The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America

T HIS BOOK GROWS out of the question,What is South Asian American writing and what insights can it offer us about living in the world at this particular moment of tense geopolitics and interlinked economies? It is my conviction that reading this body of literature must be more than just an act of aesthetic or narrative pleasure. Rather, it must be a just act—doing justice to the contexts from which the writing emerges and challenging one’s imagination to encounter the texts with courage, humility, and daring. “The idea of America” in this book’s title signals not just an examination of South Asian American writing within the context of North America, but also a discussion of the global phenomena against which the idea of America emerges and that so richly infuse a great deal of South Asian American writing. South Asia comprises the seven countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. “South Asian American” is a category that encompasses those individuals in the United States and Canada whose ancestral origins lie in one or more of these seven countries. For the purposes of this book, I limit the scope of the term “America” to the United States and Canada, although I am O N E