Reading Wednesday

[lizbee]

Only finished one book this week: The Yoga Manifesto by Nadia Gilani. This was promoted as an examination of cultural appropriation, commercialisation and exploitation in yoga, which it is, but it is also Gilani's memoir, covering her relationships and struggles with eating disorders and addiction. This made it a bit disjointed, and though Gilani writes well about her life, it's not precisely what I thought I was signing up for. (The format -- a series of essays -- doesn't help with the disjointed feeling, of course.)

As an overview of Issues In Yoga, it was more satisfying. Although -- Gilani downplays and outright dismisses the links between yoga and Hinduism. Which makes sense: she is British-Pakistani and from a Muslim family. And she is far more educated in South Asian history and culture than me. Nevertheless, her claim that yoga dates from an ancient past before the subcontinent had been touched by outside cultures kiiiiind of raised my eyebrows. It might be true, but I've seen "actually, X is GOOD and PURE and UNTAINTED BY X" come up too many times in historical studies for it to be anything but a red flag.

Overall, I enjoyed it, and it very much made me want to get back into yoga, but it wasn't quite the book I expected.

I did start another one -- Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong. Gong is a Chinese-New Zealander who writes YA Shakespearean retellings with magic, set in China in the '20s and '30s. This is extremely my jam. And I very much enjoyed the few pages that I read, but the copy I picked up from the library was a large format paperback and weighed over 500g. That is too much for my delicate hands or bad shoulder! I've gone back and reserved her first book in ebook form from the library instead.

Comments

[kore]

Gong is a Chinese-New Zealander who writes YA Shakespearean retellings with magic, set in China in the '20s and '30s

Oh, very neat!

[goss]

her claim that yoga dates from an ancient past before the subcontinent had been touched by outside cultures

Interesting. I don't think she's wrong exactly. I don't doubt that yoga predates Hinduism, in the same way that I don't doubt that many Hindu cultural practices predate the collective and multifaceted religion that falls under that banner of "Hinduism".

[lizbee]

Right! I just suspect it's more complicated than that, and while I completely understand why she doesn't want to give Hindu supremacists bait -- she has already been the target of abuse online once -- it was frustrating that she simply sidestepped the question all together.