We hear about what happens when 'Mrs. Gupta Goes to the Gynaecologist' and
celebrate the development of 'Sex, Lies, and Hash Pakoras' in true Sex and the
City style whilst the diverse collection of writers, aged between twenty-five
and seventy-one, continue to spin sensual stories engaging everything from sex
toys to food porn and ritual role play.
Stories such as Sharmeen Khan's 'Confessions of a Paki with Colonized Desire of
How Giving White Men Blowjobs Reproduces Colonialism' present to explore the
issue of race in sex.
The book's contributors include London based author Tanuja Desai Hidier (Born
Confused), Raywat Deonandan, Kareena Besh and Roohi Choudhry.
Zenia Wadhwani, one of the three editors responsible for Desilicious, the other
two being Deborah Barretto and Gurbir Singh Jolly, believes that the primary
audience are young adults, although she's heard a few stories "about the
aunties and uncles snickering about the book and trying to read some of it!".
She says its aim is to make readers "appreciate how cultural expressions of
sexuality are more varied" than those conventionally considered. "It is as much
about sensuality as it is about sexuality," she says before telling me that one
of the most pleasant surprises was discovering the number of submissions that
translated sexuality as not just a physical act, but also as an expression of
food, geography, and love.
It does seem however that the book concentrate on the romantic nature of sex as
opposed to the more ironic exploration of the differences between ethics and
desire in similar ethnic projects.
She hopes that "the collection shows how dynamically and intimately [ethnicity
and sexuality] shape each other", when texts are not aimed narrowly at any
exclusive ethnically-defined readership.
Did they set a criteria for submissions then, to focus on a specific aspect of
sexuality?
"It didn't matter if it was gay or straight. It didn't matter if the theme was
about desire or distress, or both. It didn't matter if the work dealt with
sexual initiation, or sexy seniors. We were looking for writing that
demonstrated craft. For some pieces, it was about being turned on, for others
it was about challenging the stereotype, and for others still, it was simply
about telling a great story," she says.
"At the end of the day, it was the pieces that really touched our senses that
did the trick."
But for a collection where challenging the stereotype is one of its main aims,
the use of overtly stereotypical imagery, e.g. the contrast of multi-racial
skin tones and spicy aromas, seems to be recurrent. Did that not propagate the
ethno-centric stereotype the collective aimed to diminish?
Wadhwani says that "one of the best ways to engage stereotypes is to play with
them, to invoke them subversively", without treating them as taboo subjects
that defile the "political purity" of the subject at hand, maintaining that "if
spicy aromas are a turn-on for some, then there's no harm in saying so and
being proud of it!"
Zenia believes the trio, brought together by mutual friends and a love of South
Asian literature, respected each other's literary tastes and politics enough to
"trust that if one of us respected a piece, or strongly felt it was
inappropriate for the collection, we were able to reach a confident consensus
without much friction".
