Is My Writing Too South Asian?
Do peanut vendors in India operate at 2 a.m.?
I find that I’m always halfway through some meal or the other when beta reader feedback lands in my inbox. And every time my stomach does the thing it does when I know I’m about to read something that will make me question every life choice that led me to this manuscript. I was three bites into a reheated samosa when the very first comment (the first ever on the first chapter) popped up in notifications. That was almost a year ago. The samosa went cold. It died for nothing.
I’ve worked with 12 beta readers on the full manuscript of Half Written. In fact, even though I’ve already jumped into the query trenches (at this point let’s face it, it is in the best shape I can get it to be in), a couple of them are still reading as I type this. More beta readers read the first few chapters and there were even anonymous ones that left comments on a few excerpts I put through Critique Circle.
Apart from notes on the first sentence and some descriptions here and there, the most notable feedback always starts with the Dhuli Hill scene, which appears in the second half of my first chapter.
Take a look the screenshots below. They’re important for context.
These two comments above, among more, are from two of my beta readers who are of Western heritage. Both left brilliantly insightful feedback and clear emotional reactions to my work. They’re at the free-copy-of-my-book-and-PR-package-and-name-in-the-acknowledgements level.
The scene has a very culturally specific setting, in which the characters trek up a hill to an ancient, centuries-old temple in the middle of the night. The path is lit, and studded with vendors selling fresh flowers as offerings to the deities, snacks, lemonade, peanuts, cut fruit lathered in spice mix.
Now, I would venture that there are more than a million temples in the nooks and crannies of India and more than enough of them are 24/7 access for pilgrims. They also form night trips (or day trips) for students in Indian cities and suburbs, who want to catch a break and have close to empty pockets when it comes to spending on travel. Hang-out spaces, time-pass journeys. Reasons to stay awake, talk, smoke and make out through the nights.
Yes, I realise I am now doing the exact thing I’m trying to avoid, which is explaining India to you. Consider this the last time. Maybe.
When writing it did not occur to me that this scene would be an unimaginable setting by a lot of readers. As a Brit of Indian origin who has spent a lot of time between both countries, a lot of my life has fallen into the sometimes jagged and unconfident middles of the South Asian diaspora, and this setting was cleanly lifted from my own experiences when I was in college.
I have bought those peanuts, readers. I have eaten those peanuts at 2 a.m. on a hill in Gujarat while my knees screamed and a barefoot pilgrim twice my age overtook me without breaking a sweat.
My Indian-origin beta readers didn’t blink at the scene. They sent me heart-eyes emojis and notes that said “yaar, exactly like Vaishno Devi, no?” or “this is so Mumbai–Pune ghat stuff, I could smell the oil”. One of them wrote, “I was there last year, same thing, even the uncle trying to sell me a rudraksha mala at midnight.”
They flagged other things—a timeline inconsistency, a bit of dialogue that didn’t land—but the 1 a.m. peanut thing? Completely unremarkable. And in stark contrast to Western readers’ comments. “Is this realistic? Would there really be vendors at that hour?” or “Feels a little… crowded for a night trek?” or “Should we explain why people are up there?”.
This leads me to ask two questions:
Is my writing too South Asian?
Should I be providing explanations about these scenes in the manuscript itself?
The question nobody asks, but the feedback implies
I have been fortunate enough in my experiences to not have another mature writer read my work and say, “Your writing is too South Asian. Nobody will understand this so change it.”
Nothing that blunt or crass. The comments are more surgical and specific (very understandable) such as Would this really happen? on the peanut vendors or Is this word necessary? on the Hindi and Bengali words littered around the novel. Something like I didn’t understand what this was on a cultural reference I hadn’t glossed. This section felt a bit dense on a passage where three things are happening at once in a way that is entirely normal in India but baffling in the Home Counties.
The cumulative effect of these notes, delivered individually and in good faith by smart, generous readers, puts a gentle pressure on me to explain myself. To footnote my own novel and write the kind of book where every desi word comes with a translation tucked helpfully into the next sentence, every cultural practice gets a brief anthropological aside, and every scene rooted in cultural specificity is either softened or cut.
