Why I Am Afraid To Read – A Personal Journey
One of the book groups I’m in, asked me a question that made me face a fear I’ve been afraid to name. After all, I read. It’s part of my identity, long before “I’m a writer”. Zigzackly asked,
“Who are your favourite Indian prose stylists?
Across genres, and in any languages you read a lot in.
By ‘prose stylists,’ I mean that over and above their writing ticking all the conventional boxes, like persuasive arguments or engaging narratives, lucidity, interesting subjects, and so on, these writers have distinctive, even inimitable styles, they make you pause and re-read, their turns of phrase live on in your head.
This is going to be subjective, naturally, so do please also explain what you think makes them great writers.”
My answer got too long for a Whatsapp conversation, so I decided to post it here instead. I have tried not to alter it too much for the blogpost style. But since I am here, I’ve added some links and pictures.
I like women writers. I find it liberating to read them, because that’s when I realise what wide chasms of communication I jump across every day in speaking to men and in interpreting their words to fit into my world. With women writers, my mind keeps ringing with “Oh, I didn’t know anyone else felt this because each time I’ve tried to articulate this, nobody understood”.
This is why Rupi Kaur was a revelation to me. I had never read about sex and abuse as described an Indian woman before and ‘Milk and Honey‘ echoed a lot of things I’ve felt and not had space to articulate because it doesn’t fit popular narratives about consent, pain, power and bodies. I don’t want to get into an argument about her literary merits or her ethics. And I am not a fan of her writing but it did open a door for me to discover how poetry could be about and for people like me, as written by people like me. There’s a world of female poets I’ve discovered since then, who make me want to read poetry. Truly. It feels the way I feel when people say they hate maths. Oh, you poor souls, you just haven’t met the right books yet.
This connection gets upped one level, when it’s a woman writer who is not white. Even more when they’re from a formerly colonised nation. In the last year, I’ve enjoyed two books by African women authors and two by a Japanese author. It is such a complicated thing to think in a language of the people who did not even see me as human. Even more complex to figure out who I am and what I believe in, within their limited vocabulary. Asian women really get it.
This becomes way more when the author is from a similar linguistic background from mine (because these are complicated identity aspects that are not clearly acknowledged).
This is where it is getting to be too overwhelming for me of late. I’ve been creeping closer to home in my reading and I stopped at ‘The Scent of Pepper‘ by Kavery Nambisan, which is about Kodagu (Coorg) in the 1800s. I have not been able to make progress on ‘Ocean Rimmed World‘ by Joe D’Cruz, mostly because I understand the original Tamil phrases and cultural nuances that sound silly or shallow in English. And I’ve had ‘Vaadivasal‘, ‘The Greatest Tamil Stories Ever Told‘ and ‘Malgudi Days‘ on my currently reading for weeks but am unable to make progress, despite their being excellent works. I also had to put away ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida‘ at 10% because it was making me physically sick (the writing is that good and it is about a genocide).
These posts will tell you a little about the complexities I’m navigating as a diaspora Tamilian woman.
I tried to course-correct by taking a breather with a PG Wodehouse. And right on page 15, I ran into the n-word. I have not been able to shake that off. And I’m a little afraid to read anything right now.
That said, I am not stopped for long by my fears. If you’d like to engage with me about books, add or follow me here: Goodreads, Fable.