Editorial
To all who are reading this, welcome back to the second issue of DesiLit Magazine.
The proliferation of creative nonfiction as a form of writing has become ubiquitous as far as exciting new writing is concerned. In fact, it appears to be especially fascinating to us South Asians. Here at Desilit, we certainly see more and more of the submissions coming our way bearing witness to that fact. What is it about it that attracts us so?
Many may contend that it is because the complexity of tragedy, drama, history, culture, and varying pressures all accumulate in the basic South Asian or desi experience growing up, thus driving our kin to the writing of true life fables as a form of self-therapy. While I see the evidence to back this up-after all who hasn't read childhood angst-ridden pieces of all types under this tradition-I feel that it is something else too. While we write as part of the diaspora or within South Asia, we all have family stories to tell, stories of melding together different cultures growing up, while trying to understand the nostalgia of our pining families. Back in the homeland the nostalgia may be about the things that were pre-Independence during the Raj, while in the diaspora, it is a different kind of nostalgia for home, the known life and the people left behind. This is often the catalyst that drives us to write-the desire to make sense of the tangling of feelings within our hearts, often deriving from our childhoods.
Setting aside its raison d'etre, whether we are for or against it, successful wielders or not, creative nonfiction is a form which has literally run away with our imaginations. Perhaps just as much as magic realism, which we reveled in for decades and can now actually marry with firework results to our everyday, real lives through creative nonfiction. Writing is, I think for many of us, a way to transform our experiences, and creative nonfiction appears to be the preferred amalgam of the real and unreal to allow us to do so.
Our current fascination with creative nonfiction aside, we successfully bring out the second issue of our magazine with many people who need to be mentioned for their efforts. The entire team of editors for an exceptional job of working with the waves of submissions and responding to them. Satya Gummuluri, Gita Lal, and Milan Zaveri for the wonderful look that we have for the Winter Issue. Our lovely web folk, Radha Gummuluri, Sita Bhaskar, Monisha Singhla, Milan Zaveri whose relentless efforts made it possible to put everything together online! Anjali and Nina for the copyediting work. Soumya, without whose publicity guns you would probably not be reading this right now. And as always, Mary Anne Mohanraj, whose ceaseless guidance and shoulder-to-cry-on-in-a-crisis are invaluable.
We also said goodbye to a number of wonderful people while others joined our team. Sunanda Mongia went on hiatus, and we hope that we shall have her rejoin our team in the near future.
We hope you will enjoy reading our magazine. And feel free to write to us with suggestions or sign up for future magazine updates by writing to magazine@desilit.org.
Sumita Sheth
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