South Asian Films and Books Alka Kurian

In this episode, I talk with Amitava Kumar about his 2024 novel My Beloved Life, an absorbing, exceptionally moving novel that traces the arc of a man’s life, an ordinary life made exceptional by the fact that he has loved and has been loved in turn.

In this episode, I talk to the award-winning writer Yashica Dutt about her book "Coming Out as Dalit." The book exposes the blurred lines between caste and race, for both are fabrications meant to preserve the power of a few and require the ideological purchase of the many. And for women, for whom 'purity' is a measure of status and value, the traps of caste are even more sinister, even deadly.

In this episode, I talk with four highly accomplished and widely published, US-based South Asian scholars, professors, creative writers, and performance artists - Dr. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Dr. Shreerekha Pillai Subramanian, Dr. Shoba Rajgopal, and Dr. Pramila Venkateswaran - about their contribution to the June 2022 special double issue of the Journal of International Women’s Studies and WAGADU (A transnational journal of women’s and gender studies).

In this episode, I talk with the Indian filmmaker, Shaunak Sen, about his Academy Award-nominated best Documentary film "All That Breathes," which tells the story of two brothers who've devoted their lives to protecting and rehabilitating birds in northern Delhi.

In this episode, I interview Mohsin Hamid, the award-winning British Pakistani novelist about his latest 2022 novel The Last White Man. Set in an unspecified city and country, this magic realist novel is about a white man who wakes up one morning to find himself changed to a darker skin color and a different, unfamiliar appearance.

In this episode, I talk with the award-winning Hindi language writer Geetanjali Shree, about her latest novel Tomb of Sand which won the 2022 International Booker Prize.