… for three very different books, all released in March/April 2009.
Maybe we can all schedule a reading together. 🙂
Three book covers…
Reply
Category Archives: My Writing
Post-yoga fashion dialogue
Vegas boots with hat-scarf knitted by mum.
Guy: Wow! Awesome boots! I would totally wear those— I mean, er, I wouldn’t, but… I mean, nice boots!
Me: Thanks.
Guy (to his female friend): Look at her boots!
Woman: Wow, those are great! I have some shoes, some shoes that are that color—
Me: It’s a good color…
Woman: Yea, but those boots are great.
Me: … goes with everything.
Woman (looking at crazy combo of what I’m wearing: short navy-blue yoga pants, sweater with grey-purple-green stripes, silver puffy down vest, and orange-yellow hat-scarf my mother knitted): You are, like, so adorable! Oh my gosh!
Haha. Have I finally learned (in my late 30s!) how to dress myself in a way that doesn’t require wearing all black?? Or maybe we were all stoned on post-yoga bliss… Mainly I was just trying to stay warm, especially because San Francisco has been impersonating the Windy City this week.
I do adore this hat-scarf creation, with its retro colors, because it keeps my little ears cozy. My mother designed it herself; she’s a talented knitter, crocheter, and macrame-er. I love the hat-scarf so much that I wear it all the time, except of course when I need to wear a tiara.
Amazon Update
Quick take
Coupon for 20% off at Powells.com, where “all books are created equal.” (Use by Thursday.)
Link to IndieBound to order online from a network of independent bookstores, or find the one nearest you.
In case you missed it all, read my previous post and this good, smart wrap-up blog entry that has most of the relevant links and says why this matters.
Slower take
I’m relieved that Amazon has restored rankings and full citizenship to all of the books affected by what the company is now calling a “ham-fisted” error. (What does that even mean? Do hams have fists? Is it bad when they do?) That statement was an upgrade from the first press release, which called the de-ranking of tens of thousands of books a “glitch.” Still, the latest official words fall far short of apology or explanation.
In the void of any real information, various theories have been floating around, some quite creative: confused French programmer, Internet troll, right-wing conspiracy, etc. A storm on Twitter and Facebook on Sunday led the mainstream media (L.A. Times, N.Y. Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc.) to pick up the story on Monday, and NPR’s Laura Sydell interviewed me on “All Things Considered.” In the end, Amazon said 57,310 books had been affected.
At my own publishing house, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Stacey D’Erasmo’s The Sky Below, Cris Beam’s Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers, and Anais Nin’s Little Birds were among those that, along with mine, were stripped of sales rankings and categories, which made the books invisible on lists and some searches.
A whole lot of people are still mad at Amazon for either causing or allowing this mess to happen, and as one of the owners of my local independent bookstore said, “This is why it’s not a good idea to have one company dominate book distribution.”
We might never know what happened inside Amazon, but check out the links at the top of this note for other ways to get your books online: just as quick, just as convenient, and a lot less prone to ham-fistedness.
Amazon and Invisibility
Action
Sign the protest petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy.
Call Amazon customer service: 1-866-216-1072.
Call Amazon executive customer service: 1-800-201-7575.
Complain via an email form: http://bit.ly/amazoncomplain.
Complain via email to Amazon’s “executive customer service”: ecr@amazon.com .
Twitter using the #amazonfail hashtag.
If you belong to a group that cares about books or rights, encourage your organization to make a public statement.
Background
Or, How Amazon Disappeared Me (Us)
As a new author, I try to keep tabs on how my book is doing. I’m not obsessive about it (really! I swear!), but I did notice the other day that my Amazon sales ranking — that little number that says my book is the 15,000th bestselling book of the moment, or whatever — had disappeared. I thought maybe I hadn’t logged in properly, or it was a temporary glitch, and figured I’d try again later.
Now, thanks to blogger and publisher Mark Probst, I know why:
Amazon had stripped all books labeled “Gay & Lesbian” of their rankings, categories, and searchability. That meant the main entry for my book — which was listed under “Gay & Lesbian” as well as “Nonfiction,” “Biographies & Memoirs,” “History,” etc. — no longer showed up under an Amazon search for either “Leaving India” or my name.
Outrageous.
