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Welcome to the sixth The Female Minority Voices Book Club meeting of the year!For June, our book pick is Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India by Sujatha Gidla.
About the book:
The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary
Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible life—how he became a famous poet, student, labor organizer, and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother’s battles with caste and women’s oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society.
A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.
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OFFER: Our team member Rodolfo Baldinotti will be able to order the book for those of you who want to use this offer. He will give a list to the bookstore (Norli Strandgaten) and you will be contacted when the book is ready to be picked up (payment then and there).
Send an email with your full name and contact information to [email protected] between 29.04.24 and 13.05.24 (13:00). The books will be ordered by the end of the deadline, on the 15.04.24.
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And as always, if you don't get the chance to read the book, come anyway!
The book functions as a conversation starter, so just read up on the theme/topic of the book, and join us for a good conversation - and bring a friend!
See you there!
Join our book club here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/382802586790525
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Bergen Assembly, Halfdan Kjerulfs gate 4, 5017 Bergen, Norge,Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
