On Shifting Identities, Migrations, Visibility and Invisibility

Sunil Sharma

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”

― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

This month, a collaboration with Matwaala---a USA-based literary platform promoting diasporic writings from South Asia and recently, welcoming from other ethnicities---focuses on identities that entail any migration, local, inside or outside the country of one's origins.

Matwaala completes a decade of fruitful engagement with varied poetic voices. Led by celebrated poets, Usha Akella, Pramila Venkateswaran, and her team, it makes visible the contribution of poets who chose to share their experiences of living in a new country.

When Matwaala showed interest in a joint project with Setu, we readily agreed.

Anita Nahal, one of our eminent guest editors and a close collaborator, agreed to guest edit the special edition titled: "Dual Identities".

A total of 32 poets were selected to represent this experience, lived/imagined.

That is migration from both perspectives---embedded and a distant view of these complex realities and adopting a lifestyle in sync with the customs of the chosen land---fraught with multiple challenges and full of joy and pain in democracies where top professionals still continue to be seen from the lens of skin colour, sometimes subtle, sometimes explicit!

It comes with the territory.

Whether internal or external displacement, the movement comes with its own package of biases, prejudices, and, a determined sense of overcoming these overall arbitrary labels, and, surviving the odds, fuelled by a deep existential desire of integrating into the system.

First-generation immigrants face toughest battles. They clear the ground for the next generation who speak "propah" English---native-like---but still face many levels of discrimination.

The DNA continues to evolve in such scenarios everywhere and every generation has to overcome these false barriers created by the elites of a particular colour.

Of late, the whiteness of Oscars has been increasingly interrogated and Black Lives Matter (BLM) as a movement mobilised the public opinion around issues of racism and violence in America; the twin movements went mainstream globally, resulting in remedial actions.

Black music and Lit have been exploring these themes over the decades.

Ralph Ellison is an enduring example.

Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou are still relevant.

Dreaming of a better life and more equitable cultures, artists, poets and writers keep on writing, painting, and singing of a society of equals.

Of desiring visibility.

Striving towards that---being seen.

That is the realm of serious art, not kitsch, or commercial art.

Does migration involve nostalgia? Long term? A crippling state of recall?

Talking of these imposed identities, Anita Nahal writes in her guest editorial:

Some would label me as having “dual identities.” Personally, I think I have multiple layers that lap and overlap as in a Venn diagram---human, woman, single mother, professional, writer, and so forth. And therefore, the notion of a dual hyphenated identity, such as Indian-American doesn’t garner my interest. What is the need of a hyphen between those words? And neither does nostalgia bother me nor find its way in any distinct fashion into my writings. I didn’t realize that till readers pointed that out to me.

How true! Anita is spot on!

So here we have this joint project that is going to unveil the meaning of living abroad or not living there, of the dualism, hyphenated identities---and looking at those gilded houses from far-off native shores by those who elected to remain rooted in the home soils.

A section deals with critical analysis and readings of some important texts.

And the usual fare of fine writings!

Please enjoy!

Thanks to our guest editor, Matwaala and other literary friends for their kind support.

Sunil Sharma,

Managing Editor, Setu (English)

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Setu, April 2025