Probst broke the story early Sunday morning in his livejournal blog after receiving a response from customer service saying that Amazon was instituting a policy to prevent “adult” content from showing up in searches. He figured out that Amazon was excluding all titles labeled “Gay & Lesbian” from searches, when one of his young adult titles was de-ranked.
Suddenly, anything gay was rated X.
As a means of protecting customers who might not want to see explicit material, the policy was wildly inconsistent:
Straight romances were ranked, gay romances were de-ranked. Among the classics, D.H. Lawrence’s scandalously heterosexual novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was visible, while James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” wasn’t. The DVD “Tristan’s Taormino’s Expert Guide to Anal Sex” showed up in a search for her name, but the current edition of her book “The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women” didn’t; if you looked for the book, you would only see an out-of-print listing.
And my book, which has zero explicit sexual content and approximately one kiss (no tongue), wasn’t showing up on a search, while a similar (straight) book that’s packaged with mine was. Gayness trumped all other categories. A little bit of gay was enough to disappear a book.
It’s unclear what criteria Amazon was using besides the “Gay & Lesbian” label, but an awful lot of titles were suddenly rendered invisible.
I called customer service and politely asked the nice representative to please register that I object to the new policy that makes it impossible to find gay, lesbian, and adult titles through a search. (Phone: 1-866-216-1072. Email form: http://bit.ly/amazoncomplain)
Then I started digging.
Until now, “Gay & Lesbian” on Amazon.com was a content label similar to “Home & Garden,” “Mysteries & Thrillers,” etc. It was a marketing label designed to make it easier for customers to find books that were of interest to them. Amazon was now using the label as a way to exclude rather than include books. But its menu still listed “Gay & Lesbian” books — 22,381 of them — so I clicked on a random selection.
I found that, without exception, all of the titles were de-ranked — meaning that the main entries for these books would not show up in searches.
This included titles that have a long and valiant history of being censored, as well as others that make you go “hmmm”:
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf
• Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity by Chandra Mohanty
• A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
• A History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault
• The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk by Randy Shilts
• Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation by Cokie Roberts (note to self: gotta check that one out for racy content!)
• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
• Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
• Prayers for Bobby: A Mother’s Coming to Terms with the Suicide of Her Gay Son by Leroy Aarons (a late friend, founder of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association)
• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
• Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
• Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
• Reconstructing Gender: A Multicultural Anthology by Estelle Disch
• The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals by Stephanie A. Brill and Rachel Pepper
• The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman
• The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir by Staceyann Chin
• Michael Tolliver Lives by Armistead Maupin
As I pulled out titles I recognized from the thousands on the Amazon gay=bad list, I first felt proud to be in such good company.
But scrolling through page after page of de-ranked titles, I felt profoundly sad that all of this amazing work — the genius of our community, heartfelt stories of true experience, our deepest intellectual and emotional grapplings — had been deemed, not to mince words, obscene. Inappropriate. Wrong. Bad. Needing to be zapped out of existence.
And then, as I kept going, I noticed that the policy had… changed!
Suddenly, the books started showing up in searches again. Including mine.
But as of right now, the sales rankings are still missing. This means that titles tarred with the “Gay & Lesbian” brush can never show up in, for example, bestseller lists on Amazon — since bestsellers are defined by rankings. On a personal level it also means that a week ago, for example, I could see that my book was #22 of Biographies & Memoirs –> Ethnic, and #18 of Gay & Lesbian –> Biographies & Memoirs, and so on. Now, that information is simply gone. To me this was a narcissistic exercise; to a prospective book-buyer, the sales rankings might range from totally uninteresting to mildly influential.
In addition, the loss of categories means that you can’t get to my book from another book. If you’re looking at Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, and you click on > History > Asia > India to find similar books, you won’t find mine. Gayness, it seems, trumps all other categories; if you do manage to get to the page for my book, you won’t see any categories describing its content.
Bottom line: Gay books now have second-class citizen status on Amazon.
I’m grateful for the grassroots power of the Internet that caused Amazon to rescind the most punitive aspect of its new policy, less than twelve hours after Probst posted his blog entry.
I’m shocked by the fact that, in 2009, the mere presence of “Gay & Lesbian” content can deem a book inappropriate — not by some hick rightwing school board in Texas, but by the largest bookseller in the United States.
I’m saddened and angered by the continuing differential treatment.
