“Read American Canyon not as a text about the immigrant’s loss of an Indian homeland, but as a text about the writer-filmmaker’s loss of material footage, his laboriously and lovingly constructed archive, which is reduced once again to the memories it was supposed to replace.”

That is just part of the praise that Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan had for Amarnath Ravva’s AMERICAN CANYON, in a recent review on Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

AMERICAN CANYON has also been getting great reviews for more than its text—Ravva’s use of multiple forms of media is what makes this memoir moving and memorable. As Joyce Chen on Hyphen Magazine reviews:

“The resulting narrative—part-memoir, part-documentary, part-mythical exposition—is a fragmented collage in much the same way that Ravva professes to be a man of hybrid tradition and innovation himself. The content informs the form.

. . . For the truth that he seems to state is one that all readers can relate to: memory will always be incomplete, and layered, and complicated and there’s beauty to be found in its disintegration.”

Click on the links above or below to read the full reviews:
AAWW – Lost Footage from a Dual Pilgrimage Home
Hyphen – Books: Amarnath Ravva’s Multimedia Memoir