Desilicious: Sexy Subversive South Asian

Jaroslaw Zurowsky is a translator and editor in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

In the introduction to this wonderful anthology, the Masala Trois
Collective (Deborah Barretto, Gurbir Singh Jolly, and Zenia Wadhwani)
proclaim that their mission is to dispel the myth that South Asians are
“repressed victims of sexless marriages” or else “hypersexual
inheritors of the Kama Sutra.” The pieces that they have included do
just that.

The 40 or so contributors come from various ethnic and religious
backgrounds (Hindu, Muslim, Pakistani, Punjabi, etc.). The pieces are
short (mainly prose with a few poems) and the issues they tackle cover
the whole gamut of relational problems and mystiques. The publisher’s
description of the collection as a medley is apt. One work flows into
another and points are not belabored. There are ties to the “old
world” and the “old world romanticism,” but the characters and
authors all live in the modern 21st-century Western world.

Desilicious is a must-have for readers who want to learn about the
South Asian community and who are not likely to be put off by the
book’s sexual themes.