201cWhat follows is real, and imagined.\u201d In light of the controversy surrounding James Frey\u2019s\u00a0A Million Little Pieces<\/em>\u00a0and the increased blurring of lines between fact and fiction in the memoir genre, did you feel a certain responsibility to mention that your memoir is a hybrid? What do you feel is more important to convey in a memoir\u2014emotional truth or factual truth?<\/p>\n

Vaswani:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s funny, but in a way, I think I\u2019m more honest in fiction than nonfiction.\u00a0 No,\u00a0honest<\/em>\u00a0isn\u2019t the right word.\u00a0\u00a0Bare<\/em>\u00a0is better.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at The Rumpus<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from TheRumpus.net The Rumpus Interview With Neela Vaswani AIMEE ZARING\u00a0BIO \u2193\u00a0\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0 August 11th, 2010 \u00a0\u00b7\u00a0 filed under\u00a0BOOKS,\u00a0RUMPUS ORIGINAL Neela Vaswani is author of the award-winning short story collectionWhere the Long Grass Bends\u00a0(2004). An education activist in India and the U.S., she lives in New York and is the founder of the Storylines Project with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}