Hello, everyone! Welcome to Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling minipod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today, I am loitering at my dining room table in Oakland, California.
If you’re getting this, that means that at some point or another, you’ve expressed interest in my reporting and encouraged me to keep you in the loop on future stories and my whereabouts, and what I am generally up to.
Some of you may remember the original Loitering mini podcast. That went on hiatus first when the app I used to start it shut down (which of course was not unexpected given the nature of startups). And then after I relaunched it, it went on hiatus again when I got really busy. And I also started to wonder whether the new app I was trying out was really worth it.
Meanwhile, some of you have literally told me to do what I am doing right now, which is make use of an email newsletter.
While it’s taken me a long time to do it, I actually started this one a few months ago and have started others in the past. And the reason I am partial to this platform, at least for now, is that it offers the capacity for podcasting at the same time you can send a traditional newsletter. And…I like that. The podcasting function is currently in beta, so it may have some hiccups at times, but I’m down to try it out. And I hope that now that I’m actually sending this minipod newsletter out, that I will make myself more accountable to this, and that the people who read it and listen to it hold me accountable too.
So. Now that that’s out of the way, onto what Loitering will cover in this message and in the future. And the truth is, I am not sure what its exact identity will be. I do hope to incorporate more location-based interviews, as I did before. But I’m also hoping — and this is a little bit different from before — to use Loitering as way to talk about and distribute current stories I’m working on.
That said, I want to talk about one in particular that published last week on a new site for untold South Asian stories called The Juggernaut. The story builds off of reporting I’ve been pursuing for several years, and is a story that’s occupied much of my headspace for the last couple of months. The news hook is India’s election for its next prime minister, which is currently taking place in a multi-stage voting process. The story I wrote is a broader piece about what nationalism looks like for the Indian diaspora in the U.S., and what their political significance could be both here and in India.
So basically, this is the kind of story that might only come from a person like me. And it’s the kind of story that I found, over the course of pitching it and discussing it with others, piques a lot of interests — and not just from people who are really into India. My gut feeling and observation is that the current conversation around white nationalism and global nationalism contributes to that. Nationalism has become almost a trigger word for some people, even though others do see it as akin to, say, patriotism. And so some people do have a more positive, rather than negative, identification with the word. But what are the fine lines between nationalism as patriotism, versus nationalism as something that’s more exclusionary and something to be afraid of? That’s what my story explores.
So, if you’re reading this newsletter, I’m posting the link to it. It’s called, “Where Politics in India and California Collide.” You can also Google it if you’re listening to this. Just an fyi, it is behind a paywall, but you can try a free weeklong subscription to the site to test it out and read my story. The subscription model is a popular model for news outlets these days… just as a newsletter is a popular model for journalists! Whatever you think about either, please remember that trying to keep good reporting and storytelling sustainable is at the heart of both project… and that whatever support we could get is truly appreciated.
So, before I log off, I want to share a few stories I’ve read and listened to recently that I think might stir a lot of thinking.
The first is a piece I actually just read last night. It was my bedtime story. It’s a piece by Wil S. Hylton, and it’s in the New York Times Magazine. The title is, “My Cousin Was My Hero. Until the Day He Tried to Kill Me.” So, as you can imagine, with a title like that, this personal essay is not for the faint of heart. But I found it captivating, both for its eloquence, as well for the ideas it put forward around topics like masculinity, gender norms, mental illness, how others influence our own behaviors — all of which are things that aren’t necessarily easy to discuss.
The second is an episode I listened to about a month ago from the producers at NPR’s Code Switch podcast called, “Why Is It So Hard to Talk About Israel?” And if you’re like me and interested in topics like diaspora and nationalism, and how we can distinguish between feeling “targeted” versus inhabiting a certain kind of “fragility,” then this episode delves into all of that. I also think there are a lot parallels between Jewish politics and Indian politics, so if you know me because of my India-oriented reporting, this episode might be intriguing for that reason as well.
The third is another New York Times piece called “Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got ‘Greedy.’” And this is not just about women’s work but the nature of work in general in the United States, and how it influences both our gender roles and our lives. And that’s by Claire Cain Miller.
The last piece I’m recommending is something I read a couple of months ago now, and has stayed in my memory in part because not long after I read it, I met up with a friend who had similarly just read it! And we found ourselves talking a lot about it outside a tea lounge in Union City… It’s called, “The only metric of success that really matters is the one we ignore,” and it’s by Jenny Anderson.
And that wraps up today’s edition of Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling minipod I am currently testing in newsletter format. As I mentioned, this minipod newsletter is a work in progress! I’d love your tips and feedback. Thanks for listening and reading, and have a great day. Goodbye! :)
XOXO,
Sonia
P.S. Feel free to share this with those you think may be interested. I may do a more formal “announcement” about this minipod newsletter down the line, but for now, it’s nice to slowly build a community. :)
Loitering in Oakland on Nationalism