This Is One Way to Dance

by Sejal Shah

  I had the good fortune to work closely with thoughtful editors on several of the essays. Thank you to editors Sarah Einstein and Dinty W. Moore, as well as guest editors Joy Castro and Ira Sukrungruang, of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, for selecting “Things People Said: An Essay in Seven Steps” for the fall 2016 special issue of Brevity on Race, Racism, and Racialization; in part, that publication led to this book.

  I also thank Kazim Ali (Mad Heart Be Brave: Essays on the Poetry of Agha Shahid Ali), Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis (Asian American Literary Review), Jonny Diamond (Literary Hub), Gregory Gerard (Big Brick Review), Alice M. Hummer (Wellesley), Pooja Makhijani (Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America, Seal Press), Anita Mannur (Massachusetts Review), Edie Meidav and Emmalie Dropkin (Strange Attractors, University of Massachusetts Press), Bradford Morrow (Conjunctions), Jyothi Natarajan (The Margins), Mark Pawlak (Hanging Loose), Rajini Srikanth (Catamaran: South Asian American Writing), and Erin Stalcup (Waxwing). I owe the greatest debt to Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky at the Kenyon Review. To have an editor who understands something of how you think is a gift. To have an editor who becomes a mentor and friend, even more so.

  At the University of Georgia Press, I wish to thank Lisa Bayer, Jason Bennett, Walter Biggins, Valerie Boyd, John Griswold, Kerrie Maynes, Erin Kirk New, Thomas Roche, Bethany Snead, Jordan Stepp, and Steven Wallace. I am especially grateful to Valerie Boyd, coeditor of Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction, who read my essay “Things People Said,” and who reached out to invite me to submit my manuscript, and to executive editor Walter Biggins for shepherding this book through the editorial process. Thank you as well to the anonymous reviewers for their rigorous and thoughtful reading of my manuscript. I know this is a better book for their comments and suggestions.

  I wish to thank my teachers, past and present. In particular, I have been thinking of my earliest teachers and professors whose classes gave me a wider context within which to see my own writing. Thank you to John Bird, aka Mr. Bird. I am grateful to Frank Bidart, Kathleen Brogan, Elena Tajima Creef, Laura Levine, Susan Reverby, and the late Claire Zimmerman, who were my professors at Wellesley College. I also thank my modern dance and choreography teacher at Wellesley, the late Dorothy Hershkowitz, and my Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi teacher, Rathna Kumar of Houston, Texas.

  A shout-out to my far-flung writing partners: Wendy Call (Seattle), Magdalena Maczynska (Brooklyn and Berlin), Holly Wren Spaulding (Maine), and I thank Wendy for serving as a consulting editor on this manuscript and for all her counsel and practical advice. Magda, thank you for remote co-working and check-ins. I felt as though you were just across the hall in the other office, as we were for years. Holly, I’m grateful for your attention and perspective on the big picture and small details. Thank you all for making the path less lonely. I deeply appreciate our friendships and co-working writing retreats.

  I wish to thank the following residencies, individuals, and fellowships and their transformative support: Blue Mountain Center, Harriet Barlow, and Ben Strader for my first artist residency in 2001 and for alumni mini residencies in subsequent years. The writers and artists I’ve met through Blue have shaped my life and my art practice. I thank the Consortium for Faculty Diversity (CFD) for two one-year fellowships and visiting positions at Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts) and Luther College (Iowa). I am grateful to Marymount Manhattan College for a year-long sabbatical leave, during which I began a few of these essays.

  Thanks to the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Tower View in Red Wing, Minnesota for a residency during which I worked on some of these words and to the Millay Colony for the Arts for a residency, off-season time and space, and workshops with Melissa Febos and Carole Maso. I am grateful to the Ragdale Foundation for two residencies, including a Ragdale Fellowship. I also wish to thank the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts and Lesley Williamson for two brief retreats, which helped me revise and reorder these essays into a book, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for their generous George Edwards and Rachel Hadas Fellowship. And to Ilse Ackerman and her family for hosting me at the Spring House while I reviewed copyedits.

  I am grateful to the editors of the Kenyon Review—especially to Geeta Kothari, Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, David H. Lynn, Kirsten Reach, and Nancy Zafris. Thank you, Geeta, for suggesting I come to Kenyon in the first place and for years of friendship.

