User:LekhaC/Rajshree Chauhan

Rajshree Chauhan (born November 27, 1969) is a South Asian-American writer, publisher, and educator in higher education. Born in San Francisco, California, Rajshree has had her own poems and short stories published in collections by Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine both National and Student Editions, and has published several authors in turn in sParkle & bLink and through Matrices Press. Her own work is about assimilation and the South Asian immigrant experience.

Early Life
Rajshree's parents immigrated to the US in the 1960s from. Her father came in 1964 to enroll in a Master's program at UC Berkeley. Her mother joined him two years later.

Born in San Francisco, her family soon moved to Fremont, and finally settled in Danville, California in the late 70s. Fremont is known to have a large Indian population which left her unprepared for the move to Danville - at the time it was near exclusively upper middle class white. Still both cities, developed her palette for race relations among Indians themselves, and Indians in a broader community context.

Life "In-Between"
As many immigrants and children of immigrants experience, Rajshree found that she cannot fully be accepted into either the Indian community or into American culture. She is both a blend of two cultures, yet neither one fully. She writes in :

"Collapsed in between.

Like not being white and not being black... Being brown and flowing between the two, Being forgotten there.

If it were as easy as that to choose."

Even in arts, perhaps more so in the arts, she again encountered gender bias and homogenization. The Indian community criticized her for writing about dark things in the Indian culture, and "main stream", however that would be defined, didn't see much value in the immigrant experience.

Publishing
Rajshree co-founded Quiet Lightning, a submission-based reading series formed to connect the San Francisco literary community, and promote local writers. She went on to launch Matrices Press, a small publishing house whose intention is to bring out of the darkness voices that have been silenced, experiences that have been marginalized.

Matrices Press
"is an independent press, a project, a new publication. [They] promote integrated diversity, and launch Oct 15 at 2011." Matrices Origins is the first book they are launching in 2011, and they are sending out a national call for submissions for a larger volume anthology to be published in late 2012.

The writers featured for the launch are:, , and Laura Wolfe.

The idea of Matrices came about because Rajshree and collaborator,, found that there was not a safe place people of color, people with different backgrounds could come together and trust that their stories would be treated with integrity. Most writing needs to be palatable to the publisher, and they recognized a lack of diversity among publishers.