“I’m a work-in-progress”: A Conversation with Anjali Enjeti

Anjali Enjeti is a writer and activist with two books out this year: the essay collection SOUTHBOUND and her debut novel THE PARTED EARTH

Anjali Enjeti is a writer and activist with two books out this year. Enjeti’s debut essay collection Southbound examines activism, hybrid identity, race, and feminism. In the collection, Enjeti probes complicity, allyship, and the evolution of her own social consciousness. In recent years, she cofounded the Georgia chapter of They See Blue, an organization focused on turning out the vote among Democrats of South Asian background. Where Southbound’s essays are tightly focused and personal, her debut novel, The Parted Earth, which will be published a month later, sweeps across time and space. The storytelling style is reminiscent of the novels of Lisa See or Gail Tsukiyama.

The Parted Earth opens on Partition of the subcontinent in 1947. The British broke the colony into two independent nation-states, India and Pakistan, before dissolving Crown rule. India would be secular. Pakistan would be a majority-Muslim country. Partition was the largest mass migration in human history, fracturing relations between neighbors of different faiths who had previously lived peacefully side by side, albeit under the boot of the British. Its traumatic effects can’t be overstated.

In the novel, Deepa, a Hindu teenager, has parents who are doctors; they refuse to stop treating Muslim patients during Partition, at considerable danger to themselves. She falls in love with a Muslim boy named Amir. The novel fast-forwards by decades to look at the fallout of Partition and the impact of this forbidden romance on the life of Deepa’s granddaughter, a former lawyer in the American South who goes on a quest to learn more.

I wanted to speak to Enjeti about her two books because they challenge certain stereotypes about Indian Americans that have been perpetuated over the last four decades, such as: we don’t have a progressive tradition, we’re not politically active, we readily embrace our role in this country as “model minorities,” we’re not complicated. I don’t know any Indian Americans who completely fit this bill.

Like Enjeti, I’m a writer of hybrid identity, though a different one. I haven’t previously read a book that explores how hybrid consciousness impacts one’s ability to persuade others that the world should be different. Belonging is weaponized in this art of persuasion; if you aren’t perceived as fully belonging to one group, you can’t speak about their experiences. The weaponization is manifold in India: You live in America, so be quiet about India; your parents did not have an arranged marriage, so you are not Indian; you are not a caste Hindu, so you’re inferior; and so on.

In the United States, the weaponization of belonging assumes many forms too: You are not white, so you are not American; you were not born in the States, so we won’t accept your cultural differences; you are brown or Black, so we will not give your arguments the persuasive authority we would grant the same arguments by a white person. I was taken with Enjeti’s books because they challenge the range of unspoken claims about belonging that our world makes. Her books show that it is possible to change and grow, as an activist and an individual, even though she didn’t have a clear literary roadmap for her own transformation as an Indian American of hybrid identity. They are books about change that I’m grateful my children, also of hybrid identity, will have a chance to read when they’re older, so they can more readily say to a riven world: We can be better than this.

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Anita Felicelli: I enjoyed the cultural complexity of The Parted Earth. It’s rare to see this degree of conscious global awareness in an American novel. How did you cultivate that awareness in your fiction?

Anjali Enjeti: Well first off, thank you for such a lovely compliment.

Many of the most difficult chapters of our world history have a global and generations-long impact. Survivors of the Partition dispersed all over the world, as did survivors of the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, the Rwandan genocide, and the Somali Civil War. The trauma and the stories from these events traveled with them and shaped the places they settled and the people that formed their communities. Partition happened in the subcontinent, but its legacy can be felt everywhere today.

While human struggles can be intimate, personal, and unique, they’re also universal. So much of what we endure as humans is interconnected, and this is a theme I wanted to emphasize in the novel. I say this not to essentialize events in history but to observe how they shape us in similar ways.

AF: Do you see any tension between the emotional complexity required by fiction (and that your own fiction incredibly demonstrates) and the focus required by activism?

AE: For me, they’re separate. Writing fiction is very much about the author’s voice and the author’s narrative, and hoping readers meaningfully connect with the stories. While fiction is an invitation to join a conversation, it’s a conversation on the author’s own terms, told in the individual author’s voice and from her perspective.

Organizing is about the collective, and how we can serve and empower as many people as possible by centering their experiences. It’s about creating space for others and uplifting them, and making sure that people of various backgrounds are given the microphone. In organizing, collective voices and perspectives are far more powerful than an individual’s.

While human struggles can be intimate, personal, and unique, they’re also universal.

AF: There are some horrifying scenes in The Parted Earth. I’m thinking not only of what happens to Deepa’s parents, but also the story of a Sikh character’s experience of Partition. Imagining scenes of horror can be cathartic, but it can also be overwhelming to imagine conflict in minute detail. Experiencing so much social strife even secondhand, through your fiction, has to be taxing on the psyche. Yet you managed to work hard through this last election cycle to organize South Asian Americans in They See Blue. How do you keep your spirits up to do the work of organization?

