Asian/otherAsian/other

Vidyan Ravinthiran was born in England to Sri Lankan Tamils and moved to the United States in January 2020. Considering identity in both political and psychological senses, he moves between memoir and criticism, understanding his life through poetry, and vice versa. Using the poetry of Andrew Marvell and Divya Victor, Ravinthiran discusses: Sri Lanka; experiences of racism and resilience; intergenerational trauma; pandemic parenting in an autism family; relationships shaped by the internet; growing up with a speech impediment and being sent by one's aspirational brown parents to elocution lessons; and the relative invisibility of South Asians in Western media. This hybrid memoir creates a new perspective from which to write about the self and literature.