Benyonne Schwortz, bschwortz@gmail.com
Bayside High School, http://www.baysidehighschool.org
Modern Writers of Nepal
namaste. नमस्त
Appendix A7b: Modern Nepalese Writer: Manjushree Thapa
was born in Kathmandu in 1968. She studied in St. Mary's School (Kathmandu), the National Cathedral School (Washington DC) and the Rhode Island School of Design, where she majored in photography. She has an MFA from the University of Washington, which she attended on a Fulbright scholarship.
Her first book, "Mustang Bhot in Fragments," was a travelogue published in Nepal in 1992. Her short stories have been published in the Bellingham Review, Tampa Review, Artful Dodge, Himal South Asian, and elsewhere.
Thapa lives in Kathmandu, where she helps to manage Martin Chautari, a center for public interest and advocacy, and writes a regular column for the Nepali Times, Nepaliterature, which includes translations of many original works. She is working on a nonfiction book that is expected to come out in 2003.
Thapa was interviewed for Sawnet by Sally Acharya.
Q: Could you describe your education?
The first school I ever attended was in Canada in 1971--my family lived there when I was learning to talk, which is partly why English became my first language. Later, I was in St. Mary's [a private Kathmandu girl's school] till class 6. When my family moved to Washington DC, I studied at the National Cathedral School, from which I graduated a year early in 1985. At that time I was interested in visual art. I went to college at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating in 1989. My graduate studies (MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Washington, as a Fulbrighter) took place in 1996-1998. I spent all the time before that and after that in Nepal, working in a variety of organizations while trying to focus on writing.
Q. What inspired you to become a writer? What are the greatest challenges, for you, when you're writing fiction?
I always loved literature, but only began to write after I stopped doing visual art, upon my return to Nepal in 1989. I am one of those people who cannot live without some means of creative expression. I found that visual art in Nepal was limited to very small social circles, and I didn't want to be stuck in these circles. Writing gave me a means to engage with a broader society. My shift to writing was gradual, though. Somehow I thought I had to do something more socially useful, like NGO work. I found out the hard way that I can't live without creative expression. When I finally committed to being a writer, I had already been doing it quite seriously for a few years, and had published "Mustang Bhot in Fragments" five years before.
The thrill of writing fiction is in investigating human subjectivity in imaginative ways. The challenge is to believe that writing fiction is enough of a response to the tragedies all around us.
Q. Where do you find your ideas?
I need a combination of deep social engagement with plenty of quiet time. Much of what I see as my best writing has been inspired by my engagements in areas outside Kathmandu.
Q. Who are your favorite writers in English? Are there some who have particularly influenced you? Among South Asian writers, who are your own favorites, and why?
Don Delillo and JM Coetzee immediately stand out as great favorites and influences, though I am a polymorphous reader and truly love hundreds of writers and thousands of books. My particular fascination is with writers who examine personal freedom in the context of society and its pressures and restrictions on the individual. In South Asian writing, I would say I most admire: Salman Rushdie for the permission he gave to whole generations of writers; Mahasweta Devi for her ultrareal but compassionate vision; and Amitav Ghosh for his brilliance.
Q. It's not yet common for Nepalis to read for pleasure, and this seems to be true in educated families, as well. Why do you think this is? Can you describe your own relationship with books as a child?
I was tremendously lucky as a child in Nepal to have parents and teachers who encouraged me to read, and to be able to read in English, in which language there was a wide variety of children's books available. Children in Nepal simply do not have much literature to read, other than school textbooks. Most writers here grew up in an absence of children's literature, and only began to read literature as young adults. Today, middle class families know the importance of reading for children, but there still isn't enough reading material out there (in Nepali or other national languages), and also, television has eradicated the time and space for reading--which, after all, takes more effort on the part of the child.
Q. There's an interesting Catch-22 that operates in English writing about countries like Nepal: namely, that the people who are best equipped to communicate with Western readers about the lives of ordinary Nepalis are not, themselves, ordinary Nepalis. You've had some amazing advantages for a Nepali woman in terms of education, exposure to the world, access to opportunity, and while that is certainly lucky, at the same time it separates you from the real-life Binitas and Rishis of Nepal. Can you share some thoughts on what this means to you, as a person and as a writer?
One of the blessings of Nepal is that there isn't as huge a gulf between classes as there can be in India, for example. I was never much interested in the tiny courtier class that I was born in, and was able to leave it through NGO work, and by deliberately cultivating a wide social network. I would not want to say that all English writers need to do this; but this is what I have done.
I've also found it very important to be involved in Nepali literature through translation. Though Nepali literature is relatively young, it can be very sophisticated. It has been enriching for me to be able to take it to a wider readership through translation. And as a writer I have learned from the work of Nepali writers. The challenge of Nepal's English literature, as I see it, is to come to par with its Nepali-language literature.
