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asianamlitfansWritten by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
It’s been a minute since I covered books out of the brilliant Restless Books, but I was certain that I wanted to spend some time with one of their latest offerings: Rajiv Mohabir’s Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir. I’ve been a huge fan of Mohabir’s poetry, and we earlier covered one of Mohabir’s collections, so it’s always an interesting thing when a poet turns to a more prose-y form.
Let’s let the marketing description get us off the ground: “Growing up a Guyanese Indian immigrant in Central Florida, Rajiv Mohabir is fascinated by his family’s abandoned Hindu history and the legacy of his ancestors, who were indentured laborers on British sugarcane plantations. In Toronto he sits at the feet of Aji, his grandmother, listening to her stories and songs in her Caribbean Bhojpuri. By now Aji’s eleven children have immigrated to North America and busied themselves with ascension, Christianity, and the erasure of their heritage and Caribbean accents. But Rajiv wants to know more: where did he come from, and why does he feel so out of place? Embarking on a journey of discovery, he lives for a year in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, perfecting his Hindi and Bhojpuri and tracing the lineage of his Aji’s music. Returning to Florida, the cognitive dissonance of confederate flags, Islamophobia, and his father’s disapproval sends him to New York, where finds community among like-minded brown activists, work as an ESL teacher, and intoxication in the queer nightlife scene. But even in the South Asian paradise of Jackson Heights, Rajiv feels like an outsider: ‘Coolie’; rather than Desi. And then the final hammer of estrangement falls when his cousin outs him as an ‘antiman’—a Caribbean slur for men who love men—and his father and aunts disown him. But Aji has taught Rajiv resilience. Emerging from the chrysalis of his ancestral poetics into a new life, he embraces his identity as a poet and reclaims his status as an antiman—forging a new way of being entirely his own.
Rapturous, inventive, and devastating in its critique of our own failures of inclusion, Antiman is a hybrid memoir that helps us see ourselves and relationships anew, and announces an exciting new talent in Rajiv Mohabir.” Mohabir’s memoir certainly revels in the hybrid aspect of the form. There is an obvious autoethnographic element, as Mohabir attempts to trace his familial background, one that is complicated by multiple diasporic movements. One of the most interesting aspects of the early half of the memoir is Mohabir’s predicament in India. He feels as though he must closet not only his queer background but also his mixed-caste background. Another formal hybridity occurs because of Mohabir’s focus on the interlingual valences of song. Interspersed throughout the prose tracks, we get songs in their original language as well as the occasional translations of them. Mohabir’s interest in music certainly reminds us of the poetic aspect of the text. Brilliant, honest, and moving.
Buy the Book Here
Edited by Lina Jiang
It’s been a minute since I covered books out of the brilliant Restless Books, but I was certain that I wanted to spend some time with one of their latest offerings: Rajiv Mohabir’s Antiman: A Hybrid Memoir. I’ve been a huge fan of Mohabir’s poetry, and we earlier covered one of Mohabir’s collections, so it’s always an interesting thing when a poet turns to a more prose-y form.
Let’s let the marketing description get us off the ground: “Growing up a Guyanese Indian immigrant in Central Florida, Rajiv Mohabir is fascinated by his family’s abandoned Hindu history and the legacy of his ancestors, who were indentured laborers on British sugarcane plantations. In Toronto he sits at the feet of Aji, his grandmother, listening to her stories and songs in her Caribbean Bhojpuri. By now Aji’s eleven children have immigrated to North America and busied themselves with ascension, Christianity, and the erasure of their heritage and Caribbean accents. But Rajiv wants to know more: where did he come from, and why does he feel so out of place? Embarking on a journey of discovery, he lives for a year in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, perfecting his Hindi and Bhojpuri and tracing the lineage of his Aji’s music. Returning to Florida, the cognitive dissonance of confederate flags, Islamophobia, and his father’s disapproval sends him to New York, where finds community among like-minded brown activists, work as an ESL teacher, and intoxication in the queer nightlife scene. But even in the South Asian paradise of Jackson Heights, Rajiv feels like an outsider: ‘Coolie’; rather than Desi. And then the final hammer of estrangement falls when his cousin outs him as an ‘antiman’—a Caribbean slur for men who love men—and his father and aunts disown him. But Aji has taught Rajiv resilience. Emerging from the chrysalis of his ancestral poetics into a new life, he embraces his identity as a poet and reclaims his status as an antiman—forging a new way of being entirely his own.
Rapturous, inventive, and devastating in its critique of our own failures of inclusion, Antiman is a hybrid memoir that helps us see ourselves and relationships anew, and announces an exciting new talent in Rajiv Mohabir.” Mohabir’s memoir certainly revels in the hybrid aspect of the form. There is an obvious autoethnographic element, as Mohabir attempts to trace his familial background, one that is complicated by multiple diasporic movements. One of the most interesting aspects of the early half of the memoir is Mohabir’s predicament in India. He feels as though he must closet not only his queer background but also his mixed-caste background. Another formal hybridity occurs because of Mohabir’s focus on the interlingual valences of song. Interspersed throughout the prose tracks, we get songs in their original language as well as the occasional translations of them. Mohabir’s interest in music certainly reminds us of the poetic aspect of the text. Brilliant, honest, and moving.
Buy the Book Here