  Thank you to Kundiman, which has been a family and a literary home and heart for me—the antidote to my experiences in academia. My deepest thanks to Cathy Linh Che, Sarah Gambito, and Joseph O. Legaspi. Sarah and Joseph, thank you for creating Kundiman and making the world our younger selves needed. I am grateful to belong to a community that supports and celebrates Asian American writing. I also thank writers Rachel McKibbens and Jacob Rakovan for hosting the Western New York Kundiman Reading at their bar in Rochester, The Spirit Room, in 2018.

  I grew up seeing and later studying with Garth Fagan Dance, my hometown dance company. Fagan built his internationally known company, composed almost entirely of dancers of color, in Rochester. His strong aesthetic, choreography, a movement vocabulary drawing from Afro-Caribbean and American modern dance, and wide range of artistic and musical influences impressed me. You didn’t have to fit yourself into someone else’s forms. Thank you, Garth, for bringing the world to Rochester, to Norwood Pennewell Jr. for years of friendship, and to Natalie Rogers-Cropper for the gift of your time and wisdom. I thank my beautiful Fagan dance teacher, Christopher Morrison, in memory.

  From my time in Western Massachusetts: I wish to thank my friends, former classmates, and former professors in the English Department, MFA Program, and other departments at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst—including Chris Carrier, Margo Culley, Stephanie Dunson, Caitlin Echasseriau, Peter Elbow, James (Jim) W. Foley, Nina Ha, Noy Holland, Dale Hudson, Jay Neugeboren, Mary Reda, Josna Rege, Greg Tulonen, Andrew Varnon, Erin White, LeeAnne Smith White and Philip W. White, and Leni Zumas. Thank you also to Kum-Kum Bhavnani and Liz Hanssen at Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism at Smith College, and to Floyd Cheung (also at Smith College), Jennifer Ho (Mount Holyoke College), and the Asian American Studies and American Studies community in the Five Colleges. I am grateful to Daphne Lowell and Rebecca Nordstrom at Hampshire College for their contemplative and modern dance classes and to Marilyn Hart at UMass Amherst, my first yoga teacher. At Mount Holyoke College, where I taught for a year, I thank Nilanjana Bhattacharjya, Calvin Chen, and Becky Wai-Ling Packard. Thank you to my former neighbor in Amherst, Matthew King, for attending my reading at Smith College in 2012, for insisting I needed a website, and for setting it up and helping me maintain it.

  From the years I lived in New York City: I wish to thank my former colleagues at Marymount Manhattan College, especially Michael Backus, Jennifer Brown, Giovanna Chesler, Cecilia Feilla, Kathleen LeBesco, Alessandra Leri, Magdalena Maczynska, and Martha Sledge. My cousin, Suketu Mehta, for years of dinners, drinks, advice, and conversations. My Great Lakes Writing Group: Mike Backus, Nora Maynard, and Melissa Sandor. In Brooklyn, Purvi Shah, my fellow artist and former roommate. In New Jersey, my cousin Monica Shah, fellow teacher and creative. Thank you to Denise Iris for art rituals and dance classes and to Preston Merchant for many author photos and friendship over the years.

  In Rochester, our excellent local writing community. I am especially grateful to Jess Fenn and Nadia Ghent for reading whole drafts of this manuscript and for their detailed comments and to Jess, Kyle Semmel, and Stephen West for feedback and our writing group. I thank Kristen Gentry, Rachel Hall, Gail Hosking, Sonja Livingston, Ravi Mangla, and Sally Parker for years of coworking companionship and friendship. Thank you to Mary Jane (MJ) Curry and Jayne Lammers for including me in the Warner School Writing Boot Camps at the University of Rochester and Fridays at Boulder. Thank you also to Albert Abonado, Peter Conners, Robin Flanigan, Irene Galvin, Rachel McKibbens, Jacob Rakovan, Stephen Schottenfeld, Joanna Scott,
Scott Seifritz, and Angelique Stevens. To Writers & Books and its dedicated staff for creating a community-based space for telling stories, reading, and writing, and for the opportunity to teach. I gratefully acknowledge my long-time students: Sally Bittner Bonn, Julie Cicora, Nadia Ghent, Donna Jackel, Kristin Kelly, and Pete Strub. It has been a pleasure to learn alongside you.