Q. A political campaign is the centerpiece of your novel. What is it that inspired you to center the action around the campaign? Were you concerned, when writing it, that this could potentially be difficult for Westerners who aren't familiar with Nepal to "get into"?
I don't write, of course, keeping in mind a western audience. I write because I want to write; and I write in English because English became my first language as a byproduct of how I was raised. I was quite aware that "The Tutor of History" wouldn't appeal to readers who might not already know Nepal, or care deeply for it; but I didn't want to water down its complexity just so that I could reach a wide audience. I wanted it to be like a translated Nepali-language novel: capable of allowing interested readers to feel the complexity of Nepal.
I was interested in setting the story at the time of a political campaign because that allowed me to contrast the way we use our political freedoms with the ways we use our personal freedoms.
Q. What are some of the differences between Nepali writing and writing from other parts of the Subcontinent? Who are the writers in Nepali who have most impressed you? How is the current political tension affecting Nepali arts and literature?
There are great similiarities in the literature of Nepal and the literature in the regional languages of South Asia. They tend to focus on social issues, and are often the most visionary documents of their times. But Nepali literature is younger than many South Asian literatures, and consists of a fairly small body of work.We don't have the cultural traditions and institutions that sustain say Urdu or Hindi literature. Our writers are disadvantaged in important ways.
The two writers whom I can point to as having most impressed me are Parijat and Indra Bahadur Rai--politically divergent in their views, but both very astute readers of people and human nature.
Some Nepali writers are producing brilliant creative responses to the present civil war. Bimal Nibha is one example: his satire, as well as his poetry, has been speaking of the political chaos that preceded the past bloody year, and the present political crisis.
Q. I'd like you describe a few of the other things you've been doing lately. What link do you find between your other activities and your fiction writing?
I'm affiliated with Martin Chautari, which is a research and advocacy center, and a center of open intellectual debate that has been very important to me intellectually. I'm also doing literary translation for Nepali Times [the leading Enlish weekly] which relates to issues I mentioned earlier. In addition, I'm interested in doing more journalistic or non-fiction writing, as a way to get out and see what is happening outside Kathmandu and my own imagination.
Q. You've spent quite a bit of time in the West, and it would probably be easy for you to move here permanently. Yet you haven't done that so far. Please talk a little about why it is that you've remained in Nepal, in spite of all the challenges there.
The choice for me was to live in the West and have a settled personal life but boring work; or to have interesting work but a chaotic personal life in Nepal. Everything I want to write about, at least now, is in Nepal. There is so much that can be done here, if politics would stop self-destructing.
Q. What do you hope that readers take away from your novel?
A sense that Nepali people are transforming, even though their political and social structures aren't keeping up with them. Enlightenment thinking has taken hold throughout Nepal--it just lacks leadership and organization.
Source: http://www.sawnet.org/books/authors.php?Thapa+Manjshree
The Tutor of History
by Manjushree Thapa
The first major novel in English to emerge from Nepal, The Tutor of History is a portrait of a society in change that is ultimately a story of idealism alienation and love. The events of the novel unfold against the backdrop of a campaign for parliamentary elections in the bustling roadside town of Khaireni Tar. Written with rare insight into the politics of a nation and of human relationships, The Tutor of History marks the arrival of a significant new voice from the Subcontinent.
Tilled Earth: Stories
by Manjushree Thapa
Startlingly original and closely observed stories that capture the dynamism and diversity of Nepali society in a time of great flux
In Tilled Earth several compressed, poetic and deeply evocative micro-stories offer fleeting glimpses of small, private dramas of people caught midlife: an elderly woodworker loses his way in a modern Kathmandu neighbourhood; a homesick expatriate nurses a hangover; a clerk at the Ministry of Home Affairs learns to play Solitaire on the computer; a young man is drawn to politics against his better judgement; a child steals her classmate's book . . .
The longer stories in the collection, too, span a wide course, taking subjects from rural and urban Nepal as well as from the Nepali diaspora abroad. In "Tilled Earth" a young woman goes to Seattle as a student, and finds herself becoming an illegal alien. "Love Marriage" is an inner narration by a young man who -- defying family pressure -- falls in love with a woman of the wrong caste. In 'The Buddha in the Earth-Touching Posture", a retired secretary visits the Buddha's birthplace, Lumbini, only to find his deepest insecurities exposed.
With their unexpected, inventive forms, these stories reveal the author's deep love of language and commitment to craft. Manjushree Thapa pushes the styles of her stories to match the distinctiveness of their content, emerging confidently as a skilled innovator and formalist.