| 词条 | Sujatha Gidla |
| 释义 |
Sujatha Gidla is an Indian-American author. Gidla is known for her book Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India. She was born in Andhra Pradesh and moved to the United States in 1990, when she was 26 years old.[1] She now lives in New York and works as a conductor on the New York City Subway. Early lifeSujatha Gidla was raised in the Dalit community of Kakinada, a small town in present-day Andhra Pradesh. Her great grandparents converted to Christianity through the influence of Canadian missionaries in her region who aided her grandparents in education as well.[2] Prasanna Rao, Gidla's grandfather, studied in a school set up by the Canadian missionaries.[3] Gidla's parents were also college lecturers.[4][2] After getting her bachelor's degree from P.R. govt. College in Kakinada, Gidla enrolled in a Masters' program in Physics in Regional Engineering College, Warangal. During her second year there, in one of the earlier instances of her activism, Gidla participated in a strike against an upper-caste professor in the Engineering department, who was deliberately failing students from the lower castes. She was the only woman who had participated in the strike. The protestors were all jailed in an undisclosed location. Gidla was detained for three months, during which she was tortured and contracted tuberculosis. Her mother Manjula contacted a civil rights lawyer named Kannabiran to help them.[3][5] This was one of the earlier instances of Gidla's activism. Gidla then worked as a researcher associate in the Department of Applied Physics in Indian Institute of Technology Madras, where she worked on a project funded by Indian Space Research Organisation.[2] She moved to the United States when she was 26. Some of Gidla's family members also emigrated: her sister works as a physician in the United States, and her brother is an engineer in Canada.[4] WorkGidla previously worked as an software application designer at the Bank of New York, but was laid off in the global financial crisis and recession in 2009. She says that she then wanted to do a manual job.[6] She became the first Indian woman to be employed as a conductor on the New York City Subway – one of the busiest mass transit systems in the world.[1] In an interview, she said, "Because I am a Marxist and Communist, I also have romantic feelings about being a working class person. So this job attracted me. Secondly, I wanted to do something that men are supposed to be doing."[6] Ants Among ElephantsAnts Among Elephants is Gidla's first book and was published in 2017. It is a family memoir that chronicles the life of her uncle, KG Satyamurty, a Maoist leader and the founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement called the People's War Group (PWG). The book also described the personal history of her mother Manjula's life, both of which are juxtaposed against the peasant revolt and the formation of a new state in newly independent India.[5][7] Gidla classifies the book under the genre of 'literary nonfiction'.[8]Gidla has recalled her introduction to understanding casteism as being through a movie. The film was a love story fraught with conflict due to the girl being a wealthy Christian, whose family opposed her marriage to a Hindu boy who was less well-off. She had hitherto believed that the caste discrimination she faced as a Dalit, or "untouchable", was due to her status as a Christian, with Christianity being a minority religion in India. In an interview with Slate, she says, "That's when I started thinking: If it’s not Christianity, why were we untouchables?"[1] According to Gidla, the creation of the book was a family affair. Her mother was closely involved in the process of writing the book as it was her story too, and her niece Anagha was involved in designing the book cover.[1][4] Gidla conducted over 15 years of research and made three trips to India for the book.. She reportedly wrote 50 to 60 versions of the book before publishing it[8][2][4] Gidla has spoken about publishing first a prequel, and then a sequel to Ants Among Elephants. The prequel will tell her own family's story before her uncle's generation, detailing the journey of her family being hunter-gatherers in the forests of Andhra Pradesh before moving to the villages and getting subsumed into the Hindu caste system's lowest rung. The sequel will be an autobiography, and discuss the contemporary generation.[6][7] Her writing has also appeared in Oxford India Anthology of Telugu Dalit Writing.[9] Reception and publicityAnts Among Elephants has received the following accolades:[10]