And I’m firmer than ever in my support of independent bookstores, where books aren’t sold by algorithm but out of love and an unwavering commitment to authors, stories, and freedom of speech.
Book tour pictures – Part 1
I’ve had a great time over the past few weeks jet-setting and Amtrak-ing hither and thither to talk about the book. Of course I wore my tiara as much as possible. I think it’s part of my gender now.
The fun continues: I have San Francisco events coming up on April 10 (call in to KQED radio’s “Forum” show and ask me a question!), April 11 (Writers With Drinks), and May 9 (K’Vetsh). My summer plans include Chicago, New York, Boston, Las Vegas… so please stay tuned and do get in touch if you have contacts and/or want to help me plan fun activities in your town!
If you want to check out any of the recent interviews I’ve been doing, I am posting the links (audio/video/text) as soon as I receive them here.
And here are a few moments from my adventures…
March 1: Pre-launch…
My awesome friends got together at El Rio in SF to give me a fun sendoff. Here I am with Amber Field, the talented ladybug who made my video book trailer for Leaving India.
March 6-7: In New York, I got to be part of a panel and evening reading during a literary festival curated by the amazing women of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective. I was inspired by everyone’s work and by the beauty and collective power of fierce brown women artists.
(>> photo by Preston Merchant)
March 18: Official launch day!
I started the day at BBC Studios in NY, taping a short segment with the radio program “The World” (click here to listen).
In the evening, many sweet cool people —including a friend from high school and my cousin from Florida/South Africa — joined me for a sparkly celebration at Leela Lounge.
Tonight I’m going to the APIQWTC banquet in Oakland. We pronounce it “app uh cute see”… Gotta go get cute now, so I’ll post more pictures from the actual readings and such soon.
Live web radio today!
I’ll be doing a ‘virtual reading’ and conversation with live callers today, 10am-11am California time, 1pm-2pm Eastern Standard Time (see your local time here: http://bit.ly/minaltime ). I’d love to hear your questions and comments, as well as your own diaspora stories. A few of my relatives who appear in the book may also join the conversation. We’re expecting callers and commenters from around the world so please join us if you like!
Here’s how to listen or participate:
ONLINE:
listen live or later at
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/saja/2009/03/26/Minal-Hajratwala-author
hit “click to talk” to talk
or join the live text chat
BY PHONE:
listen live by calling +1-347-324-5991
press 1 to talk
For further information please check out the hosting organization, the New York-based South Asian Journalists Association: http://www.sajaforum.org/2009/03/books-minal-hajratwalas-leaving-india.html
First reviews!
Quick post to say I’m so excited to read these first reviews of my book — what a great way to begin the weekend!
San Francisco Chronicle review by ABRAHAM VERGHESE:
Leaving India gives us a means to understand the forces that took so many Indians (my parents included) away from their birth land … Echoes of V.S. Naipaul … Rich, entertaining and illuminating.
Washington Post review by SADIA SHEPARD:
Meticulously researched and evocatively written … searingly honest … Leaving India is a story of migration, but it is also, as Hajratwala reminds us, about “the ones we leave behind.”
I heart New York
So busy, so full of art and dirt and food and hunger, so hot (art again, pretty people, trendspotting), so cold (I love my coat and the hat-scarf my mother made for me), and so much fun!
I landed at JFK at 10:30 p.m. last Wednesday; was welcomed with frigid air, a warm car, and a home-cooked aloo-gobi sabzi; danced with the stars and (mostly) their friends at Basement Bhangra; re-learned the subways; and entered a whirlwind of activities as part of the weekend SAWCC Literary Festival, “Stranger Love.”
As I embark on my own book tour, I was interested to see how two experienced South Asian American authors, Jhumpa Lahiri and Suketu Mehta, held forth on their work in almost opposite ways. Jhumpa was reserved and is an obviously very private person, so her stage conversation with author/journalist Sugi Ganeshananthan revealed few surprises. I did like what Jhumpa said about writing: “Books are my religion, but I dare to write them.”
Suketu and I, along with a third journalist/author, S. Mitra Kalita, were on a panel together that was moderated by the lovely Pooja Makhijani. (By the way, I’m including links so you can check out all these authors; Pooja’s site also has great recommendations for teachers and parents, as she is a children’s author among other her talents.) Suketu was funny and personable, told stories about interviewing torturers and assassins, and seemed extremely comfortable talking about his book.