  In Rochester, our local Gujarati family friends and community. To Marjana Ababovic, for being at every local reading I can remember during the last seven years, your support and presence there, and honest feedback after. For writing and yoga and adventures. You made returning to Rochester something to look forward to and also enjoy. To our neighbors, Maggie, Colin, and especially Alice (“I’m gonna lock you out”) Doody. A thousand thanks to Lorraine Bohonos, Arlene Dalton, Beverly Gold. I thank Jennifer Leonard, Kate Polozie, Margie Searl, and Kitty Wise, longtime and loyal friends.

  To friends who live all over: some of you are mentioned by name in this book, but all of you are in these words. Sarah Adams, Brandon Block, Brian Caton and Sandhya Purohit Caton, Natasha Chang, Neelu Chawla, Karina Corrigan, Ann Gagliardi, Jeanie Gayeski, Monica Gebell, Emily Heaphy, Brian Hessel, Uttara Bharath Kumar, Lei Ouyang, Annapurna Poduri, Kristie Shah, Elliot Shapiro, Dena B. Vardaxis, and Cat Willis. To Pat Dougherty, in memory.

  To my fellow writers and artists from all over I thank you for comradeship, commiseration, and inspiration across screens and in person—including Willa Carroll, Erica Cavanaugh, Alexander Chee, Chen Chen, Kiran Desai, Parijat Desai, Aditi Dhruv, Anjali Enjeti, Sugi Ganeshananthan, Cathy Park Hong, Mira Jacob, Elizabeth Kadetsky, Madhu H. Kaza, Amitava Kumar, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Pooja Makhijani, Dawn Lundy Martin, Michael Martone, Rahul Mehta, Shaila Mehra, Carley Moore, Michele Morano, Michael Morse, David Mura, Sara Nolan, Minna Proctor, Leslie Roberts, Preeta Samarasan, Robin Beth Schaer, Prageeta Sharma, Sadia Shepherd, Danielle Sosin, Shreerekha Subramanian, and Tanu Mehrotra Wakefield.

  Shout out to the women of #HIVEDIT, to the Binders (especially CNF, Memoirists, and Forthcoming), and to the Author’s Guild.

  I am deeply grateful to the writers whose books made me want to write and which have sustained me over the years I worked on these essays: they include bell hooks, Maxine Hong Kingston, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Adrienne Rich. I called upon them in troubled times and they helped me gather my resolve and write back.

  To my parents, Ashok and Shobhana Shah: your support and encouragement have made my life and creative work possible. Thank you for being lifelong readers and learners who kept me stocked in library books and notebooks. My brother and sister-in-law, Samir Shah and Seema Byahatti: you have always lit the way and had a place for me at your table. Thank you. Anand, I remember your telling me at age six, No more books, Sejal Foi!; you were done with that as the default gift. Thanks to you and Vijay for teaching me about cars and planes (KBOS) and showing me the world through your eyes. I feel very lucky to be your aunt.

  Thank you to my parents-in-law, Singa and Jambu Singaravelu, for your generosity and kindness. Thank you to my uncle, Kirit N. Shah, the first writer in the family, for your example of reading two newspapers a day, and for always answering my specific and sometimes obscure questions and emails right away. I don’t take it for granted. Thank you to my extended family for showing up.

  To R: Thank you for everything.

  This book is in memory of my maternal grandmother, Indumati Natverlal Shah, and my friend LeeAnne Smith White. They shared a love of beauty, and both had a gift for creating community and joy and for gathering family and friends together. They are in these words, they are in me, and I hope to have invoked them for you, as well.

  For my grandparents—I end these words with your names, to honor my ancestors and the work you did and how far you moved from home. I am grateful.

  Nathalal Amthalal Shah

  Kantaben Nathalal Shah

  Natverlal Ambalal Shah

  Indumati Natverlal Shah

  Notes

  INTRODUCTION

  I found Margaret Atwood’s essay “Nine Beginnings” years ago in The Writer on Her Work, Volume II: New Essays in New Territory, edited by Janet Sternberg (New York: Norton, 1992), 150–56. Atwood gave nine different responses to the question “Why do you write?” and through those responses created a powerful, formally inventive essay. I loved the circling and jagged movement and leaps and took the form and question as inspiration for my introduction. Though I later cut the numbers and my introduction is no longer a list essay, what remains are my answers as to why I wrote these essays and this book.

