Bullshit versus authenticity

The earliest identifiable influence I recognise on my becoming a short fiction writer is, Bharati Mukherjee's, The Middleman and Other Stories. I came across a recent article on Mukherjee . What I like is her honesty in defining herself as an American writer, despite having spent her formative years in India. I am tired of trying to expose the bullshit that is the basis of Guyana-born writers calling themselves Guyanese writers and what they are writing "Guyanese literature" simply be virtue of being born here. Mukherjee writes:

"I maintain that I am an American writer of Indian origin, not because I'm ashamed of my past, not because I'm betraying or distorting my past, but because my whole adult life has been lived here, and I write about the people who are immigrants going through the process of making a home here... I write in the tradition of immigrant experience rather than nostalgia and expatriation. That is very important. I am saying that the luxury of being a U.S. citizen for me is that can define myself in terms of things like my politics, my sexual orientation or my education. My affiliation with readers should be on the basis of what they want to read, not in terms of my ethnicity or my race."