Neela vaswani biography of alberta

Neela Vaswani is a gifted envoy from that nation beyond borders of people with multiple homelands and heritages, citizens of a world where the old categories of race and ethnicity are blurring at the edges.

The New York City writer, who is making an appearance at Baltimore’s CityLit Festival Saturday, has father who is Sindhi-Indian, a mother who is Irish-Catholic and a gift for the sensitive rendering of what she calls the world of the “in between,” where cultural and racial categories are smudged, shuffled and deliberately resisted.

In an age when Barack Obama is president of the United States and many families cross racial divides, her work has certainly struck a nerve.

The publication of Vaswani’s autobiographical, semi-fictional “You Have Given Me a Country” by a small literary press has drawn a wide audience and won a series of prizes, including the American Book Award.

All of which came as a surprise, Vaswani said.

“I had never in m