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Sameer Pandya – MEMBERS ONLY : A Novel
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MEMBERS ONLY : A Novel

Sameer Pandya
LIGHTLY USED, PAPERBACK

RM16.00

A Satirical And Thought-Provoking Fictional Commentary On Race, Class, And The Complexities of Multiculturalism In Contemporary America

ISBN 9780358379928
Book Condition LIGHTLY USED
Format PAPERBACK
Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Mariner Books)
Publication Date 07 July 2020
Pages 368
Weight 0.36 kg
Dimension 20.5 × 13.5 × 2.6 cm
Availability: 1 in stock

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★★ Finalist for the California Book Award ★★
★★ An NPR Best Book ★★
★★ A Millions Most Anticipated Title of 2020 ★★
★★ A Rumpus Best Book for Asian and Pacific Islander American Heritage Month ★★
 
First the white members of Raj Bhatt’s posh tennis club call him racist. Then his life falls apart. Along the way, he wonders: where does he, a brown man, belong in America? This award-winning novel “offers deep insight into the ways the characters are shaped by racism” (Publishers Weekly).
 
“Members Only” is the first novel written by Sameer Pandya, published in 2021. It is a satirical and thought-provoking exploration of race, identity, and belonging in America as provocative as it is comedic. The story revolves around Raj Bhatt, a middle-aged professor of ethnic studies and the son of Indian immigrants, who is invited to join a prestigious private tennis club in an affluent California suburb.</strong
Raj is often unsure of where he belongs. Having moved to America from Bombay as a child, he knew few Indian kids. Now middle-aged, he lives mostly happily in California, with a job at a university. Still, his white wife seems to fit in better than he does at times, especially at their tennis club, a place he’s cautiously come to love. But it’s there that, in one week, his life unravels.
 
It begins at a meeting for potential new members: Raj thrills to find an African American couple on the list; he dreams of a more diverse club. But in an effort to connect, he makes a racist joke. In a horribly misguided attempt to bond with the first people of color since his own admission into a suburban Los Angeles tennis club, Raj’s well-intended but inexcusable use of a slur sets off what will clearly be the worst week of his life.
 
As a Bombay-born Indian American, Raj was the lone member of color at the Tennis Club: “simple nouns elevated to proper status,” he glibly observes, shortened to TC for the anointed. His own welcome was indirect–because he’s his white wife’s brown spouse.
 
Raj currently serves on the membership committee, vetting prospective new couples. He’s especially thrilled to meet Bill and Valerie Brown–an African American power couple sponsored by the (white) Blacks. Their appearance inspires “big, friendly grins,” until Bill’s modesty about his Stanford tennis days elicits Raj’s utterly inappropriate response.
 
The committee turns on him, no matter the years of prejudice he’s put up with. And worse still, he soon finds his job is in jeopardy after a group of students report him as a reverse racist, thanks to his alleged “anti-Western bias.” Heartfelt, humorous, and hard-hitting, Members Only explores what membership and belonging mean, as Raj navigates the complicated space between black and white America.
 
As Raj enters this elite social circle, he becomes acutely aware of the racial dynamics and cultural biases at play. The novel delves into the complexities of navigating an exclusive space as a person of color and examines the notion of assimilation, racial stereotypes, and the challenges faced by immigrants in the United States.
 
Through humor and incisive observations, Pandya tackles themes of privilege, racial microaggressions, and the pressure to conform to societal expectations. Raj’s experiences at the club prompt him to question his own identity, values, and the sacrifices he has made to fit into American society.
 
Yet as dire as Raj’s faux pas is, none of his co-members are willing to acknowledge the ongoing racist incidents Raj regularly faces. Just minutes before the Browns’ entrance, for example, another prospective couple had repeatedly called Raj “Kumar.”
 
When his corrections are twice disregarded, Raj silenced his “incensed” retorts, still “hoping that, given time, I could be part of this club without losing some vital part of myself and my dignity.” No member noticed the microaggression. At least, none came to his defense. But all are ready with condemnations when he slips.
 
From the courts to the classroom, Raj’s university teaching career next takes a downturn when a student films parts of Raj’s cultural anthropology lecture about the West and Christianity and the clip–misrepresented and out of context–lands on a conservative website.
 
The consequences snowball quickly: students officially complain, demands are made, attacks happen, there’s even a hunger strike. Still, the challenges don’t stop: Raj’s minor foot procedure could turn fatal; his older son’s artistic experiments could get him expelled. And no, that’s not all.
 
Facing social, professional, personal implosion–all in one week–might seem impossibly overdramatic, but Members Only proves remarkably convincing. For people like Raj, a carefully constructed life–complete with an Ivy League Ph.D., a white wife and two children, elite memberships, connected friends–could all be reduced to virtually nothing with one small mistake.
 
That said, don’t expect all doom-and-gloom here: without ever eliding the gravity of serious social issues like racism, privilege and power, Pandya deftly manages to create a tragicomedy of errors driven by surprising wit, irreverent humor and razor-sharp insight
 
With insight, humor, and highly nuanced dialog, Sameer Pandya gives us a glimpse into the middle ground between white and black America, the struggles surrounding what is accepted and how to feel and be treated as an equal based on varied shades of skin color. Raj is delightful, flawed and a wonderful character to go on this journey with.
 
A quick read, very timely with much to think about and discuss, and I highly recommend it!

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KIRKUS REVIEW :
 
Over the course of a week, an Indian American professor’s life spirals out of control.
 
University lecturer Raj Bhatt loves the exclusive Tennis Club, TC for short, to which he and his family belong even though he has always felt uncomfortable as one of its few nonwhite members. When, in an effort to connect with a black couple who want to join the club, he lets slip a slur in front of the membership committee, the other members of the TC are horrified.
 
Raj feels awful, but he can’t help wondering why the racial slights he’s faced during his time there haven’t received the same attention. Meanwhile, after students in his anthropology class send video of him supposedly criticizing Christianity and the West to a right-wing website, he finds himself in the middle of an internet firestorm that threatens his job.
 
Suddenly, he’s being labeled a racist and a reverse-racist simultaneously. This first novel from Pandya (The Blind Writer, 2015) aims to skewer both the upper-crust milieu of exclusive country clubs and conservative campus culture, and it partially succeeds.
 
Pandya is sharply critical of right-wing “news” sites and conservative students who argue against any critique of the West, but his depiction of these phenomena is not totally believable. Pandya focuses on website comments, not social media or Reddit (the hubs of online hate today), and Raj’s outraged students feel more like convenient obstacles than real people.
 
Also, while he captures the details of the country-club setting, he doesn’t examine the politics of those characters as closely. The novel’s satirical edge might have been more effective if Raj were either more sympathetic or more odious. The novel ultimately sides with him, but he causes many of his problems himself and is irritating enough that it’s hard to feel too sorry for him.
 
A readable but frustrating critique of contemporary politics that lacks bite.
 
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About the Author :
 
SAMEER PANDYA is the author of the story collection The Blind Writer, which was longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award. He is also the recipient of the PEN/Civitella Fellowship. His fiction, commentary, and cultural criticism has appeared in a range of publications, including the Atlantic, Salon, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and Narrative Magazine. He teaches creative writing and South Asian and Asian American literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Members Only is his first novel.

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