Later, at the closing evening reading, I was part of a lineup of great writers/performers and got to wear my tiara. I enjoyed every minute, even though by that time I was exhausted after several late nights in a row. The audience was sweet, enthusiastic, and large! I had an amazing time at the festival and enjoyed reconnecting with old friends as well as meeting new people. It was such a privilege to land and have an immediate connection to the strong, vibrant, South Asian women’s artistic community here.
Amid all that, I didn’t have a chance to mention to anyone that I posted a few days ago about the inner workings of my book promotion process on this group blog … so if you’re interested in the deep background, you can read all about it now!
I also did an interview with this online publication (click on page 1 and then page 16 to read both parts), aimed at readers in Gujarat, where my family originates. The headline refers to me as an “NRG Author,” and it took me a minute to realize that the abbreviation stands for Non-Resident Gujarati. Very amusing.
This week, I am guest-lecturing at an NYU comparative diasporas seminar, meeting with my agent and editor, socializing, sending millions of emails, fielding inquiries, and generally getting ready for next week’s launch/travel/media extravaganza. I’ve updated my events page with more details, a new San Francisco event in May, and several public radio shows. Both the Leonard Lopate show (NY, 3/23) and Against the Grain (Berkeley, 3/25) are call-in shows… so please call me!
love,
Minal
LEAVING INDIA book tour and launch
Here’s a list of my book tour and launch events! Would love to see you there. NY, DC, LA, SF, and more, March and April 2009.
View as Google calendar
View as Facebook events
3/18/09 Official Launch Date!
3/18/09 Radio: “The World” from PRI
When: Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Where: More than 200 public radio stations across the United States. Listen online at www.theworld.org or use the station finder to find the schedule for your local public radio station.
3/19/09 Washington DC: Reading
When: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Where: Politics & Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Contact: 202-363-7663, eventspolitics@prose.com
3/21/09 Pawling, NY: Reading
When: Saturday, March 21, 2009, 3:00pm
Where: The Book Cove
22 Charles Colman Blvd., Pawling, NY 12564
Contact: 845-855-9590, info@pawlingbookcove.com
3/23/09 Radio: The Leonard Lopate Show
When: Monday, March 23, 2009; 12:40 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Where: WNYC radio, FM 93.9 and AM 820, or listen online.
3/23/09 New York: Reading/Reception
When: Monday, March 23, 2009, 6:00pm – 7:30pm
Where: Corner Bookstore
1313 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
Contact/RSVP: 212-831-3554 or cornerbook@aol.com
Introduced by Samuel G. Freedman, author and professor of journalism, Columbia University. Wine and cheese reception and book signing to follow. Co-sponsored by the South Asian Journalists Association.
3/25/09 Radio: Against the Grain with C.S. Soong
When: Wednesday, March 25, 2009, 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Contact: 510-848-4425, http://againstthegrain.org
Author Minal Hajratwala will discuss the phenomenal growth of India’s diaspora with “Against the Grain” host C.S. Soong, in a wide-ranging conversation encompassing colonialism, racism, migration policy, queerness, and more. Please call in with your questions and comments at 1-510-848-4425.
3/26/09 San Francisco: Reading and Launch Party
When: Thursday, March 26, 2009, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Where: The Booksmith
1644 Haight Street, San Francisco
Contact: 415-863-8688, events@booksmith.com
Introduced by Sandip Roy, host of New America Now on KALW (FM 91.7). Launch party to follow with book signings, drinks, snacks by mom, and tunes by *dj kbug*.
3/30/09 Pleasanton, California: Reading
When: Monday, March 30, 2009, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Where: Pleasanton Library
400 Old Bernal Avenue, Pleasanton, CA
Contact: 925-931-3400
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
4/2/09 Los Angeles: Reading/Conversation
When: Thursday, April 2, 2009, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Where: ALOUD series presented by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles
630 West 5th Street, Los Angeles, CA
Contact: 213-228-7472, lstein@lapl.org
In conversation with Swati Pandey, reporter, Los Angeles Times.