A New York Times review called it "unsentimental, deeply poignant ... Ants Among Elephants gives readers an unsettling and visceral understanding of how discrimination, segregation and stereotypes have endured."[2] Gidla declined an invitation to be the key note speaker in a festival called We The Women, a women-only festival curated by Barkha Dutt. Her refusal was a result of the conference being sponsored by the United Nations, which Gidla said was a "fig-leaf of US imperialism". She also objected to the participation of Smriti Irani, an Indian politician who was the Minister of Human Resource Development at the time that Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide. "She was instrumental in Rohith's death. His blood is on her hands. I couldn't possibly have participated alongside her," she said.[11] Gidla was invited to the prestigious Jaipur Literature Festival in 2018 as a speaker. She spoke at a session called "Narratives of Power, Songs of Resistance", where she spoke about contemporary Dalit politicians Jignesh Mevani and Mayawati, saying they had a limitation in working for Dalit upliftment since they had chosen to work under the framework of electoral politics. Gidla also discussed the communalism present in both of India's major political parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress, as well as criticized the Indian activist Gandhi for being casteist and racist.[12][13][14] References1. ^1 2 3 {{Cite news|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2017/08/sujatha_gidla_on_india_s_caste_system_and_ants_among_elephants.html|title=Why Were We Untouchables?|last=Chotiner|first=Isaac|date=August 30, 2017|work=Slate|access-date=26 May 2018|issn=1091-2339}} {{authority control}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Gidla, Sujatha}}2. ^1 2 3 4 {{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/books/ants-among-elephants-a-memoir-about-the-persistence-of-caste.html|title=‘Ants Among Elephants,’ a Memoir About the Persistence of Caste|date=July 17, 2017|work=The New York Times|access-date=26 May 2018|issn=0362-4331}} 3. ^1 {{Cite web|url=http://theladiesfinger.com/ants-among-elephants-sujatha-gidla/|title=I Read Sujatha Gidla's Memoir And I Understood My Father's Dalit Boyhood a Little Better|last=Kumar|first=Vijeta|date=October 31, 2017|website=The Ladies Finger|dead-url=|access-date=June 26, 2018}} 4. ^1 2 3 {{Cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-40702242|title=The defiance of an 'untouchable' New York subway worker|date=July 25, 2017|work=BBC News|access-date=26 May 2018}} 5. ^1 {{Cite news|url=https://scroll.in/article/849340/an-indian-familys-encounter-with-caste-and-untouchability-that-no-one-should-ignore-even-in-2017|title=An Indian family's encounter with caste and untouchability that no one should ignore even in 2017|last=Kumar|first=Anu|work=Scroll.in|access-date=26 May 2018}} 6. ^1 2 {{Cite news|url=https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/nobody-notices-caste-operating-in-society-says-author-sujatha-gidla/1061417/|title=Nobody notices caste operating in society, says author Sujatha Gidla|date=February 11, 2018|work=The Financial Express|access-date=26 May 2018}} 7. ^1 {{Cite news|url=https://www.hindustantimes.com/books/sujatha-gidla-at-jlf-2018-hinduism-is-a-religion-tailor-made-for-caste/story-wa1WATxfuPjKQO1TJVEOoO.html|title=Sujatha Gidla at JLF 2018: Hinduism is a religion tailor-made for caste|date=January 29, 2018|work=Hindustan Times|access-date=26 May 2018}} 8. ^1 {{Cite news|url=http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2018/feb/11/sujatha-gidla-author-of-ants-among-elephants-my-book-wouldnt-stand-a-chance-in-india-1771747.html|title=Sujatha Gidla, author of Ants Among Elephants: My book wouldn’t stand a chance in India|work=The New Indian Express|access-date=26 May 2018}} 9. ^{{Cite news|url=https://us.macmillan.com/author/sujathagidla/|title=Sujatha Gidla {{!}} Authors {{!}} Macmillan|work=US Macmillan|access-date=26 May 2018}} 10. ^{{Cite news|url=https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780865478114|title=Ants Among Elephants {{!}} Sujatha Gidla {{!}} Macmillan|work=US Macmillan|access-date=26 May 2018}} 11. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.firstpost.com/living/sujatha-gidlas-ants-among-elephants-is-a-searing-indictment-of-caste-untouchability-in-india-4270863.html|title=Sujatha Gidla's 'Ants Among Elephants' is a searing indictment of caste, untouchability in India – Firstpost|website=firstpost.com|access-date=26 May 2018}} 12. ^{{Cite news|url=https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2018/01/29/gandhi-casteist-racist-indian-american-dalit-writer-sujatha-gidla-432266/|title=Don't blame me for calling Gandhi 'casteist and a racist': Indian American Dalit writer Sujatha Gidla|date=January 29, 2018|work=The American Bazaar|access-date=26 May 2018}} 13. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.firstpost.com/living/at-jaipur-literature-festival-2018-writer-sujatha-gidla-says-mahatma-gandhis-anti-casteism-was-mere-lip-service-4326555.html|title=At Jaipur Literature Festival 2018, writer Sujatha Gidla says Mahatma Gandhi's anti-casteism was mere lip service – Firstpost|website=firstpost.com|access-date=26 May 2018}} 14. ^{{Cite news|url=http://indianexpress.com/article/india/mahatma-gandhi-was-casteist-and-racist-says-us-based-writer-sujatha-gidla-in-jlf-5043981/|title=Jaipur Lit fest: Mahatma Gandhi was casteist and racist, says US-based writer Sujatha Gidla|date=January 29, 2018|work=The Indian Express|access-date=26 May 2018}} 5 : Year of birth missing (living people)|Living people|American women novelists of Indian descent|Dalit activists|Women from Telangana |
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