This book lives beautifully in the gray area of trying to navigate a divisive environment while growing up queer and Asian American.”Forbes
“I’m glad this memoir exists . . . and I’m especially glad it’s so good.”New York Magazine
“A graceful exploration of identity, community, and contradictions.”Scalawag
“A timely collection that begins to fill the gap in literature focused mainly on the white male experience.”Ms. Magazine Bitch Media
“Compelling and refreshing. . . . Appalachia needs more people like Neema Avashia.”Daily Yonder
“Readers may be Indian, Appalachian, and queer or they may be some or none of these things. No matter—Avashia’s beautifully rendered prose contains insights to which everyone can relate.”Still: The Journal
“This book gave me such tenderness toward a place that parsing my thoughts about it was like scooping up tadpoles with my bare hands.”
“Another Appalachia is a breath of fresh air, a work that the public is in dire need of reading. Wide and expansive as the land the author calls home, this essay collection subverts the mainstream’s hyperfocus on white male-dominated narratives from rural America and commands your attention from the first page to the last word.”This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America and Caul Baby
“Neema Avashia, in this book, has named the unnamed, spoken the unspoken so that it does not become—to paraphrase Adrienne Rich—the unspeakable, and she has done so in language that is both lyrical and direct, both entertaining and edifying, both challenging and generous. I love this book and believe it introduces an important voice in America’s ongoing racial reckoning.”No Other World
“An essential text to add to the new canon of Appalachian writing—a compassionate and rigorous memoir of the author’s experience growing up as a queer Hindu child and teenager in a small community of West Virginian Indians. Another Appalachia is a bright and deeply empathetic portrait of a complicated place, a place that Neema Avashia allows to be multifaceted in the way it deserves.”
As we follow Avashia through basketball games and Hindu holidays, Saddy imbues her performance with all of the tenderness and hope that Avashia has for her hometown and the people who helped make her the person she is today.
Jeed Saddy performs this dazzling debut essay collection from author Neema Avashia. The daughter of immigrant parents, Avashia grew up as one of a number of Indian American families in southern West Virginia. Avashia describes being deeply rooted in her Appalachian community and considers many of her neighbors to be almost family. Identities can be messy, and Saddy’s narration captures the emotional complexity of Avashia’s life as a desi queer kid who didn’t see anyone like her. As we follow Avashia through basketball games and Hindu holidays, Saddy imbues her performance with all of the tenderness and hope that Avashia has for her hometown and the people who helped make her the person she is today. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile
Jeed Saddy performs this dazzling debut essay collection from author Neema Avashia. The daughter of immigrant parents, Avashia grew up as one of a number of Indian American families in southern West Virginia. Avashia describes being deeply rooted in her Appalachian community and considers many of her neighbors to be almost family. Identities can be messy, and Saddy’s narration captures the emotional complexity of Avashia’s life as a desi queer kid who didn’t see anyone like her. As we follow Avashia through basketball games and Hindu holidays, Saddy imbues her performance with all of the tenderness and hope that Avashia has for her hometown and the people who helped make her the person she is today. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2023 - AudioFile
