The Trouble with Humpadori

"In The Trouble with Humpadori we find a bejeweled and day-glo world in which the figure of Humpadori—human and non-human—performs, taunts, seduces, and critiques with all sorts of ‘unfurling action.’

Here language pulses with vital sounds and inventive word incarnations. Downright serious Vidhu Aggarwal creates contemporary spectacles with shades of myths and dystopias. A fantastically original book!"

—Molly Bendall

"In The Trouble with Humpadori, Vidhu Aggarwal goes all ‘boogie woogie’ with the politics of imperialism and racism, wedding abjection and postcolonialism, exuberance, and shame.

This book explores the accent, the smear, and the mangling of language–the “violence of exchange”–while giving us some of the most ‘debased kerfuckle’ around.”

— Johannes Göransson

"The Trouble with Humpadori is an inter-intra-cultural post-post-colonial (& then some) deranged wikidickiepsychopedia tilt-a-whirl carnival screw-ride of creation-decreation myths, unreliable facts, improbable gossip, disco ball narratives, pop (& lock) fairy tales & chainsaw allegories, all in some futuristic language not unlike our own."

—Justin Chin

"The Trouble with Humpadori is a Rabelaisian journey of epic (dis)proportions. Introducing the world to the unforgettable Humpadori—an ontological riddle wrapped in a historical enigma, or vice versa—Aggarwal’s dazzling collection imagines a new kind of poetic subject that embodies the vexing complexities of identity in Anglophone Indian verse.

Traveling a literary landscape of mock-interviews, pseudo-manifestos, concrete poetry, and Bollywood marquees, our hapless protagonist discovers that modern India—and our ancient planet—offers little cover for the endlessly unraveling self.

Throughout, the comedy and tragedy of identity alike are illuminated by the spotlight of universal longing. “I’d say we’re pretty much all Humpadori,” says Humpadori. For reasons beyond me, I whole-heartedly agree."

—Srikanth Reddy

“Vidhu Aggarwal is a poet of the pineal gland. She transmits emits like a unicorn technology in the form of an author. Brilliant and wild, she writes. Then writes again."

—Bhanu Kapil