Curry: Reading, Eating, and Race (Exploded Views) - Softcover

"Ruthnum picks apart Jhumpa Lahiri, Rohinton Mistry, Daniyal Mueenudin, Shoba Narayan, Madhur Jaffrey, and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle with a thoughtful ambivalence that exhibits an admirable intellectual honesty ...It's fun to watch him think." - The Toronto Star "Spot on, scathing, and often humorous, Ruthbum's prose has a strong sense of voice that is unlike anything produced lately." - Quill & Quire "Ruthnum's provocative intellectual journey in Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race explores this colonial endpoint, tracing the complex roots of curry as well as its diasporic colonization of the West in a series of interconnected essays that are as deliciously pleasant in narrative style as they are provocatively piquant in theoretical debate." - Pop Matters "Curry, which reads more like a conversation than a hardcore critique, introduces Ruthnum's philosophical and humorous side." - Metro News "Curry is an engaging and insightful long-form essay that connects the dots between the popular dish and how it functions as shorthand for brown identity in representing the food, culture and social perception of the South Asian diaspora." - CBC Books "Curry proves itself to be a smart text, one that shows us the link between who we are and what we eat is never as straightforward as it may first appear." - The Walrus "Always engaging and sometimes funny, [Ruthnum is] most fierce when talking about currybooks ..." - NOW Magazine "Curry is a challenging, but refreshing take on the politics involved in our reading and choices, and one that reminds us of the messy ambiguity of racial identity, particularly in diasporic communities. Ruthnum's mixing of personal history and vast reading experience make it valuable contribution to discussions of race in writing and popular culture." - Hamilton Review of Books

Ruthnum won the Journey Prize in 2013 His short fiction has also won the Peterson Prize for Writing, and the Malahat Review's Novella Contest. His first crime novel to be published under the pseudonym Nathan Ripley will appear in 2018. Curry was inspired by Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands Cultural authenticity and appropriation are currently hot-button issues