Cirrus@Austlit

'My mother learnt everythIng she knew about white people from daytime TV. 
'She would watch, transfixed, flipping channels like a roving anthropologist. My mother's social circle was stolidly South Asian, in defiance of the political right and their notion of assimilation. The TV was a portal into a different kind of life, a blindingly white world with its own specific conventions.'  (Publication abstract)

'Watashi. Nadia's tongue grips the roof of her mouth. 

'The classroom is sparse: two rows of trapezoid desks, American exchange students with Orientalist tans. Nadia sits behind the Hawaiian woman, staring at the gleam of her lacquered ponytail. She is distracted by the way the woman's buttocks protrude from the back of her chair...' (Publication abstract)