When you're an immigrant, you're at the bottom of the ladder. You might not be at the bottom of the ladder economically. Those contradictions led me to feel that the role in society I was given didn't jive with my sense of myself. I think, in fact, that is the case with most people. Everybody feels themselves to be in an original relationship to creation, and feels confined by their social role.
Vijay SeshadriWe live in a trans period. Contemporary issues of sexuality, for example - the exciting aspects of them - have to do with transgenderedness. And there's trans-nationality. There are people like me, for example. I mean, what am I? Am I Indian? Am I American? And I'm not alone in being between things.
Vijay SeshadriHistorically, there are hierarchies of purity. Certain aspects of poetry are very, very pure. The lyric poem can't be anything but the lyric poem.
Vijay SeshadriGenres have a history and impose a historical character upon the writer. What is interesting in the poem involves a certain kind of dramatization of the self that you don't have to engage in in the essay. In fact, the essay is a more social medium than the poem.
Vijay SeshadriLanguage itself is a mask. It's the first mask in the series of invented selves - they've come right out of language. The way you speak changes you, because when you are speaking, you are representing yourself in a certain way.
Vijay Seshadri