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2023 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Lesbian Memoir/Biography Named the BEST LGBTQ+ MEMOIR of 2022 by Book Riot Named a New York Public Library Best Book of 2022 Weatherford Award finalist, nonfiction “Commands your attention from the first page to the last word.” —Morgan Jerkins “I’m glad this memoir exists . . . and I’m especially glad it’s so good.” —Vauhini Vara, New York MagazineWhen Neema Avashia tells people where she’s from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving “There are Indian people in West Virginia?” A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teaches, how she advocates, how she struggles.Another Appalachia examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia’s identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, gun culture, and more, Another Appalachia mixes nostalgia and humor, sadness and sweetness, personal reflection and universal questions.
Nutshell: If you have read Hillbilly Elegy, I suggest checking this one out for some different perspectives on Appalachian culture. And if you don't typically read about Appalachia but enjoy personal narratives, I highly recommend this very readable collection of memoir essays.The Long Version:I didn't know this book even existed, but I saw it on a library display and was intrigued. Not only did I grow up in Appalachia, but I also grew up around several Indian kids whose fathers had come to the "Mountain Place" to work as doctors--as did the author's dad. I wondered even as a child whether or not they had a hard time figuring out how they fit into this very specific and overwhelmingly White culture. So it was wonderful to discover Avashia's answers to that question, in her exploration of what being Appalachian once meant and now means to her.In this series of interconnected essays, she writes with humor, empathy, longing, sadness and joy about the complicated emotional terrain she had to navigate, mainly as an Indian American born and raised in Appalachia but also as a queer woman coming out to her home community. She writes of the comfortable, warm connections she formed to the people of West Virginia--friends, neighbors, found family--as well as the subtle and overt racism she experienced in the very same culture. To me, this encapsulates the innate paradox of Mountain folks--warm, welcoming, offering food and shelter and care, but also prone at times to distrust and bigotry. It's at once a place both open and closed, a contradiction with no easy resolution, particularly in a post-2016 world.Avashia also points out that this isn't the only place that bears such a contradictory outlook to the rest of the country. Plenty of rural spaces exhibit similar paradoxical attitudes, and Appalachia is not alone in its red-dominant political stances. She gives us a fuller picture than we typically see in other nonfiction of the diversity of viewpoints within even traditional Appalachian culture. You will find much here that you do not expect.But it's the truly personal moments that form the focus and heart of much of the book, and we get to see and feel along with her key moments from both her childhood and adult life, experiencing her feelings in the past moment as well as her perspectives and discoveries in reflecting on it. She doesn't give us easy answers, either, but there are threads of simplicity and beauty woven into the complication and contradiction. In all, one of the most engaging and lovely memoirs I have read. Highly recommended.
