Asian/Other

How often are we rendered strange and unmappable to ourselves by the very cultures that seek to classify and contain us? And yet, as Vidyan Ravinthiran writes, "how hard it seems, for many of us, to even begin to escape the face in the mirror!" With fearless honesty and a stunning lyric imagination, Asian/Other disrupts the silence and dispels the darkness into which so much vital testimony has been huddled. This is a bold, borderless, breathtaking memoir about race, language, inheritance, and love's many forms and outposts. * Tracy K. Smith, poet *
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 *
There's nothing like Asian/Other ... I received an education I didn't know I needed until I had found it. Read it. * Stephanie Burt, author of We Are Mermaids *
A moving love story to fathers and sons who endure with dignity despite the misunderstandings they encounter. This is a persistently illuminating and inspiring memoir that somehow transforms the aesthetics of literature into a guide for good living. Original, wise, witty and exciting! * Daljit Nagra, author of Look We Having Coming to Dover! *
Ravinthiran brilliantly blends the poetic, the personal and the political as he skilfully explores 'the problem of memoir'. A poet I've long admired, who makes a true success of the journey into prose. * Andrew McMillan, author of Pity *
Beautifully written and impeccably argued. * Kirkus *
To witness Vidyan Ravinthiran thinking is a privilege. In this generous, vulnerable memoir he takes on cultural flashpoints - race, identity, neurodiversity, cultural appropriation - with a stubborn compassion, refusing to simplify arguments or monster others. One of the best critics of our generation. Ravinthiran is a writer of uncommon brilliance, and it is a pleasure to follow the lucid wanderings of his mind. * Clare Pollard, author of Delphi *
Asian/Other is a beautifully written and beautifully vulnerable work in praise of uncertainty, curiosity and the quiet satisfaction of living a life because of poetry. * Shash Trevett, author of The Naming of Names and co-editor of Out of Sri Lanka *
Asian / Other is an extraordinary book, full of wisdom, deep thinking, hard truths and gentle hilarity, all couched in the most gorgeously pyrotechnic prose. Plunging the wells of identity, creativity, and intercultural strife, Ravinthiran's sentences carry us between distant shores - from there to here, from then to now - with the strange vividness of dream. The transatlantic experience of otherness, belonging and parenthood he lovingly anatomises here is one I will return to for years to come. With this unique work, a creature entirely its own, Ravinthiran has invented a new genre. More than that, he gives me hope. * Sarah Howe, author of Loop of Jade *