Review | UNBELONGING by Gayatri Sethi
Introductory statement about UNBELONGING, by the author, Gayatri Sethi:
I am often asked to share the inspiration behind this kind of an experimental book about identity and belonging. I approached the writing of it as if I were crafting a tapestry or quilt. Some of the elements I wove together include biography, reflection questions, verses, and narratives. I am an educator who taught courses in feminist, international and global studies. One of our first units of study in these courses is typically an exploration of identity. I often found myself telling stories about my overlapping cultural and linguistic identities to illustrate some of the topics of study. I was constantly in search of biographic, ethnographic and even personal narrative based accounts by folks of the global majority that would illuminate some of the nuances when it comes to learning and teaching about varied identities. The accounts of marginalized folks are rarely encountered in mainstream textbooks.
My ongoing search for such interdisciplinary teaching materials centering non-Western experiences for high school and college level courses prompted me to create my own learning tools. I was seeking out content that evokes emotional as well as intellectual understanding to bridge the so-called empathy gap. This search led me to craft my own book. For instance, I often used reflection prompts and research invitations in my classes in order to encourage learners to think and reflect deeply about their own lived identities. I wove those elements of my pedagogy into the pages of Unbelonging alongside theoretical concepts and research notes. I envisioned that this book would be interactive so readers feel empowered to write their own reflections on blank pages. This is why I chose to write in narrative poetry inspired by speaking traditions from North India and southern Africa, where I grew up. It is my earnest hope that teachers and learners will find this a useful tool to add to their own learning journeys.
Unbelonging By Gayatri Sethi
Mango and Marigold Press, 2021
Review By Ray Anthony Shepard
Gayatri Sethi’s Unbelonging will challenge many young adults’ expectations for storytelling. This experiential memoir is a testament to the author and publisher’s bravery and belief that there are readers for an idiosyncratic book told in a mash-up of poetry, workbook, and space for a personal journal. Sethi warns early on, “If some of these verses appear didactic, this is authentic to my identity.” She is too modest. Yet there is a story and lessons here for a reader who is searching for identity—for a psychological space of belonging. And what adolescent isn’t? The author calls this search unbelonging.
Sethi refuses to acknowledge traditional storyboarding. However, her narrative arc has a subject (herself) with a sympathetic problem (fitting in) and moves through a series of crises before reaching a believable goal. Defiance! But her crises do not rise in greater conflict, each more intense and threatening the success of her quest. Instead, she gives us a table of incidents as she tells her life story. Still, her telling has an emotional pull as strong as any Olympic rower, and the poems carry us crashing through waves of the forced or self-selected outsider; the ethnic, national, religious, and racial blending bending other!
Her story will appeal to the intelligent, social-justice, politically aware young adult—a reader who intuitively understands and identifies with being boxed in the corners of the margins and what it takes to breathe as the corners keep folding.
Unbelonging is also experiential in its structure, with an array of poetic forms: verses with long and short lines, shape poems, quotes, and prose poems. It demands an attentive reader, but her writing will reward with a refreshing story of a brown immigrant who stands tall for who and what she is. And that reader, whether they or their ancestors emigrated from Botswana or Belarus, Pakistan or Panama, India or Imperial, Nebraska, will be moved by Gayatri Sethi’s tale of trauma and her persistent strength to step from the margins and tell her life’s story.
About the reviewer:
Ray Anthony Shepard’s picture book biography, Runaway: The Daring Escape of Ona Judge, was published earlier this year. His verse biography of race in America will be published in 2023. Ray can be reached at rayanthonyshepard.com. He is a founding member of Diverse Verse and his poetic picture book biography RUNAWAY was reviewed by Padma Venkatraman earlier this year.
