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Ants among elephants : an untouchable family and the making of modern India

Title: Ants among elephants : an untouchable family and the making of modern India / Sujatha Gidla.
Author: Gidla, Sujatha, 1963-
Publication: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 17-7999	Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315

Details

Description

306 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"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"--

Subject

Call Number

JFE 17-7999

ISBN

9780865478114
0865478112

LCCN

2016052857

OCLC

2016052857

Author

Gidla, Sujatha, 1963- author.

Title

Ants among elephants : an untouchable family and the making of modern India / Sujatha Gidla.

Publisher

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Research Call Number

JFE 17-7999

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