[Reader-list] "Suburban Sahibs" released in South Asia

[zehra rizvi]

dear sarai people..

i have read this book and will be (hopefully!) interviewing mitra on my 
radio show in NJ.....please help her out if you can since the book is really 
very wonderful.
i am going to cc her on this email so please feel free to get in touch with 
her if you need to.

best,
zehra.

mitra, if you havent already, check out sarai.net

>From: "S. Mitra Kalita" <smkalita at yahoo.com>
>To: saja-disc at lists.jrn.columbia.edu, students 
<sajastudents at yahoogroups.com>,  sawcc <sawcc at yahoogroups.com>
>Subject: [sawcc] STORY IDEA: "Suburban Sahibs" released in 
South Asia
>Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 21:02:37 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Review copies (journalists only):
>hemali.sodhi at penguin-india.com.
>
>Interviews: smkalita at yahoo.com or call 202-607-6836
>
>Hi, all:
>
>I'd like to thank you for your support of my book,
>"Suburban Sahibs: Three immigrant families and their
>passage from India to America." Initially published by
>Rutgers University Press, the book sold out of its
>first edition, is currently in a second printing and
>should be out in paperback next year. None of that
>would have been possible without community support and
>favorable press (including a New York Times book
>review).
>
>I'm writing to ask for your help now as the book
>launches in South Asia and Singapore, published by
>Penguin-India. If you are a journalist in those
>countries, please consider doing a review or story on
>the book. If you live there, please approach your
>local bookstores and ask for the title. If you have
>family or media contacts on the subcontinent, please
>do forward this e-mail to them.
>
>For review copies (journalists only), contact:
>hemali.sodhi at penguin-india.com.
>
>For interviews, feel free to contact me via e-mail at
>smkalita at yahoo.com or at 202-607-6836. If you need me
>to call you at an overseas number, please send me an
>e-mail and the best time to do so.
>
>Below, I've included the blurb from the Penguin
>edition, a bio and a just-published piece in the
>Economic Times (of India). More information is
>available at www.desiwriter.com.
>
>Thank you again for all your support.
>
>Best,
>
>Mitra
>
>00000000000000000000000
>
>American-Born Confused Desi, Emigrated From Gujarat,
>Housed In Jersey, Keeping Lotsa Motels, Named
>Omkarnath Patel…
>
>Many Indians know that thousands of their compatriots
>live in New Jersey, USA, but the realities of these
>immigrants’ lives are often obscured by the image of
>the wealthy NRI. In this pioneering profile of one of
>America’s most dynamic ethnic communities, S. Mitra
>Kalita, an award-winning journalist at the Washington
>Post, enters the lives of three families – the
>Kotharis, Patels and Sarmas – and shows how varied the
>Indian experience can be in one US locality.
>
>Increasingly moving straight to the suburbs rather
>than ‘paying their dues’ in a city, New Jersey’s
>newest Indians soon face problems of transportation,
>affordable housing and, on occasion, resentful
>reactions to their growing success. The fates of those
>on professional visas are tied to the economy, but
>others have continual difficulty finding jobs; Harish
>Patel, a former banker, returns to Baroda several
>times in defeat, declaring the US an ‘awful, lonely,
>back-breaking place to live and work.’ Pradip Kothari,
>who owns a travel agency, gets so weary of Indians’
>lack of representation that he runs for political
>office.
>
>Yet while parents struggle, their children often
>excel, and they are all in good company: the largest
>celebration of Navratri outside India now takes place
>in Edison, New Jersey. ‘Whiz kids Sankumani and
>Shravani Sarma,’ says Kalita, ‘left a rapidly
>Americanizing India only to find a rapidly Indianizing
>America.’ Lucid and sympathetic, Housed in Jersey puts
>a human face on India’s massive diaspora.
>
>00000000000000000000000
>
>S. MITRA KALITA is an education reporter at The
>Washington Post and serves as president of the South
>Asian Journalists Association. She is the author of
>"Suburban Sahibs: Three immigrant families and their
>passage from India to America," published by Rutgers
>University Press (2003) and Penguin-India (2004). She
>has written extensively about immigration and the
>South Asian diaspora. She previously worked for
>Newsday in New York City as a business reporter,
>carving a beat out of immigration and the economy. In
>the aftermath of Sept. 11, she did extensive reporting
>on the backlash faced by Arabs and South Asians in the
>New York area, and authored a chapter in a book about
>the experience ("At Ground Zero: The Young Reporters
>Who Were There Tell Their Stories"). She has reported
>from Buffalo and Bombay, and many points in between.
>Mitra graduated from Rutgers University, Phi Beta
>Kappa, with a bachelor's in history and journalism.
>She received her master's degree from Columbia
>University Graduate School of Journalism. Mitra has
>received numerous awards for her work, is featured in
>the "Best Business Stories of 2003" and was most
>recently named Young Journalist of the Year by the New
>York State Associated Press Association. The daughter
