Amma's Daughters: Reading by Meenal Shrivastava

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Thursday, October 11th, 2018
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM

Nanaimo’s newest independent bookstore, Windowseat Books, will host their first-ever author reading on Thursday, October 11.

Meenal Shrivastava, a local writer from Sidney, BC, will be reading from her new memoir, Amma’s Daughters (Athabasca University Press, 2018). Amma’s Daughters is a groundbreaking work of creative non-fiction that uncovers the story of Gandhi’s feminist foot soldiers. Shrivastava, the granddaughter of one of these revolutionaries, captures the courage of her grandmother, Shanti, at the age of twelve, as she joins the nationalist movement and is subsequently arrested for making seditious speeches. Despite serving many jail sentences, Shanti never wavers from her devotion to Gandhi’s teachings and her dream of equality for women.

“Amma’s Daughters draws a vivid portrait of a revolutionary woman who challenges the norms of her time. Drawing on diaries and oral history, Shrivastava takes us on a journey alongside her courageous grandmother as she joins the Gandhian struggle against British rule in India and, after independence, negotiates her way through a political terrain inhospitable to women while simultaneously being a wife and mother.” —Sikata Banerjee, professor of gender studies, University of Victoria