{"product_id":"the-smudged-hyphen-lakshmi-iyer-9798251021608","title":"The Smudged Hyphen: Essays on Family, Identity, and the Art of Belonging","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere is a word in Tamil that English has no equivalent for. \u003ci\u003eIdam.\u003c\/i\u003e It means place, but also space, but also belonging. You say it when you are looking for where you fit. You say it when you have found something.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLakshmi Iyer has been asking \u003ci\u003eidam enge\u003c\/i\u003e - where is my place - since she left Madras at twenty-five with a suitcase and an arranged marriage and landed in southeastern Pennsylvania, where the winters were grey and the nearest temple was a Sunday drive away. \u003ci\u003eThe Smudged Hyphen\u003c\/i\u003e is the record of what happened next: twenty years of building a life between worlds, written in real time and gathered here into a collection that moves from the private to the political and back again.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe essays range across marriage and its long negotiations, the silence around money in adoption, the specific bewilderment of raising white daughters as a brown woman in America, the body's quiet rebellions in midlife, the grief that arrives when a parent dies and keeps arriving for decades after. Iyer writes about vibuthi and K-pop, about the politics of joy and the labour of festivals no one else in the house understands, about the moment she looked at her father - the man she had idolized for his silence - and understood that his silence had a different name.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShe does not resolve these tensions. The hyphen in the title is smudged, not erased. The essays hold contradictions: love and clear-eyed reckoning, rootedness and restlessness, the home you carry and the home you keep making. What emerges is a portrait of a woman in the middle of her life, still asking the question, still finding that the asking itself is a form of arrival. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Smudged Hyphen\u003c\/i\u003e is for anyone who has ever stood between two places and wondered if the space between counts as somewhere.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Lakshmi Iyer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798251021608\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/06\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 280\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.62lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.59d","brand":"Lakshmi Iyer","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48440747950335,"sku":"9798251021608","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_bf6a45bc-477c-48ff-b22c-a6721b689981.jpg?v=1777184539","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-smudged-hyphen-lakshmi-iyer-9798251021608","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}