India West reports that Deepa Iyer has won an American Book Award for her novel, We Too Sing America.
The award recognizes outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community.
We Too Sing America examines recent violence and hostilities towards South Asian Americans in the larger context of race relations in the United States.
In an interview with AsAmNews in November of last year, Iyer said “We have a trend in this country towards racial anxiety, xenophobia, national insecurity, Islamophobia that is getting louder and louder. I felt like this book would be an important entry point to having a discussion about those different forces in the United States and how people of color and immigrants can actively engage those issues.”
Iyer is the former executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together and a senior fellow at the Center for Social Inclusion.
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