AE: My two worlds, and the two communities I roam in, are very separate. This helps tremendously. Hardly any of my Georgia organizing friends are writers. Some of them don’t even know I’m a writer. I prefer it this way, to be honest. Because when we’re doing the work of getting out the vote, no one is asking me how my books are coming along or what I’m working on next. I can focus solely on what’s in front of me. My fellow organizers are also ridiculously supportive. We laugh hard together. We cry hard together. So many times this past election cycle I’d send messages at 4 a.m. saying, I can’t do this anymore. I’m too scared and tired. Someone almost always responded immediately with exactly what I needed to hear.

What made this past election cycle particularly draining was the pandemic. Organizing for elections in previous years involved a lot of in-person contact, and this in-person contact fuels the soul in a way zoom calls don’t. I missed eating meals with other canvassers after we’d spent all day knocking on doors. I missed holding meetings at my home. I missed hugging my comrades. The in-person contact helped sustain me. I’m looking forward to getting back to this for the 2022 midterm elections.

Most of my close writer friends live in NYC or outside of Georgia. They’re not as intimately familiar with my day-to-day organizing work here. We don’t talk a ton about politics or elections, and again, this works well for me. When I turn to them to fret about how much I hate something I’m working on, I don’t necessarily care to talk about how my campaign signs were stolen again or all the times voters hung up on me when I was trying to speak to them on the phone. And this writing community has also been incredibly supportive of me. Being on the receiving end of so much love while writing and organizing keeps me going in every aspect of my life.

AF: I like how you describe mixed identity in Southbound: “Mixed people are oftentimes not seen as wholes, as authentically belonging to any race, culture, religion or ethnicity. We are aberrations or unicorns, rumors whispered among nosey neighbors.” What difficulties and/or benefits have you found in writing and organizing with a mixed identity?

AE: Goodness, I find it all so difficult. As a mixed person, I oftentimes feel as if I’m sucking too much oxygen out of the room while also erasing crucial aspects of my identity. And how I feel about being mixed is complicated and evolving. How I saw myself as a mixed-race brown woman five years ago is different than how I see myself now, and how I will see myself five years from now.

I want to tell stories from an authentic lens, and I want to organize without centering myself, but I also feel I need to be inclusive in order to reach as many people as possible. In organizing, we talk about meeting people where they are, and this is what I hope to achieve as an author. This means I write the story I’m compelled to write, but also give enough background and context for readers who are not familiar with the kinds of narratives I’m writing. In organizing, I have to work with people every day with whom I disagree on some issues, because I have to build a coalition with them. We either sink or swim together. So if I’m not actively working to create a space that we can both enter, safely, to commune with one another, I’ve failed.

I’d like to think my mixed identity makes engaging with others, whether as an author or an organizer, more natural for me, but it’s not. I’m a work in progress. I’m as flawed and fallible as the next person and oftentimes feel as if I’m holding my hands out in front of me in a dark room and searching for a light switch.

Being on the receiving end of so much love while writing and organizing keeps me going in every aspect of my life. 

AF: What responsibility should a writer have to his or her own community? To what extent do you believe it’s part of a novelist’s work to try to influence her own community to do better with regard to Islamophobia, for example? What is the role of politics in fiction?

AE: We have a huge responsibility to our own communities, whether we are writers or not. We need to encourage our own folks to do better and unpack their own biases, whatever those biases may be. Writers, especially, know how to communicate well and effectively and have a pretty good idea about how to bring up and dissect tough issues. We should, I feel, be at the forefront of doing this work.

I’ve written many opinion pieces about white supremacy, xenophobia, and Islamophobia. They will pass right over the heads of some people who read them, including those who truly believe they’re not engaging in bigotry. But some people can more easily see the truth of how they marginalize others in fiction, because it’s more subtle, not so didactic, and they’re not being directly called out for their problematic beliefs. In a novel we’re saying, “Look, here’s a serious issue. How did we get here? What part do we all play?” Fiction can open the eyes of readers who are otherwise resistant to seeing what they need to see about themselves. So yes, to answer your question, I do think politics play an important role in fiction.

AF: In order to organize, you have to be able to call people in. How did you think through the political critiques you levy in The Parted Earth and Southbound? For instance, there are Indian Americans that support the RSS, the far-right paramilitary organization, yet also support causes progressives support, such as environmental causes. They might feel defensive about critiques of India and Hindu nationalism and shut down. Did you worry about how the Hindu American community or any other community might receive the novel? How do we build coalitions and also critique?