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
5/3/09 San Francisco: Reading
When: Sunday, May 3, 2009, 7:30pm – 10:30pm
Where: K’Vetsh at EROS Lounge, 2051 Market at Church, San Francisco, CA
Contact: 415-255-4921
Featured reader at K’Vetsh Queer Open Mic, one of the longest running queer open mics in SF, located at the fabulous, scandalous, and intimate EROS Lounge.
Free. All Genders 18+ welcome.
‘Slumdog’: Don’t just watch, do something
Long after the Oscar parties fade into tomorrow’s hangover, the reality of the suffering portrayed in “Slumdog Millionaire” will persist. If the film moved you and you want to know, “Why isn’t anyone DOING anything about this horrible situation?” … well, maybe someone is. And maybe that someone could be you. Read on for scenes from the movie, the corresponding reality, and what’s being done about it.
movie: Jamal rescues a pre-teen Latika from a brothel where she is forced to dance for older men.
reality: Hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked into prostitution in India, with Mumbai’s red-light district being one of the largest and most brutal in the world. I give to the Global Fund for Women, an amazing U.S.-based foundation that funds grassroots groups for girls and women around the world, with a special focus on trafficking issues. The groups they fund work to free girls from prostitution; give them options for physical, emotional, and economic recovery; and prevent girls from being sold or kidnapped into the trade in the first place. Learn more about trafficking, donate now or shop your values.
movie: Poor children hustle to make ends meet, work for unscrupulous characters, and don’t go to school.
reality: Elimination of child labor is tough organizing work that has to be done child by child, neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community. Moving children from hustling, begging, and informal labour into schools also requires empowering their caretakers through programs such as micro-loans supporting small-scale entrepreneurialism by women. Hand in Hand is an India-based non-profit that works to end child labor in rural Tamil Nadu and “aims at building self-reliance of disadvantaged groups by alleviating poverty through sustained income generating programmes.” Read a BBC article about the work of Hand in Hand or visit the organization’s website.
movie: Poop scene, women washing clothes in public pool.
reality: Yep, sewage and water are not sexy issues but they are huge. Informal settlements such as Dharavi, though they are often referred to as slums, are larger than most cities in the world — yet basic services are lacking. Lack of access to clean water and sewage leads to poor health outcomes for children and adults. The Society for Human and Environmental Development (SHED) works on these important issues in Dharavi; the writing on the website is a bit random and hard to wade through, but here’s a much better article on their work.
movie: People climb on garbage heaps, picking through refuse and living there.
reality: Yes, this is how some of the poorest Indians eke out a living. ACORN International’s Dharavi Project is working to organize rag pickers and waste collectors (those children climbing the garbage piles in the movie) in Dharavi. The international wing of ACORN is affiliated with the U.S. ACORN “community organizers” who were subject of a manufactured controversy during the Obama campaign. Both ACORNs do amazing, from-the-ground-up community organizing that aims to empower the disempowered to advocate for their own rights and make needed changes in their own community, rather than take a top-down “charity” approach.
movie: Children of the Dharavi slum go through all kinds of shit, no adults help them.
reality: yeah, children of Dharavi go through all kinds of shit. The adults and organizations around them are severely under-funded to meet the need. Maybe that’s where we in the privileged West can make a contribution, if we educate ourselves a little bit. So in addition to the organizations above, here are few more groups and resources:
SNEHA, the Society of Nutrition, Education & Health Action, was formed in 1999 “by a group of concerned doctors and social workers to address the special needs of women and children in urban slums.” Here’s an article about their Kishori Project in Dharavi: “In Asia’s largest slum, the Kishori project is introducing young girls to reproductive healthcare, pregnancy care, HIV/AIDS and more. As added inducement, low cost trainings in computers and tailoring are drawing them to the centre for a chance to earn and save money.”
“Slumdog Millionaire” actor and Bollywood star Anil Kapoor has donated his entire fee from the movie to a children’s charity called Plan India. Article here, Plan India website here.
Dharavi.org is a multimedia wiki website designed to gather information, images, and ideas on Dharavi in Mumbai. Specifically, it offers a space to discuss the Dharavi Redevelopment Project and its alternatives.
*DO YOU KNOW of an organization, site, or resource that should be on this list? Please post a comment on the blog, or email me and I’ll update the list.
**PLEASE NOTE that this list is not vetted thoroughly; you should always check out organizations to your own satisfaction before transferring funds, especially internationally.