>of immigrants from Assam, she was born in New York
>City and has lived in Long Island, New Jersey and
>Puerto Rico. She now lives in  Washington, D.C., with
>her husband, artist Nitin Mukul.
>
>00000000000000000000000000000
>
><http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/709544.cms>
>
>Helping America understand Indian Immigrants
>ISHANI DUTTAGUPTA
>
>TIMES NEWS NETWORK
>
>MONDAY, MAY 31, 2004 01:14:31 AM
>
>S Mitra Kalita has helped the American public
>understand immigrants better through her writing The
>author of Suburban Sahibs-three immigrant families and
>their passage from India to America, S Mitra Kalita,
>is in many ways telling her own story and that of her
>family in the narrative non-fiction work.
>
>The difference is that a lot of second generation
>Indian immigrants have been writing about themselves,
>while Kalita focuses more on her parents’ generation.
>
>“When I started working on this book, a lot of the
>work coming from my generation was about us. While I
>applaud this, some of the works tended to dismiss the
>experience of people like my parents' - seemingly
>average experiences of working hard, saving money,
>buying houses, sending kids to college, wanting a
>better life for their kids than they had. In my book,
>I really tried to get inside the heads of immigrants,
>to understand their displacement, their desires, as
>well as those for their kids,” says Kalita who is a
>reporter at The Washington Post and serves as
>president of the South Asian Journalists Association
>(SAJA).
>
>She has written extensively about immigration and the
>South Asian diaspora even in her previous job with
>Newsday in New York City as a business reporter,
>carving a beat out of immigration and the economy.
>
>“I think my reportage and writing on South Asians
>stems mainly from two places: a desire to help a
>public better understand the subcontinent and its
>diverse diaspora, and a desire to better understand
>myself, my family and where we came from. You cannot
>understand the second generation without attempting to
>understand the first,’’ says Kalita who is a graduate
>from Rutgers University, Phi Beta Kappa, with a
>bachelor's in history and journalism.
>
>She received her master's degree from Columbia
>University Graduate School of Journalism and has
>received numerous awards for her work, is featured in
>the Best Business Stories of 2003 and was most
>recently named Young Journalist of the Year by the New
>York State Associated Press Association.
>
>And her specialisation on the South Asian ethnic
>community has been a fillip for her career in
>journalism. “My background and interest in immigration
>has only positively affected my career. I am lucky to
>have a lot of control over the types of stories I
>pitch and write, so I try not to do stories that I
>don’t see as legitimately newsworthy. A good story is
>a good story, regardless of the subjects' colour of
>the skin. I work for a very large U.S. newspaper - the
>Washington Post - and feel it is incumbent upon people
>like me to bring stories of different communities, not
>just the Indian community, to the mainstream. Then
>only can we start to redefine the mainstream to
>include people like us,’’ she says.
>
>Kalita looks at three different Indian families from
>different economic groups rather than from different
>regions of India. “I think I tried to look at trends
>among Indians immigrating to the United States as an
>aggregate group. Certainly, regional distrinctions can
>be drawn but I felt like there was much more to be
>said about the eras in which immigrants landed on US
>shores, the India they left behind and the America
>they encountered.
>
>The distinctions _ geographic, linguistic, religious
>-- can also be drawn among Indians in India. I felt
>the increasing economic diversity of Indian immigrants
>(not all are wealthy and living in mansions) is a
>story that warranted telling, for both our community
>and a readership at large,’’ she feels
>
>“The goal was not to try to include every single type
>of Indian immigrant in the United States. The goal was
>to tell dramatic stories of real people who represent
>different waves of immigration into the American
>suburb,’’ she says.
>
>Her book has been set in the backdrop of suburban NYC
>in New Jersey mainly because of the economic diversity
>among the Indian community in that region. “In some
>ways the West Coast might be more progressive.
>However, the communities there have burgeoned largely
>due to the hi-tech boom, and I did not see the same
>economic diversity that I witnessed in New Jersey. But
>perhaps it exists and I just missed the signs,’’ she
>says.
>
>As for being compared to Jhumpa Lahiri, she doesn’t
>mind. “I admire her work greatly. But remember, my
>work is all nonfiction, rooted in real people and real
>stories,’’ she says. But unlike Lahiri, who chose to
>be married to her American fiance in Kolkata, Kalita
>recently married Nitin Mukul, a second generation
>Indian immigrant and an artist, in a traditional Hindu
>ceremony in New Jersey.
>
>-30-
>
>
>
>
>
>
>=====
>S. Mitra Kalita
>
>Order your copy of my book, "Suburban Sahibs," today! Details 
at www.desiwriter.com.
>
>
>
>
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