Breaking Out
Breaking Out

Author: Padma Desai

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0262019973

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The brave and moving memoir of a woman's journey of transformation: from a sheltered Indian upbringing to success and academic eminence in America. Padma Desai grew up in the 1930s in the provincial world of Surat, India, where she had a sheltered and strict upbringing in a traditional Gujarati Anavil Brahmin family. Her academic brilliance won her a scholarship to Bombay University, where the first heady taste of freedom in the big city led to tragic consequences—seduction by a fellow student whom she was then compelled to marry. In a failed attempt to end this disastrous first marriage, she converted to Christianity. A scholarship to America in 1955 launched her on her long journey to liberation from the burdens and constraints of her life in India. With a growing self-awareness and transformation at many levels, she made a new life for herself, met and married the celebrated economist Jagdish Bhagwati, became a mother, and rose to academic eminence at Harvard and Columbia. How did she navigate the tumultuous road to assimilation in American society and culture? And what did she retain of her Indian upbringing in the process? This brave and moving memoir—written with a novelist's skill at evoking personalities, places, and atmosphere, and a scholar's insights into culture and society, community, and family—tells a compelling and thought-provoking human story that will resonate with readers everywhere.

India's Unending Journey
India's Unending Journey

Author: Mark Tully

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-02-29

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1446491498

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Sir Mark Tully is one of the world's leading writers and broadcasters on India, and the presenter of the much loved radio programme 'Something Understood'. In this fascinating and timely work, he reveals the profound impact India has had on his life and beliefs, and what we can all learn from this rapidly changing nation. Through interviews and anecdotes, he embarks on a journey that takes in the many faces of India, from the untouchables of Uttar Pradesh to the skyscrapers of Gurgaon, from the religious riots of Ayodhya to the calm of a university campus. He explores how successfully India reconciles opposites, marries the sensual with the sacred, finds harmony in discord, and treats certainty with suspicion.

The Oneida Indian Journey
The Oneida Indian Journey

Author: Laurence M. Hauptman

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780299161446

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For the first time, the traumatic removal of the Oneida Indians from New York to Wisconsin is examined in a groundbreaking collection of essays, The Oneida Indian Journey from New York to Wisconsin, 1784-1860. To shed light on this vital period of Oneida history, editors Laurence Hauptman and L. Gordon McLester, III, present a unique collaboration between an American Indian nation and the academic community. Two professional historians, a geographer, anthropologist, archivist and attorney join in with eighteen voices from the Oneida community--local historians, folklorists, genealogists, linguists, and tribal elders--discuss tribal dispossession and community; Oneida community perspectives of Oneida history; and the means of studying Oneida history. Contributors include: Debra Anderson, Eileen Antone, Jim Antone, Abrahms Archiquette, Oscar Archiquette, Jack Campisi, Richard Chrisjohn, Amelia Cornelius, Judy Cornelius, Katie Cornelius, Melissa Cornelius, Jonas Elm, James Folts, Reginald Horsman, Elizabeth Huff, Francis Jennings, Arlinda Locklear, Jo Margaret Mano, Loretta Metoxen, Liz Obomsawin, Jessie Peters, Sarah Summers, and Rachel Swamp

A South Indian Journey
A South Indian Journey

Author: Michael Wood

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2007-08-02

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0141032677

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Inspired by a temple astrologer (who had accurately predicted his marriage and the birth of his two daughters), the writer and broadcaster Michael Wood travelled on a magical journey through south-east India.

Leaving India
Leaving India

Author: Minal Hajratwala

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2009-03-18

Total Pages: 469

ISBN-13: 0547345410

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The PEN Award–winning chronicle of the Indian diaspora told through the stories of the author’s own family. In this “rich, entertaining and illuminating story,” Minal Hajratwala mixes history, memoir, and reportage to explore the collisions of choice and history that led her family to emigrate from India (San Francisco Chronicle). “Meticulously researched and evocatively written” (The Washington Post), Leaving India looks for answers to the eternal questions that faced not only Hajratwala’s own Indian family but all immigrants, everywhere: Where did we come from? Why did we leave? What did we give up and gain in the process? Beginning with her great-grandfather Motiram’s original flight from British-occupied India to Fiji, where he rose from tailor to department store mogul, Hajratwala follows her ancestors across the twentieth-century to explain how they came to be spread across five continents and nine countries. As she delves into the relationship between personal choice and the great historical forces—British colonialism, apartheid, Gandhi’s salt march, and American immigration policy—that helped shape her family’s experiences, Hajratwala brings to light for the very first time the story of the Indian diaspora. A luminous narrative from “a fine daughter of the continent, bringing insight, intelligence and compassion to the lives and sojourns of her far-flung kin,” Leaving India offers a deeply intimate look at what it means to call more than one part of the world home (Alice Walker).