AE: I have been trolled, harassed, and threatened as both an activist and a writer based on what I’ve said about the RSS, Prime Minister Modi, and the BJP, so much so that I now do a fair amount of self-censorship online. But we all have very important work to do as a community to dismantle the belief that far-right extremism has anything to do with any religion or any nation. The critique of far-right extremism, how it operates, and who it affects the most isn’t a critique of a faith or a people. It’s a critique of institutions, governments, and bad actors in power who weaponize their ideology to commit violence against minorities. In the case of Hindu nationalism, it’s a critique of how some Hindus weaponize Hinduism against Muslims, Dalits, and other minorities. And it’s everyone’s responsibility, whether Hindu, non-Hindu, Indian, non-Indian, to call this out—no matter what continent it’s happening on.

In organizing, we talk about how important it is to abstain from judgment and not denigrate folks just because they’re not as far along in their understanding of equality and justice. But it’s very difficult to begin these conversations when people refuse to see the hypocrisy involved in supporting progressive causes and condemning discrimination in one country but not in another. And people are dying from far-right extremism. This is a dire situation. We don’t have the luxury of time to teach or explain why views are harmful to the people holding them. To be honest, at times I feel like throwing my hands up in the air and giving up.

Fiction can open the eyes of readers who are otherwise resistant to seeing what they need to see about themselves.

AF: The story of Harjeet, a Sikh man migrating with his family during Partition, is violent and intense. It’s brief, only two and a half chapters of the novel, but it’s going to stay with me. What was your thought process for writing such a sensitive, potentially controversial storyline for a character with whom (I believe) you don’t share an identity?

AE: That’s correct, I do not share an identity with Harjeet. His story reflects one of the darkest chapters of Partition, and it was not uncommon. Folks from every ethnic/religious group on the subcontinent participated in it. It’s based on firsthand testimony I uncovered during my research. For a long time, I wrestled with whether or how to tell his story. The last thing I wanted was for a survivor of Partition to read this novel and think, “This is tragedy porn,” or to feel as if their community is being maligned.

I did a few things to make sure I got Harjeet and his family right, as well as the other characters, including Amir and Laila, who are Muslim. I hired two authenticity editors with similar racial/ethnic/religious backgrounds. These editors’ ancestors had also survived Partition, and they knew their stories. Even after I worked through suggested revisions, I worried about whether the book would cause harm. So I also hired a historian who collects and archives Partition accounts to read all the parts of the book that take place during Partition. I’m glad I did. She made suggestions to alter crucial details that I’d not uncovered in my own research.

I could not, nor would not, write an entire novel about Harjeet—I’m not capable of it. Nor could I have written an entire novel about Amir or Laila, from their points of view. The presence of these three characters loom large throughout the book, and their roles are vital. But their actual appearances are limited, and that’s intentional. I know my limitations as a writer.

I also did not presume I could write Deepa’s story any better than Harjeet’s, Amir’s, or Laila’s simply because my identity is a (slightly) closer match to hers. I was just as scrupulous about how I portrayed her. I’ve never really believed, actually, that shared or partially shared identities automatically confer accuracy, authenticity, or truthfulness in character-building or storytelling. The Parted Earth revolves around Shan, whose father is Indian and whose mother is white, and my own father is Indian, and my own mother is mixed-race but white passing, but I could have just as easily gotten Shan completely wrong. I’m no authority on writing biracial or multiracial characters just because I’m multiracial.

Writing any characters well, I believe, comes down to approaching the subject and characters humbly, with great intention, understanding the risk of harm to marginalized communities, interrogating internalized biases, and collaborating with professionals to catch what you will inevitably miss as a storyteller. Paranoia, doubt, and the fear of not getting it right are healthy and helpful emotions when we’re telling tough stories.

AF: I found the role of Gertrude in The Parted Earth intriguing. From Southbound, I know that Gertrude was the name of your grandmother who grew up in Austria during the era of Nazi Germany, whose father was turned in for betraying the Third Reich. The character Gertrude tries to be a good friend to Deepa, the initial protagonist of the novel, and her small son. And yet she finds herself overstepping. It read to me as a blunder that is common among people who are trying to be allies. What do you believe the role of an ally is? How do we show solidarity without overstepping?

AE: Yes, Gertrude is loosely based on my real grandmother of the same name, and in The Parted Earth, the fictional Gertrude confuses her love for her dear friend Deepa as having the right to do what she thinks is best.

I find questions about allyship and solidarity so difficult to answer, though, because while I actively interrogate my internalized bigotry and try to change my problematic behavior, I still have a lot to learn. Generally speaking, I think of solidarity as a verb, an active state of awareness, action, and being. More often than not, allyship feels performative—it’s more about how our actions appear to others rather than whether these actions can effectuate change.

Here are some of the questions I regularly ask myself while engaging in this kind of work: Who do I consider “my community,” and who and why are some folks excluded from this group? Am I spending the majority of my time amplifying the words and actions of marginalized folks, or am I centering myself? Am I accepting credit from others instead of diverting or at least sharing the credit with folks who have been doing the same work longer and more effectively? Do I need to have my voice in every conversation about justice, or am I helping communities more if I stay silent, listen, and then work to change my behavior? And above all else, am I bringing others along on my journey of learning?