DIDIHOOD ~ Issue 62

Happy Spring, Didis!

This month, we're launching another year of The Didi Creative Fund, in collaboration with Tamil Women Rising and the South Asian and Tamil Women's Collective. We'll be awarding grants to support South Asian women and gender-diverse artists in their creative endeavours. Make sure to follow us on Instagram for updates on how to apply — and good luck! 

Also a huge shoutout to Didihood mentees Prapti and Rukhsar for being selected as this year's CBC News Joan Donaldson scholarship recipients, one of the most competitive placements in journalism in Canada.

Meet the Didi: 

This month we want Didis to get to know Anuja Varghese, a writer and editor based in Hamilton, Ont. Her work appeared in Hobart, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Plenitude Magazine, Southern Humanities Review and most recently, she released her debut short story collection Chrysalis.

When did you first start writing? And what pushed you into a writing career?
I have been writing stories basically from the moment I learned how to write, but I never considered creative writing as a career. Probably like a lot of second generation brown kids, my parents pushed me towards what they saw as a more stable career – perhaps in teaching or law (it was VERY clear VERY early that neither medicine nor engineering was in the cards for me), but I found my way into the nonprofit sector instead. What actually pushed me to pursue creative writing more seriously was when I unexpectedly lost my job in middle management at a national health charity. That moment was when I really had to ask myself what do you want to do? And the most true answer was that I wanted to write. So I started taking writing classes and finding a writing community. I connected with supportive mentors and eventually, started to get work published in literary magazines and anthologies. All those steps have led to right now, as I publish my first book!

Your work has appeared in multiple publications and you focus on a range of genres. How did you figure out which genre or style to write?
I have always been drawn to genre writing, whether it was romance or horror or fantasy. But for a long time, was worried that if I wrote “genre” fiction, I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a writer. I initially intended to write Literary-with-a-capital-L stories, but found that I was always writing something speculative on the side “just for fun.” When I started getting more feedback on my work, I was hearing loud and clear that it was those speculative stories – the ones full of ghosts and goddesses and magic and monsters – that readers were most interested in. I finally realized that I didn’t have to choose between “genre” and “literary” fiction, and that’s how Chrysalis came to be an intentionally genre-blending book.

You talk about the importance of having women as leads in your work, why is this important to you?
Chrysalis’ dedication page reads: “This book is for all the girls and women who don’t see themselves in most stories. You are worthy of reflection, despite what you have been told.” The idea of being “worthy of reflection” can mean two things: One, it can mean a throwing back or mirroring of. There were so few books with brown girl main characters when I was growing up. And even now, as an adult, bisexual, South Asian woman, I see myself reflected almost nowhere in mainstream media. So, in many ways, this is a dedication to myself, and to other readers who may discover a mirror somewhere in this book. Two, it can mean worthy of serious consideration. The women who dominate the pages of this book are just that. They are not sidekicks or victims. They are not predictable or well behaved. They demand attention. And I want readers of this book to remember that they have that power too.

Have you faced any barriers as a queer South Asian woman working in this space?
I’m quite lucky, I think, to have been really well supported by my publisher, House of Anansi Press, and by my peers in the literary community. I did have one writing class where I was workshopping a scene and the feedback from a few classmates was that “maybe the racism was a bit overt.” And I was like, well… yes, it certainly felt overt when it actually happened to me! That scene became the story in the book called Stories in the Language of the Fist and so many other brown women have messaged me to share the ways they felt seen by that story. I did worry when I was first shopping around the completed manuscript, that my stories might be too weird or too queer or too explicit in depicting ways brown women are robbed of power in everyday life. But now that it’s out in the world and readers are connecting with it, I’m so glad I didn’t give up on these stories.

Tell us more about your new project Chrysalis, why was it important to talk about the South Asian experience through a feminist lens?
The stories centre brown women and girls navigating family dynamics, sexuality, culture and community, and moments of transformation where all those intersect. The frame for South Asian diaspora experience, especially for women, tends to be pretty narrow. It’s widening for sure, and there are so many incredible didis out there doing this work to make space for South Asian women to be our authentic, creative, complex selves. Although we’re seeing more diverse representations of brown women’s lives emerging in media, it’s still rare to see South Asian queer and trans women, or polyamorous women, or women in positions of power – and even rarer still to see these women get to have pleasure and joy. South Asian communities can put a lot of expectations on women to look/love/behave in certain ways, and it felt important to me to use my writing to push back against that.

How much does your identity play into your writing? Why is this aspect important for you and representation?
In some ways, the intersections of my own identity play a huge part in my writing. For many years, I defaulted to writing straight white main characters in my stories because that’s all I had ever read. Now, I write almost exclusively brown characters and am intentional about making space for queer representation in my work. I have contributed work to a few different erotica anthologies and it was especially important for me to show brown women in this context because, ironically, brown women in books tend to be the least spicy! Many of the stories in Chrysalis have genre elements – so you’ll find some horror, some fairy tale, some magical realism. And by and large, brown characters are woefully underrepresented in these types of stories. So, it also felt important to place brown characters in these narratives, especially where the story itself doesn’t necessarily revolve around identity. It could be any family in that haunted farmhouse – it just happens to be a brown family in my book.

What would be your advice to other Didis wanting to work in this space?
Jump in! Everybody has a story to tell and the Canadian literary community needs more brown women and girls represented on the page. If you don’t know where to start, my advice would be to invest in sharpening your storytelling skills by taking a creative writing class or workshop. Start getting feedback on your work and honing your unique voice. Find out what’s going on locally (writing groups, readings, festivals, etc.) and use those opportunities to connect with mentors and other writers. Write what you are excited to read and don’t be afraid to put your work out there!

What we're reading:

Our feature on City News Toronto  'A special type of validation': grassroots grant supports South Asian women creatives

Sara Koonar Knows the Power of Social Media Influencers

— Arti Patel

Issue 62
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