Impressing the Whites
Update: I am delighted that 12 Years a Slave received an Oscar for Best Picture--it should be made compulsory viewing for every high school and college student. I salute the courage of Brad Pitt for having made it.
On the subject of racism:
HERE IS THE BLURB of my book, Impressing the Whites:The New International Slavery
• How did Salman Rushdie end up becoming a Western sacred cow (i.e. a true Moo-Salman?)
• How can East and West live together with greater authenticity, mutual recognition, and respect?
• Who uttered the immortal words, “If you wish to succeed in the West, impress the whites!”
• For whom is this a golden rule: "Do not fire your pen guns until you hear the Ayes of the whites"?
• What is the New Spiritual Colonialism?
• How do the suave and wise French keep their African ex-colonies happy?
• What are the rules for Asian and African writers wishing to win the Booker Prize?
• What is the Occidental Cow, and how many billion teats does it have? How does it compare with the Third World Cow?
If you buy the e-book on any of its multiple platforms, it is the completely edited and expanded 2013 version of the controversial paperback (published in 2000) that was featured on Indian national television, and is, for now, only available in e-book format. In this part-satirical, part serious book of essays on the distortions caused by race, Richard Crasta, author of the celebrated novel The Revised Kama Sutra, reveals the Fourteen Commandments of Impressing the Whites and a formula to win the Booker Prize and impress white tourists. While satirizing the phenomenon of "impressing the whites," which results in absurd posturing, it also proposes ways to promote authenticity, honesty, integrity, and a mutually respectful relationship between the races.
Among other things, the book contains detailed and humorous observations about such well-known writers such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Arundhati Roy.
"The reader laughs, squirms, recognizes his/her own hypocrisy and the blatant absurdity of most unquestioned social conventions. In this, Crasta succeeds in ways not unlike Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat character or Chris Rock race routines succeed, i.e., brilliantly. Zany exuberance . . . mischievous pleasure."--Frank Feldman, 5-star review
"Boldly goes where no Indian writer has gone before."--The Asian Age [END OF BLURB]
So, how can you impress me? Not by telling me you've read Nietzsche or Kierkegaard. Every second pretender aspiring to be called an intellectual has read both. By telling me that you read Impressing the Whites and that you even decided to gift a book to a friend . . . or someone who deserved to read it.
Like an Indian friend of mine who derived immense pleasure from gifting the paperback to a former classmate, who had now become a "pseudo." "He took it from me as if I was handing him a snake," said my friend.
It is also a litmus test for white people who are closet racists (there are lots of them around, who truly believe they are not racists, but are): if they happen to be racists, the book will make them furious.
Enough said. The book is now available on Google Play, in addition to Amazon Kindle, Apple, and elsewhere. A few links:
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52468
On the subject of racism:
HERE IS THE BLURB of my book, Impressing the Whites:The New International Slavery
• How did Salman Rushdie end up becoming a Western sacred cow (i.e. a true Moo-Salman?)
• How can East and West live together with greater authenticity, mutual recognition, and respect?
• Who uttered the immortal words, “If you wish to succeed in the West, impress the whites!”
• For whom is this a golden rule: "Do not fire your pen guns until you hear the Ayes of the whites"?
• What is the New Spiritual Colonialism?
• How do the suave and wise French keep their African ex-colonies happy?
• What are the rules for Asian and African writers wishing to win the Booker Prize?
• What is the Occidental Cow, and how many billion teats does it have? How does it compare with the Third World Cow?
If you buy the e-book on any of its multiple platforms, it is the completely edited and expanded 2013 version of the controversial paperback (published in 2000) that was featured on Indian national television, and is, for now, only available in e-book format. In this part-satirical, part serious book of essays on the distortions caused by race, Richard Crasta, author of the celebrated novel The Revised Kama Sutra, reveals the Fourteen Commandments of Impressing the Whites and a formula to win the Booker Prize and impress white tourists. While satirizing the phenomenon of "impressing the whites," which results in absurd posturing, it also proposes ways to promote authenticity, honesty, integrity, and a mutually respectful relationship between the races.
Among other things, the book contains detailed and humorous observations about such well-known writers such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, and Arundhati Roy.
"The reader laughs, squirms, recognizes his/her own hypocrisy and the blatant absurdity of most unquestioned social conventions. In this, Crasta succeeds in ways not unlike Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat character or Chris Rock race routines succeed, i.e., brilliantly. Zany exuberance . . . mischievous pleasure."--Frank Feldman, 5-star review
"Boldly goes where no Indian writer has gone before."--The Asian Age [END OF BLURB]
So, how can you impress me? Not by telling me you've read Nietzsche or Kierkegaard. Every second pretender aspiring to be called an intellectual has read both. By telling me that you read Impressing the Whites and that you even decided to gift a book to a friend . . . or someone who deserved to read it.
Like an Indian friend of mine who derived immense pleasure from gifting the paperback to a former classmate, who had now become a "pseudo." "He took it from me as if I was handing him a snake," said my friend.
It is also a litmus test for white people who are closet racists (there are lots of them around, who truly believe they are not racists, but are): if they happen to be racists, the book will make them furious.
Enough said. The book is now available on Google Play, in addition to Amazon Kindle, Apple, and elsewhere. A few links:
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52468
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