I, as a first-time novelist have, on multiple occasions, felt the need to do so. The impulse to add a descriptive footnote. I have felt the creeping worry that I’m asking too much, that the reader will put the book down, that I should just make it easier. Pitfalls of writing an #ownvoices story rooted in POC shenanigans.
And then I remember that I have read approximately nine hundred novels (no, I exaggerate) set in small-town America and not once has anyone paused to explain to me what a tailgate party is, or what it means to “take the 405,” what or who on earth is a homecoming queen, or why there’s a diner open at 3 a.m. in a town with four buildings and a church.
I figured it out. Context did the work. That’s what context is for.
The thing about italicisation
Political commentary on the italicisation of vernacular language is not new. When I was a kid writing random stories, we were told to italicise words like rasta or chai or roti, as if to warn the Western reader: “Careful! Foreign word approaching. Please consult the glossary at the back.”
Why do I mention this? Because the hawkers and the italics are the same problem viewed from different angles. One is about explaining settings, the other is about explaining words.
I think most writers, especially POC writers would point out the usefulness of not having italicised words of native or vernacular origin. The decision to not italicise desi words was an early one for me. Because my bilingualism (or trilingualism, is that a word?), like Jumoke Verissimo iterates, is a privilege. Chai, duniyah, arre, kombol, ammachi, meri jaan. And more, features heavily in the novel. And they’ve been used very consciously. If a reader is unfamiliar with these words, which I expect most will be, then context will inform them. Or Google will. I find that I want to trust my readers’ intelligence more than I fear their confusion.
The art of not explaining
I also recently beta read another Indian diaspora novelist’s work where the setting and characters were decidedly Indian. I estimate she is much newer to writing than I am, but comes accomplished and with a great premise for her novel. Her story contains the following examples:
“She wanted to eat paani puris, which are fried semolina balls filled with spicy tamarind….”
He sat on a charpoy—a rattan bed with wooden frames…
I left my comments. She came back on them. Why should she not explain? What if her Canadian or US audiences don’t understand what paani puris or charpoys are?
Needless to say, I am never going to push any writer to be political about things I am political about and my conversation with her only went as far as to explain my thought process and my determination to not produce explanations (or footnotes, or a end-of-the-book glossary…shudder). But nevertheless, it was fascinating to observe another POC written piece which aimed to explain things for the Western reader.
Specificity is universal
What I have promised to myself that I’ll do:
I will always try to make sure the prose carries the meaning. Always. If a word or a practice or a setting is unfamiliar, the sentence around it should do the work of grounding the reader without pausing the story to explain.
This is, honestly, just good writing practice regardless of whether your novel is set in Gujarat or Guildford. The reader should never feel abandoned, but they should also never feel patronised. And the irony of writing is that the more specific you are, the more people relate to it.
My Western readers might not have climbed Dhuli Hill at midnight and they may not know the precise history of Dhuli Hill or the economics of late-night peanut vending in rural Gujarat, but the prose exposes them to new situations in new worlds and it tells them to feel the cold air and the crunching stones and the flickering halogen and the boy who materialises behind two girls to buy them peanuts because he’s trying to impress one of them and can’t figure out how else to do it.
That’s the scene. That’s always been the scene. The South Asian-ness of it is not the obstacle. It’s the entire point.
The beauty of having beta readers from a variety of backgrounds that’s different to the setting of the novel (also something I was hyper-focused on when looking for betas) also lies in having them listen to me provide explanations about the specificity of the Dhuli Hill setting. And while I’ve enjoyed doing that just to watch them react with fascination, I’ve also encountered feedback such as below.
And those just make my day!
How do you handle cultural specificity in your work? Do you find yourself reaching for the italics, or have you joined the “No-Glossary” rebellion? Is your world not of ours (of sci-fi or fantasy and are you doing a Glossary even so)?
Swap notes in the comments?
Happy writing!
Amrita
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