Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center, misdirected assaults on Sikhs and other South Asians flared on streets across the nation, serving as harbingers of a more suspicious, less discerning, and increasingly fearful world view that would drastically change ideas of belonging and acceptance in America.
Weaving together distinct strands of recent South Asian immigration to the United States, Uncle Swami creates a richly textured analysis of the systems and sentiments behind shifting notions of cultural identity in a post 9/11 world. Vijay Prashad continues the conversation sparked by his celebrated work The Karma of Brown Folk and confronts the experience of migration across an expanse of generations and class divisions, from the birth of political activism among second generation immigrants to the meteoric rise of South Asian American politicians in Republican circles to the migrant workers who suffer in the name of American capitalism.
A powerful new indictment of American imperialism at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Uncle Swami restores a diasporic community to its full-fledged complexity, beyond model minorities and the specters of terrorism.
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[Prashad] has set the standard by which future works on the Asian diaspora must be judged. —Abraham Verghese, bestselling author of My Own Country and Cutting for Stone
[Prashad's] scholarly analysis of the current Islamophobia is laced with great quotes from scholars and activists, including Gandhi on the limits of tradition and Tolstoy on feel-good liberalism (give to the poor but don’t change anything). Like Prashad’s prizewinning The Darker Nations (2008), this is bound to spark discussion as he juxtaposes the platitudes of multiculturalism, which celebrate the peoples and traditions of "other" lands (Africa, Asia, Latin America), against the unchanging truth that non-Western continues to be viewed as subordinate. —Booklist
About the Author
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of The Karma of Brown Folk and The Darker Nations (The New Press); the latter was chosen as a Best Nonfiction Book of the year by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Vijay Prashad is Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, where he holds the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History.
Prashad is the author of fourteen books, most recently Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press), which India's The Hindu called "a book that deserves to become essential reading, a canonical account of a world-historic chain of events," and Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today (New Press), which the Boston Globe called "required reading for anyone who wants to understand race, assimilation and patriotism."
His Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New Press, 2007) was chosen by the Asian American Writers' Workshop as the best nonfiction book of 2008, and it won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Award for 2009. It is now available in French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Swedish, with editions in India and Pakistan and translations in Arabic, Mandarin and Turkish in process. Kamal Mitra Chenoy, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, wrote in Economic and Political Weekly, "This is a comprehensive, informative and rewarding book to read, and documents a critical part of our international politics and culture which is much misrepresented nowadays." Former Indian Foreign Minister K. Natwar Singh, writing in Tehelka, notes, "The book invites comparison to Edward Said's Orientalism. Vijay Prashad's passionate commitment, his intellectual brio, his literary style, are all immensely impressive." El Pais said of the Spanish edition, "Las naciones oscuras es un libro excepcionalmente documentado. Era obligado, dada la ambición del proyecto. Su documentación es tan buena que brilla."
Prashad is a columnist for Frontline (India) and a correspondent for Asia Times, an editor at Bol (Pakistan) and Himal (Nepal) and a writer for al-Akhbar (Lebanon) and Counterpunch (USA). He has been published in The Hindu (India), Egypt Independent (Egypt), Bidayat (Lebanon), Economic and Political Weekly (India), Third World Resurgence (Malaysia), Mail and Guardian (South Africa), and India Abroad (USA).
In December 2012, Verso Books will publish his The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, which former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali calls "a contribution to the intellectual-cum-political emancipation of developing countries and their empowerment through greater self-reliance on their own intellectual and analytical resources."
For LeftWord books in Delhi, he edits a series called Dispatches. The first volume, Dispatches from Latin America, co-edited with Teo Ballvé appeared in 2006. The second volume, Dispatches from Pakistan, co-edited with Qalandar Bux Memon and Madiha R. Tahir, will appear in October 2012. The third volume, Dispatches from the Arab Revolt, co-edited with Paul Amar, will appear in December 2012. Two volumes, Dispatches from Africa and Dispatches from Europe, are currently in formation.
I appreciate how Dr. Vijay Prashad chronicles my history as a second generation South Asian American in a social/political/economic context. He speaks to my soul, validates my worldview and inspires me to think about social justice in new ways.