  The quoted excerpt from Kakali Bhattacharya comes from her essay “(Un)Settling Imagined Lands: A Par/Des(i) Approach to De/Colonizing Methodologies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Methods for Public Scholarship, edited by Patricia Leavy (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2019), 179–208.

  PRELUDE

  The title “Prelude” references my favorite dance by the choreographer Garth Fagan, “Prelude: Discipline Is Freedom.” I grew up seeing and later studying with Garth Fagan Dance, whose movement vocabulary draws from ballet, American modern dance, and Afro-Caribbean dance. Fagan created his own dance technique and worked almost entirely with dancers of color. His distinctive aesthetic made an impression on me. I saw that you could invent your own language; you just had to train and believe.

  is my first name in Gujarati. Thank you to my uncle, Kirit N. Shah, for walking me through using Google Translate. The opening of “Prelude” takes as inspiration the title of Noy Holland’s I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like: New and Selected Stories (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2017). The phrase “there is only a door” echoes “it is only a door,” a line from Adrienne Rich’s “Prospective Immigrants Please Note” (The Fact of a Door Frame: Poems Selected and New, 1950–1984 [New York: Norton, 1984], 51–52).

  “I too call myself I” are the final words of Kamala Das’s poem “An Introduction.” Thanks to Josna Rege for her long-ago birthday gift of Nine Indian Women Poets: An Anthology, edited by Eunice de Souza (Delhi: Delhi University Press, 1997), in which I first discovered the poem. “An Introduction” was originally published in Das’s book Summer in Calcutta (New Delhi: Rajinder Paul, 1965).

  SKIN

  “Desi” is a term that means “from the homeland” (homeland = desh) in some South Asian languages. The term “desi” was adopted by progressive South Asian Americans in the nineties. I first heard the term in connection with Desh Pardesh, the multidisciplinary South Asian Arts Festival—activist-literary-creative-queer—in Toronto that ran from 1988 to 2001 (http://www.savac.net/collection/desh-pardesh/). I attended Desh in 1996 and 1998 and met writers, dancers, activists, and musicians I’ve continued to know through the years. In the late 1990s, I experienced both the term and festival as revolutionary. I wrote “Skin” during a time when the word “desi” felt potent and alive for me. However, I realized while working on this book that I don’t use the term anymore and have not in some time—a reader will not find “desi” in my later essays. “Desi” feels dated to me now—of a time or just very specific. First, because it refers only to Indians and not to all South Asians (South Asia as a cultural and political identity: covering several countries, multiple religions and languages, but “desis” would not necessarily include Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, Pakistanis). Second, because I don’t hear it often now where I live in western New York or in the online communities I belong to and at the conferences I attend. In places with larger South Asian American populations, such as New Jersey and the Bay Area, “desi” is certainly still in use.

  Network of Indian Professionals (Net-IP) is an organization that started in 1990 and held an annual national conference along with other events and programming. Part of the unstated but understood point of the conference seemed to be about creating opportunities to meet a potential mate. There was a certain generational anxiety in which parents worried about who their children would and did marry—one inevitable, tangible result of the pare
nts’ immigration. How would the culture and language and heritage continue if you found a partner who was white or black, “American”? I felt this anxiety, too, when I was in my twenties. I think the fear has subsided as time has gone on, Indian Americans have become more integrated in the larger American culture, and many have married out.

  MATRIMONIALS: A TRIPTYCH

  I wrote the earliest version of “Matrimonials” in 2002 as the introduction to my MFA thesis, which was a collection of short stories. In revision, I brought the perspectives of 2018, 2019, and intervening years to bear on my earlier essay. Thank you to Jennifer Acker for reading a draft and for comments made a few years ago. I am also grateful to Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky for reading this essay (and the whole book) and for his suggestions more recently.

  For its concise summary of the complex history of Indian immigration to the United States, I drew on the introductory page of the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) website, which is also a terrific resource on the history of South Asians in the United States.

  Adrienne Rich’s 1984 essay “Invisibility in Academe” provided me with tools to begin to articulate my experiences against the framework and context of academia, and Rich’s words have influenced me and so much of my writing. I am grateful for Rich’s essay, which has shaped my understanding of power and representation in education and literature. The phrase “real and normative” and the longer excerpt included in the footnote are from page 199 of Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979–1985 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company. Thank you to Elliot H. Shapiro for introducing me to Rich’s prose.