Join us for a live discussion on identity and India’s caste system with internationally acclaimed Dalit journalist Yashica Dutt!
SAWCC presents a reading and conversation with award-winning author Yashica Dutt and journalist Mona Elthaway, discussing identity, India’s caste system, and the newest edition of Dutt’s book, Coming Out As Dalit: A Memoir of Surviving India’s Caste System (Beacon Press 2024). Reception and book signing to follow.
Thursday, February 29, 2024
7:00 pm: Space opens
7:30 pm: Event starts
at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop
112 W 27th Street, #600
New York, NY 10001
About Yashica Dutt: Award-winning author of Coming Out as Dalit, Dutt is an internationally acclaimed Dalit journalist and among the most recognized global voices on caste. Dutt’s work has been published in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, and the Atlantic; and she has been featured on the BBC, the Guardian, and PBS NewsHour.
Coming Out as Dalit, which was published in the South Asian subcontinent in 2019, quickly became a bestseller and is currently part of the curriculum in over 50 colleges and universities worldwide, including Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis.
Dutt was involved in the passing of the historic anti-caste bill in the city of Seattle and her writing has been instrumental in shaping the text of the first-in-nation law. Dutt is currently working on her second book on caste in the United States, also commissioned by Beacon Press. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School and lives in Brooklyn.
About Mona Elthaway: She is a feminist author, commentator, and disruptor of patriarchy. Elthaway is the founder and editor-in-chief of the newsletter FEMINIST GIANT. Her opinion essays have appeared in media across the world. Her first book, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015), targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa, and her second, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls (2019), took that disruption worldwide. She is a contributor to the recent anthology This Arab is Queer and is editing the anthology Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrums. Her new book, due 2026, is a memoir of menopause called The King Herself: How Hatshepsut Helped Me Unbecome.
SAWCC’s programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.