Anjali Enjeti: Politics and Possibility

Anjali Enjeti published not one but two books this spring: a novel, The Parted Earth, and an essay collection, Southbound. Both are remarkable debuts, focusing on lives that do not receive enough careful attention in US literary culture. The novel traces four South Asian women across time and geography from mid-twentieth century Asia — when, in 1947, their lives are forever changed by the partition of India and Pakistan into separate nation-states — to Trump’s America. It’s the story of women exploring their histories and coming into their own later in life, despite great odds. Southbound charts Enjeti’s political awakening while growing up in Detroit and after moving to Chattanooga in 1984, when she was ten, as well as her experiences contending with discrimination and coming to terms with her identity as a woman of Indian, Austrian, and Puerto Rican descent. In a nod to the collection’s title, Enjeti writes of representing “multiple souths” — South Asia, southern India, and the American Deep South. In both works, she’s sensitive to such complexities in herself and her characters, and the ways they animate a life.

Enjeti’s persistence in the publishing world drew us together a few years ago. We’re both South Asian women writers who launched our creative careers after navigating the complexities of jobs and family, and the sheer challenge of breaking into publishing in midlife and as women of color. Enjeti is a former-lawyer-turned-activist, an award-winning journalist, a creative writing teacher, and the mother of three children. A reported essay she wrote for Guernica won the South Asian Journalism Award. She also co-founded the Georgia chapter of They See Blue, an organization that mobilizes South Asian voters to engage in progressive US politics.

Now that Enjeti has two books out, I wanted to catch