Kirin Narayan (born November 1959) is an Indian-born American anthropologist, folklorist and writer.

Early life, education, and career

Narayan is the daughter of Narayan Ramji Contractor, a civil engineer from Nashik, and Didi Kinzinger, a German-American "artist, decorator, and builder of sustainable housing".[1] Narayan was born in Bombay, attended school in India and came to the United States in 1976.[2]

Narayan received a BA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and went on to post-graduate studies in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving her PhD in 1987. She taught anthropology and South Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[1][3][4] In 1993 she was named a Guggenheim Fellow in the field of anthropology and cultural studies.[5] She is a professor in the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University.[6]

Books

In 1989, Narayan published Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels: Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching.[7] It received the Victor Turner Prize from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology[8] and was co-winner of the Elsie Clews Prize for Folklore from the American Folklore Society.[6]

In 1994, she published the novel Love, Stars and All That.[9] Reviewing the novel, Indian poet and editor Dom Moraes praised the work, saying:

"This is a novel well received and achieved: it is also intelligent, excellently written, and revelatory of what it is like to be an American born in India. It makes one feel Narayan is that very rare bird, a born writer, and that she may fly far."[10]

Narayan published Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon: Himalayan Foothill Folktales in 1997.[11] In 2002 a new edition of the first collection of Indian folk tales in English, Mary Frere's Old Deccan Days, was published with an introduction by Narayan.[12] In 2007, she published a memoir My Family and Other Saints.[3][4][13] An autobiographical work in which "Gods, gurus and eccentric relatives compete for primacy", The New York Times described the work as an "enchanting memoir".[14] Its title is a reference to Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, a childhood inspiration to Narayan.[15]

In her 2012 work Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov,[16] Narayan used Anton Chekhov's Sakhalin Island as inspiration for an exploration of ethnographic writing. James Wood, writing of his 'Books of the Year' in The New Yorker, described it as a "brief and brilliant book" that he read "with huge pleasure".[17] In 2016 Narayan published Everyday Creativity: Singing Goddesses in the Himalayan Foothills, about women's traditions of singing in the Kangra Valley.[18]

References

  1. ^ a b Sharma, Maya (2000). "Kirin Narayan". In Emmanuel Sampath Nelson (ed.). Asian American Novelists: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. p. 257. ISBN 0313309116.
  2. ^ "Professor Kirin Narayan". ANU Researchers - Research Services Division. Australian National University. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  3. ^ a b Sanga, Jaina C (2003). South Asian Novelists in English: An A-to-Z Guide. p. 186. ISBN 0313318859.
  4. ^ a b Oh, Seiwoong (2015). Encyclopedia of Asian-American Literature. pp. 556–57. ISBN 978-1438140582.
  5. ^ "Kirin Narayan". John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
  6. ^ a b "Professor Kirin Narayan". Australian National University.
  7. ^ Reviews of Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels:
  8. ^ "SHA Prize Winners". Society for Humanistic Anthropology.
  9. ^ Reviews of Love, Stars and All That:
  10. ^ Moraes (1994)
  11. ^ Reviews of Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon:
  12. ^ Review of Old Deccan Days:
  13. ^ Reviews of My Family and Other Saints:
  14. ^ Grimes (2007)
  15. ^ Sharma, Sanjukta (19 September 2008). "A family 'we-moir'". Livemint.
  16. ^ Reviews of Alive in the Writing:
  17. ^ Wood, James (17 December 2012). "Books of the Year". The New Yorker.
  18. ^ Reviews of Everyday Creativity:

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