My stories, my family's stories, were not stories in India. They were just life.
When I left and made new friends in a new country, only then did the things that happened to my family, the things we had done, become stories. Stories worth telling, stories worth writing down.
Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. Her mother and uncles 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 allegiance. Rallies, agitations and arrests were commonplace. The independence movement promised freedom but for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. In rich, novelistic prose, Ants Among Elephants tells Gidla's remarkable family story, detailing her uncle's emergence as a poet and revolutionary and her mother's struggle for emancipation through education.
A moving portrait of love, hardship and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is a personal history of modern India, told from the bottom up.
'The story Gidla recounts is so urgent and affecting that it is easy to overlook the extraordinary literary skill with which she tells it.' Literary Review
'Unsentimental, deeply poignant... Gidla writes with quiet, fierce conviction.' Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Book Review
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
'This is a vital and illuminating book. Sujatha Gidla tells it like it is. She rips the pious mask off a society that institutionalises injustice and inhumanity in the name of ancient culture and religious practice. We need libraries full of books like hers.' --Arundhati Roy
'The most striking work of non-fiction set in India since Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.' --Economist
'Outstanding in the intensity and scale of its revelations... Gidla's book achieves the emotional power of V.S. Naipaul's great novel A House for Mr Biswas.' --Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books
Sujatha Gidla was born in Andhra Pradesh, India. She studied Physics at the Regional Engineering College in Warangal and at twenty-six moved to New York, where she became the first Indian woman to be employed as a conductor on the New York subway. Ants Among Elephants is her first book.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. 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 transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet 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. The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781911547228
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