Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Reading Challenge.


I am so excited to be participating in the South Asian Author Challenge that is being hosted by S. Krishna's Books! Back in college I was an English major. I signed up for a Gender and Literature course, not knowing it was themed: Gender Issues in Postcolonial Literature. I am fairly certain that course--the professor, the other students, the literature we read--profoundly changed me. It was heavily focused on India, since that is where the professor is from, but we touched on other areas. It was like traveling the world without the expensive plane ticket. I discovered the lush, beautiful prose of South Asian writers and could not get enough. Now some of my favorite writers include Salman Rushdie, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Jhumpa Lahiri, Vikram Seth, Vikram Chandra, Arundhati Roy, etc. I've pledged to read five books written by South Asian authors by the end of the year. I am sure I will far exceed those five, but I wanted to make sure I met my pledge. I will blog about what I read here. Interested in joining the challenge? It's not too late! Follow the link or click on the image above!

2 comments:

Sarah said...

Is there a specific book you could recommend as a first for such a challenge (esp for those with not so much time for the whole challenge)?

Lauren said...

Hmm...it's so hard to recommend only one! Maybe Sister of my Heart or Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni? Some others might be The Namesake or The Interpreter of Maladies (short stories) by Jhumpa Lahiri.