KIN: Essays on Reckless Devotion, due out from Graywolf in 2027, is a collection of six essays that explore ecstasy, agony, and frisson as kinship catalysts in the South Asian diaspora, framing the discussion through visual arts, film, architecture, and global Anglophone poetry. These frames demand a new imagining of the essay as a non-western genre. Much of the book breaks with traditional notions of the essay to invent a prose-form that enacts the order, rhythm, and drape of the sari worn by Tamil women—a pleating (not blending) of verse, vignettes, and visual objects.

Parallel Stories:
This Fall Parallel Story resonates from the Museum’s extensive and exceptional Asian Art Collection spanning 5,000 years with over 3,600 objects and curated by the incomparable Susan Tai. It is meant as a tribute to Tai, who retires at the end of this year, and invites us to reimagine and reframe some of the histories, traditions and stories contained in the collection.

To do this, we turn to three contemporary authors—M. Lin, Divya Victor, and Karen Tei Yamashita—who write stories that are both deeply felt and impeccably researched, through a hybrid lens of experience, history, and imagination. This series is a collaboration with The Asian American Studies Department of UCSB. Sameer Pandya, Chairman of the Department and author of the award winning The Blind Writer, Members Only, and Our Beautiful Boys, will facilitate the conversations.