Description
Book SynopsisThe twenty-six essays in
Lunch With a Bigot are examples of how Amitava Kumar turns his observations of the world into words. A mix of memoir, reportage, thoughts on the craft of writing, and criticism, these essays tell broad stories of immigration, change, and a shift to a more globalized existence.
Trade Review“Heterogeneous and complex, this book offers insight into Indian culture from a multitude of complex spaces between East and West. An exuberantly inquisitive collection of essays.” * Kirkus Reviews *
“[Kumar’s] rhythms and insights beguile, and the trip itself is as rich as the destination. The reader returns with a broader sense of power, religion, oppression, familial love, censorship, and the power of the written word, to name but a few.” -- Robert Burke Warren * Chronogram *
“Kumar is an artful, frank and clean-cut writer, with a compassionate curious mind and a dry sense of humor. He includes his personal responses in his journalism and maintains his questioning skepticism even in his most emotional essays.”
-- Sara Catterall * Shelf Awareness *
“A dexterous and entertaining book that mixes personal essay, reportage, and criticism,
Lunch With a Bigot never loses sight of its subtitle: each piece, in its own way, is about the writing life, whether it deals with paper as an object of the sacred and profane, the immigrant writer’s experience of ‘being brown in America,’ or the temporal dislocation of returning home.” -- Jonathon Sturgeon * Flavorwire *
"Taken together, these essays written over the last 15 years of cataclysmic wars, fanaticisms, environmental disasters, and turbo-capitalism, tell the story of what has really been happening while those of us in the West have looked the other way. As the media caters to our fascination with Donald Trump’s hairstyle and his vitriolic one-liners, Syrian refugees have had to find refuge in Dachau. To see how one narrative has obfuscated the other ought to enrage us, and asks us to examine what is absent from our daily conversations. Kumar provokes us with his vulnerability, his observations of our shared flaws, and his impassioned interest in a world he hopes to make more livable. He reminds us what the writer — the writer as rioter — can do. And he reminds us that to be alive demands that we search for new forms of intimacy all the time, in order, as Adrienne Rich insisted, 'to extend the possibilities of truth between us.'" -- Leah Mirakhor * Los Angeles Review of Books *
"
Lunch with a Bigot is, at its core, a collection of writing that delivers Kumar’s memoir. The ambling essays wander but never strand readers, and together they form something largely autobibliographic—that is to say, a deep, lengthy telling of the author’s reading (and viewing) life. ... Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above." -- E. McCourt * Choice *
"While Kumar’s well-trained eye roves from subject to subject with intellectual rigor and academic insight, he is able to coalesce these disparate parts into a cohesive whole with his inevitable return to his love of literature.... Kumar proves to be an astute cultural and literary critic, adept at surveying the world around him at all angles—making
Lunch with a Bigot an engaging and memorable collection." -- Alex Brubaker * Rain Taxi *
Table of ContentsAuthor's Note xi
Part I. Reading
1. Paper 3
2. My Hanif Kureishi Life 14
3. The Map of My Village 29
4. The Poetry of Gujarat Riots 32
5. Conversation with Arundhati Roy 37
6. Salman Rushdie and Me 51
7. Bad News 58
Part II. Writing
8. How to Write a Novel 79
9. Reading Like a Writer 84
10. Writing My Own
Satya 97
11. Dead Bastards 106
12. The Writer as a Father 110
13. Ten Rules of Writing 119
Part III. Places
14. Mofussil Junction 127
15. A Collaboration in Kashmir 132
16. At the Jaipur Literature Festival 141
17. Hotel Leeward 146
18. The Mines of Jadugoda 151
19. Upon Arrival in the Past 155
20. Bookstores of New York 162
Part IV. People
21. Lunch with a Bigot 169
22. The Boxer on the Flight 183
23. Amartya's Birth 187
24. The Taxi Drivers of New York 192
25. On Being Brown in America 196
26. Missing Person 201
Index 213
