About Writing Immigrant Narratives
I have been researching and writing stories about the immigrant Indian experience for more than two decades. In doing so, I started to realize that my stories -- while unique to me -- overlapped with other immigrant experiences and that those stories if told together had the potential to radically shift the meaning of America. I created a writing workshop entitled "Writing Immigrant Narratives" so that I could teach and guide others to tell their stories.
The premise of Writing Immigrant Narratives is simple: All of us come from an elsewhere. All of us have direct experience or family memories of that elsewhere. Few of us share those stories outside of our own family circles, partly because we believe that nobody cares. However, we need to be sharing our stories because our stories are America's story; they are the narrative not known.
In "Writing Immigrant Narratives," each workshop participant completes approximately 50 short pieces. We write in response to prompts as well as poems, paintings, memoir, documents displaying legal policies, photographs, and historical archival materials on the American immigrant experience. We explore our histories and American history through our personal lens. And, as we do so, we connect our stories with other people's stories, creating a rich, deeply layerd, varied historical yet creative text on the American immigrant experience.
I will offer "Writing Immigrant Narratives" as part of a special arts residency through Empire State College in Fall 2011. The workshop will be from Sept. 23-Dec. 24. Most of it will occur online; however, participants also will gather in Schenectady NY, for three days of face-to-face workshops Nov. 2-4. We will share writing at our meetings in Schenectady and explore ways of creating a digital and/or print anthology of our work. You are not required to be an Empire State College student to participate. For details, please visit Empire State College or contact me for details. Check my Home page for updates, as well.
"Writing Immigrant Narratives" is a workshop with a larger vision,
which is to gather and create an archive of personal histories
My parents leaving India for America.
interwoven into American history for teaching, reading, and writing purposes. My contribution to that larger vision includes several essays and a book manuscript on the experiences of growing up as the daughter of Indian immigrants in Muncie, Indiana. For a listing of essays, please visit my Resources page, where you will find links to many of my published works.