#lailaseverin

[maddiesflame]

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[quillify-tries-to-talk]

as a tamil girl who's been dancing bharatanatyam for 12 years, i just wanted to say that there is no way laila could have danced properly with free hair. in my dance class, you're not even allowed to dance with two plaits (you either have to tie both plaits with the same band or undo it completely and tie in it one plait) because all your movements have to be sharp and precise, so you can't brush it away or flip it back in the middle of dancing. for dance programs (like on stage), we have to have it in one plait (with an extension if needed) and the plait MUST be tucked into your ottiyaanam (it is a sort of belt jewellery you wear around your waist, i can't find a translation sorry) so that it doesn't move AT ALL when you dance. and as for clothes, we wear salwar kameezs (we call them churidhars down south) ONLY in class. for big performances, we have costumes (not saris lol, its impossible to even move comfortably in a sari). so yeah.

sorry this got so long omg i just had to get it out

It's fine, bestie. I'm glad I finally have the input of an actual dancer since I'm not one and I only spoke from an observer's POV.

Ahh see?? I knew it wasn't a salwaar kameez for the performance but I also knew saris would be too complicated.

I was wondering the same thing about Laila's hair tho! If it's waist-length, how are you gonna dance without locks getting in your mouth or slapping your face😭??? Make it make sense, Ms. Chokshi.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, famous Indian authors in diaspora need to do better research and need to have more sensitivity if they're gonna handle topics like colonialism or the culture of the country they've inherited but are sometimes disconnected from. Colonization, especially, is something that has been impacting the world even today (Israel-Palestine, military occupation in Kashmir, USA and its tendency to interfere everywhere), and children are suffering due to it.

I mean.... bharatnatyam is a beautiful dance, rooted in years of history and tradition. It needed to be handled wih care instead of being used for a bullshit sexy romance subplot (kinda thinking now.... Cordelia dancing in Hell Ruelle, Laila dancing in front of an audience. Authors apparently loveeeeee making their brown girls dance for the love interests in the name of empowerment... hmm...)

Chokshi has money and she has connections, so what was so hard about contacting an actual dancer for research? Internet has made things so easy now, right? Or do they just wanna check off the diversity quota for the bare minimum? How is that better than what Sarah J Maas or Cassandra Clare are doing now?

[rothjasmine]

the gilded wolves headers

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[quillify-tries-to-talk]

I think I figured out the problems in Roshani Chokshi and Sandhya Menon's books (as much as I love them, their Indian rep doesn't resonate with me as much as I'd hoped).

DISCLAIMER: not hating. There are valid issues that PoC face in foreign countries and I'm not trying to invalidate them. This is just an opinion

A little background first. Contrary to what you're shown in Hollywood movies, south asian countries are not a wasteland of forests and slums, but the situation isn't great, either.

Majority of the population is somewhere in the middle class rungs that often comes with a plethora of issues starting from academic pressure to feelings of guilt and anxiety over spending money on yourself. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. (Colonial trauma is a bitchy, vicious cycle).

It is a privilege to leave the country, to have enough money to live an entire ocean away. Not all of us will ever be able to do that so we'll have to deal with whatever shit is thrown in our faces by the society and government (the CAA/NRC act, privatization of govt institutions, the farmer bills that aren't actually pro-farmer, covering up atrocities in the most outlandish ways, controlling media houses so actual news never reaches common people, catering to billionaires, mismanaging the pandemic and opening your eyes only when you see the ashes).

Not to mention a lot of Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) are wealthy, upper caste people, absolutely cloistered from the atrocities that occur everyday against marginalized communities.

So when I read books by Indian-American authors, my feelings are mixed. If they're set in historical times my anger is through the roof. Let's take an example.

Laila from The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi gave me immense joy at first for being beautiful, bold brown girl. But as I read further, my feelings started to grow more negative.

It's because of the way Chokshi did zero research on South Asian colonization of the British while waxing poetic about the tragic fates of her male characters. Laila is from Pondicherry, and the French colonized that place (we only get mentions of forests and magicians because apparently that's all there was in the 1800s, huh :))). We have no idea how she ended up in Paris, or how as an 18 year old brown girl she took up a job as a courtesan/sex worker (I don't have a problem with sex work, but I would like to know how she got that job and I would like to see her childhood and trauma explored. Okay, Severin gets pages of backstories about his fathers but his love interest doesn't?). She didn't have a surname first while everyone else did. And now, in the second book we move with the fact that we have zero ideas for her real name too. For a book that's about colonization, desi history gets ignored by the author, and instead Laila is sexualized af. I'd like to ask what's her role in the story beyond causing Severin angst, baking, reading objects for him, and being a generally sweet person? Chokshi keeps *telling* me that she isn't there for Severin and is her own person, but where's the proof? She has no backstory, no name, and no role beyond romance and smexy courtesan.

Like Wikipedia has a whole ass page. Wouldn't have taken much to just Google it all. And for an author of south asian ethnicity to ignore this, the way white historians do? Reeks of privilege.

Her MG series, The Pandava Quartet, is also set in America. A story.... about Hindu mythological legends... in America.... it was jarring to read, honestly. For once in my life I'd like to see something *not* being set in America. America is not the center of the world for crying out loud.

Same with Sandhya Menon's books. We'll leave out her twisted idea of feminism: gurls ruleeesss!! Boys droolzz. It was very obvious in When Dimple Met Rishi, with the way Dimple kept hitting and punching Rishi, and it was deemed as badass. All her boys have the same archetype: Love Interest Cameras.

Y'know, romance works with *two* characters, right? Two of them, each bringing something to the table for a healthy, balanced relationship that progresses slowly through various stages (because real life often isn't a Bollywood movie). Boys need to have good role models and a role beyond "hot, sexy love interest." Y'all have become the very thing you swore to destroy.

Wait, I derailed. Sorry.

Ahem. Back to the topic.

I shouldn't have been shocked, but I truly was while reading Menon's books. It just made me realize the privilege a lot of NRIs have and they don't even realize it.

Case in point: most of Menon's characters are all wealthy and loaded af, and that makes them extremely hard to relate to. They are disconnected from their culture, they don't speak any of the native languages, not even a little bit. The little mentions we got were so inaccurate, they made me grit my teeth and make a whole post about it. It feels as though she just slapped a south asian name on a white—I'm not even gonna call them characters—they're basically puppets for her romances (who tf kisses right into 3-4 chapters of a book, c'mon!).

I'd have expected such disconnect from a white author *side-eyes Cassandra Clare*, but not from someone of my own ethnicity. It was heartbreaking. I'm sorry if you don't agree but I had to get this off my chest

Again, BIPOC in foreign countries have issues that need to be examined, but we keep forgetting that most of them aren't in America. We're living in our countries, and there are a host of marginalized communities whose stories need to be heard, now more than ever.