Chaitali Sen – författare

This anthology of eight short stories and eight narrative essays depicts diverse facets of the South Asian experience in the American South. Some of them relate to the proverbial longing for what the immigrants have left behind, while the others spotlight the immigrants’ struggles to reconcile with realities they did not sign up for. In Chaitali Sen’s “The Immigrant,” Dhruv is unable to talk about a lost boy because he feels “as if he were trapping the boy with his story,” as if the lost boy’s story were his own story of getting lost in a foreign country. In Hasanthika Sirisena’s “Pine,” a Christmas tree becomes more than “only a pine tree with decorations thrown on it” when Lakshmi’s ex-husband lets her know he is converting to Christianity “to get ahead in this country.” Aruni Kashyap’s “Nafisa Ali’s Life, Love, and Friendships, Before and after the Travel Ban” tell a post-2016 immigrant story in which love is baffling. In “Gettysburg,” Kirtan Nautiyal asks, how does an immigrant become part of the new country’s history? Soniah Kamal’s essay “Writing the Immigrant Southern in the New New South” reflects on what it means to be an immigrant writer and if one can write from two places at once. Together, the stories and essays in the anthology compose a mosaic of South Asian lived experiences in the American South.

Kirkus Reviews, "Best Fiction Books of the Year"Kirkus Reviews, "20 Best Books to Read in January"Kirkus Reviews, "Yes, You Can Read Short Stories in Shuffle Mode"Book Riot, "15 Excellent 2023 Short Story Collections by Asian Authors"Liberty Hardy, "Favorite Books of 2023"Electric Literature, "Recommended Reading”Storizen, "9 Short Story Collections by Asian Authors in 2023" by Saurabh ChawlaTexas Monthly, "The Best Books, Film, TV, Art & More Coming to Texas This Winter"Winner of the 2021 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction“The stories in A New Race of Men from Heaven move elegantly between the ache of loneliness and the grace of connection, however fleeting.” —Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical CorrectionsA New Race of Men from Heaven is a collection of stories about characters who wander but are never truly lost. A lonely man on a business trip finds himself in the middle of a search party for a missing boy; a grieving widow leaves India to join family in the United States; a writer finds renewed success when an unknown imposter begins publishing under his identity. In these quiet yet deeply knowing stories of migration, power, and longing, A New Race of Men from Heaven offers us, above all else, stories of enduring love and hope.