Comments on Brooklyn Book Talk: Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villa...

Thanks for the thoughtful discussion. Of course th...

2009-06-29T01:02:41.438-04:00

Thanks for the thoughtful discussion. Of course there's much more to be said about the topic. I honestly don't understand why writers are reluctant to use the "fiction" label when they are making things up — there's no shame in the art of imagination. It seems to me that many books that were once considered autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novels are now being called "memoirs"; wonder if it's a marketing thing and the public's appetite for "true" stories (a la "reality" tv)?

I completely agree with Abeer that story and fact are not mutually exclusive. Part of why I chose the approach I did is that I couldn't have made up the amazing stories I found, and I wanted to be true to them, particularly as many of the "characters" in the book are alive (and reading it as we speak!).

It did take some work, though, to commit to the real stories and not just decide to invent details when I didn't have sufficient information. I wrote a fairly academic piece about the approach I used in LEAVING INDIA, laying out the literary tools available to the nonfiction writer who doesn't want to blur the lines. It's here: http://cdy.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/2-3/301

Keep on writin' and readin' ...

warmly,
Minal

It's a great question...memoirist and journalist D...

2009-06-27T12:29:17.883-04:00

It's a great question...memoirist and journalist David Carr went to fierce lengths to document his past before he wrote about it, in part because he had been in a drug haze when it happened, and in part because it was clear that he had remembered some things just plain wrong. I like this approach--on the other hand, he also had a hell of a story to tell.

What I like up front is an acknowledgement of *point of view*--which your author does. We all see the world from our own eyes, and part of what reading does is force us to see something with somebody else's.

To me, the most important thing about fact versus ...

2009-06-11T20:31:06.142-04:00

To me, the most important thing about fact versus fiction is that the line be fairly clear. I love it when the author tells me up front. Hajratwala did that, saying she took a journalistic approach. I'm also happy for an author, like Abeer the previous commenter, to re-create conversations but I would appreciate something in the forward indicating that. Either way, I can happily read the book.

Here's something related. In a book where the author says up front that dialogue and other details have been created to advance the story, do you ever find yourself stopping to wonder if what you just read was on the fiction or fact side? I sometimes do. I'm not sure that it effects my enjoyment of the book, but it certainly effects the flow of my reading!

i don't think facts and story are mutually exclusi...

2009-06-11T11:11:07.156-04:00

i don't think facts and story are mutually exclusive. the way i think of creative nonfiction includes using fictive techniques to tell a true story. so there's drama, tension, plot, background, character development, crisis, resolution. all part and parcel of a novel or short story.

there are probably lines in the sand as per what is strictly the truth or not, and different authors approach that in different ways.

i'm currently reading "what is the what" which is billed as a novel b/c so many of the conversations were from 20 years back and had to be made up, but the facts of the story are true. IMHO, this could have been billed as an autobiography (as written by dave eggers), but they chose not to, i suppose abiding by stricter rules than i do.

in my memoir (which i'd love for you to read when i'm done), i am sometimes making up dialogue, based on the facts of what happened, and the way i remember people speak. and the timing and order of things isn't absolutely chronological. but i'm still calling it creative nonfiction/memoir/true story/etc.

but back to the book - it sounds like leaving india has some good history in it, but perhaps not woven into the story as much as it could be. i'll take a look.

What could be a more relevant book for Brooklyn (o...

2009-06-09T10:23:59.698-04:00

What could be a more relevant book for Brooklyn (or for that matter Americans) to read than the life story of an immigrant. The choice is apt and thoughtful. As Franklin Roosevelt said: "Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”

Although America is a land and dream of immigrants, and an unprecedented experiment in changing human nature and human condition for the better, still the battle is engaged every day by every person on every front.

Bill Clinton was not merely using rhetoric when he said: “The divide of race has been America's constant curse. Each new wave of immigrants gives new targets to old prejudices. Prejudice and contempt, cloaked in the pretense of religious or political conviction, are no different. They have nearly destroyed us in the past. They plague us still. They fuel the fanaticism of terror. They torment the lives of millions in fractured nations around the world. These obsessions cripple both those who are hated and, of course, those who hate, robbing both of what they might become.”

Indeed, the story of immigrants and immigration is as complex and ambivalent as the design of the human mind and contradictions in the human condition. May be Amborse Bierce is right when he defines an Immigrant: n. An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.

No matter what the whole truth about immigrants is, I heartily agree Jean Rhy: “Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.”