It comes as something of a shock to have Aasif Mandvi describe himself as an actor on “The Daily Show.’’ He has become so well-known as the late-night program’s “senior Middle East-Muslim-All Things Brown correspondent’’ that it’s easy to forget that the show is satire and that “guest correspondents” like Mandvi are, well, actors.
Mandvi’s book “No Land’s Man’’ is a collection of humorous essays that explore his myriad identities: Indian, Muslim, British, and American. But you get the feeling that the identity Mandvi, 48, would most claim for himself is that of actor. Having seen Mandvi in his charming, daffy, but surprisingly affecting 2009 movie, “Today’s Special’’ (which he also co-wrote), it is easy to understand why.
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Mandvi is concerned here with exploring how the world has pegged him, how it sees him. The book is a lighthearted but heartfelt portrait of Mandvi’s childhood and his struggles to come to terms with his rather complicated life. Born in India and raised in England, Mandvi emigrates to the United States as a teenager, thanks to the whims of his father, who decides that any country that has invented the concept of brunch is worth living in. The young Mandvi is happy to get away from cold, gloomy England, where the kids at his boarding school refer to him as “Curry Pot’’ and chant, “Let’s go Paki bashing.”
Anything-goes America treats the teenager better than formal England had. Almost immediately Mandvi falls in with “the wrong crowd: the Actors.” It is his first, and lasting, chosen identity. Acting is such an odd career choice for an Indian-American boy in the early 1980s that the only thing his bewildered relatives can advise is that he model himself after Omar Sharif, the only brown-skinned Hollywood actor they know.
Two years into his life in America, Mandvi brings the crowd at his high school variety show to its feet by performing Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” silver glove and all. His transformation is complete: “I was an Indian, English kid who had been transplanted to America, dancing on a Tampa high school stage, channeling a black man who looked like an Indian girl.”
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Mandvi, by the way, references this and other aspects of the book in a witty, goofy Internet book trailer. In it, Mandvi approaches several actor friends to star in the trailer, only to be turned down. There is his brush with an overly solicitous Jack Black, who, when he finds out Mandvi is Muslim, insists that the irreligious Mandvi pray on the spot. There is a scene with Connie Britton, who has known Mandvi for 20 years, but who dismisses him with, “So you’re Indian now?” Finally, there is the encounter with John Oliver who, like a propah British colonialist, renames the book “Oliver’s Land’s Man.’'
The shadow of 9/11, and the backlash against Islam, hovers over these essays, coloring Mandvi’s uneasy relationship with his religion. Mandvi also writes about his struggle as an actor to get roles other than stereotypically ethnic ones.
Perhaps the most poignant chapter of the book is his encounter on a train with a beautiful Pakistani woman during a visit back to England. Mandvi is drawn to the stranger’s beauty but repelled by the hijab that covers her from head to toe. Despite their superficial similarities — both of them Muslim, both raised in England — he senses the unbridgeable gulf between her piety and his ambivalent relationship with Islam.
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For every serious moment, though, there are plenty of lighter ones. I enjoyed reading about Mandvi’s father, who not only impulsively moves the family to Florida, but also makes them all wear IHOP (“International House of Patel’’) T-shirts while on vacation in the hope of getting discounts at the restaurant chain. There is also an amusing chapter on Mandvi’s interaction with the eccentric director Ismail Merchant, who at a party accuses the hapless Mandvi of “having sex on my chair and he broke it.” (Don’t ask.)
The irony of Mandvi becoming the Middle East-Muslim-All Things Brown correspondent on “The Daily Show’’ is not lost on him. But neither is the pride that other Muslim-Americans feel in his success and visibility.
As Mandvi acknowledges, that pride is misplaced. He is, after all, merely an actor, the Muslim correspondent who doesn’t know much about the religion he professes to represent on TV. But perhaps Mandvi is wrong about this; at a time when racial sensitivities are so high, maybe the sheer presence of a brown-skinned Muslim correspondent on TV matters. Even if he’s a fake correspondent on a fake news show.
Or, as Jon Stewart once told Mandvi when he protested that he couldn’t speak for all of Islam: “I know . . . but right now . . . you’re all we’ve got.”
Thrity Umrigar lives in Cleveland and is the author of six novels, including, most recently, “The Story Hour.’’
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