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Appreciate this essay by . @curvi_k on mangoes and diasporic South Asian literature. And, so we remember, this is part of an ongoing, larger literary discourse as follows. 1/n https://twitter.com/curvi_k/status/1358803554945937408
Mohsin Hamid, Mohammed Hanif, Daniyal Mueenuddin, and Kamila Shamsie on how to write about Pakistan, beginning with how to reference mangoes, particularly. Almost everything can be applied to India too. 2/n https://granta.com/how-to-write-about-pakistan/
Jeet Thayil at NPR saying he avoids mangoes, saris, and spices in his fiction. http://www.npr.org/2012/04/08/150003126/wesun-narcopolis-shell. 3/n
Sheetal Majithia in Samar Magazine on the fetishization of South Asian identity via symbols like mangoes and more. 4/n http://samarmagazine.org/archive/articles/59
Jabeen Akhtar on the 17 elements of a (bad) South Asian novel in Publishing Perspectives. Doesn't explicitly mention mangoes but. 5/n https://publishingperspectives.com/2014/06/the-17-elements-of-a-bad-south-asian-novel/#.V-O4HztBT-0
Jabeen Akhtar again. In LARB this time. On South Asian identity and pandering to western audiences. 6/n https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/brown-south-asian-fiction-pandering-western-audiences
Soniah Kamal in Literary Hub about how someone else's exotic can be a writer's authentic. What then? 7/n http://lithub.com/when-my-authentic-is-your-exotic/
Amitava Kumar's take in The Caravan about Indian writing in English covers more nuances, especially as it relates to writing in regional languages. 8/n http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reviews-essays/shiver-real
And Anjum Hasan, also at The Caravan, on how middle-class Indian fiction in English lacks depth and why. Her focus is on the differences between commercial and literary South Asian fiction but several points apply to this topic too. 9/n https://caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/code-read
I don't agree with everything that everyone has written here. Perhaps the take that I'm most in agreement with is . @SoniahKamal's, which sort of gave me permission to write my own subversive short story, 'Mango Season', in my collection #EachofUsKillers. 10/n
'Mango Season' has all the tropes: saris, monsoons, mangoes, slums, spices, and even Bollywood. It was, as I say, a subversive response. I discussed it a bit in this interview with . @shallwe_write at Columbia Journal. 11/n http://columbiajournal.org/on-intersectional-character-dynamics-subverting-their-tropes-an-interview-with-jenny-bhatt/
I'm sure I've missed a few other such essays and think pieces out there on mangoes and such tropes in South Asian fiction. The good thing is that so many of us have been thinking and writing about it in our own ways. Please add any other such essays to this thread. Thanks. 12/n
