I asked the well-known philosopher Judith Butler to unpack for me the phrase “academic interest.” Here is the piece I wrote for The Chronicle’s Lingua Franca: In a video that is available online, you can watch Judith Butler, philosopher and winner of a bad writing award, speaking to a crowd at Occupy Wall Street. It… Read more »
Posts By: Amitava Kumar
Teachable Moment
I have written a piece about Claudia Rankine and how she creates teachable moments; for instance, in her commentary on what commentators say about Serena Williams. More generally, the piece is about academe and race: Everything in American public life, when it comes to race relations, serves as a frame for a history of violence… Read more »
Yaddo
From my latest The Bookist column “What Is It, Dear Heart?”: I am at Yaddo writing a novel about the messiness of love. Yaddo is an artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. I have been here for a month. I write every day, I walk in the woods, and before I go to… Read more »
On Poetry
My latest column (“The Bookist,” a monthly column for Hindustan Times Brunch) is on poetry: One night in the early Eighties, in the basement theatre of Shri Ram Centre in Delhi, I heard the Hindi poet Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena read his long poem Kuano Nadi. This was my discovery. I had taken a DTC bus… Read more »
Radio
I saw the above sign at a reading I did at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck. This post is about recent events related to the release of my essay collection, Lunch with a Bigot, primarily links to my radio interviews: with Joe Donahue on WAMC; with Brian Lehrer on WNYC; with John Hockenberry at WNYC’s The… Read more »
Upcoming Readings
Forthcoming readings from Lunch with a Bigot: Tsion Café, Harlem, New York, Thursday, May 7, 2015, 7 PM, in conversation with Akhil Sharma; Oblong Books, Rhinebeck, Friday, May 9, 2015, 7 PM; Community Bookstore, Brooklyn, Tuesday, May 12, 2015, 7 PM, in conversation with Dani Shapiro; Inquiring Minds Bookstore, New Paltz, Friday, May 15, 2015,… Read more »
Patna Roughcuts
I have just written a piece for Granta on a visit to my hometown. Ought one get a massage in Patna? How about a wedding? Or a funeral? These and other questions answered here. The day after the wedding, I flew out of Patna. When I returned to New York, I found copies of Granta… Read more »
Lunch With A Bigot
Today I was sent the full cover of the new book.
First review is in
Kirkus Reviews calls Lunch with a Bigot “an exuberantly inquisitive collection of essays.” The photograph above is of Hanif Kureishi. I’ve put it up here because 1. he is looking good; 2. I have an essay on him in the forthcoming book; 3. I just wrote a review piece on his latest novel, The Last… Read more »
Granta
Granta 130 carries my essay, “Pyre,” a report on my mother’s death in Patna. A different version of this essay will appear in my forthcoming book, Lunch With a Bigot. This longer essay is titled “Missing Person.”