“…leaves you unsettled. Akkai means to disturb and disrupt us.” — Vrinda Grover, lawyer and women’s rights activist
“Akkai Padmashali’s forceful and eloquent new book, A Small Step in a Long Journey, tells of the awe-inspiring life of this eminent activist. From the harrowing abuse she has faced to her ironclad determination to change attitudes toward the transgender community, Akkai’s story is an indictment of society’s cruelty toward those it deems to be different, and an inspiration to anyone who wishes for a more just world.” — Shashi Tharoor, author and politician
“Searching for the Songbird is an exciting mystery for younger readers with a number of provocative themes wrapped up inside a compelling thriller about a puzzling disappearance.“ — Stephen Alter, author of several award-winning works of fiction and non-fiction, including Birdwatching: A Novel
“The serenity of the hills juxtaposed with the unsettling realities of crime and social conditions. An exciting read.“ — Paro Anand, award-winning author and a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Bal Sahitya Puruskar for her anthology Wild Child and Other Stories
“She is a fabulist who is never preachy. A feminist who is never humourless. A poet who is never arcane. An intellectual who is never pedantic… Her work points to a deeply internalized radicalism, one that has as much depth as it has edge. Quirky, funny, intellectually agile, capable of making connections between the mundane and the metaphysical, adept at sniffing out the archetypal in the culturally particular, they point to a mind that is as engaged as it is engaging.“ — Arundhati Subramaniam
“This delightfully refreshing collective of organic voices is more than a book, an unsecured cove into which five simple women in Tamil Nadu, India, trustingly invite us into their worlds of agency in affirmations of womanhood, economic independence, and fashioning of ‘woman-rules’. As both a page-turner, and a head-turner, these imprinted voices demand the active presence of the reader drawn into the generous outpouring of personal stories of sacrifice, ruptured dreams and bodies, inter-caste marriages, friendships, romance, and rebellion. These audacious voices burst with self-conjured healing, rooted in a culture of simplicity and earthy humanness to counter gender and caste norms. This uncommon work is charming and moving, as we are left laughing, crying, and wanting more of the warmth and color of ‘Muthu’s room’ filled with kind and bold breaths.“ — Roja Suganthy-Singh, author of Spotted Goddesses: Dalit women’s agency-narratives on caste and gender violence
“Weaving in the meanings of mobile phones, mobility, migration, labour, life, struggles, and love, the conversations shared here resonate with so many intimate histories of (migrant) labour extraction as well as with so many ‘kitchen table’/‘tea time’ conversations amongst women who become chosen family across time and place. As Jacqui Alexander argues, we ‘need to become fluent in each others’ histories,’ and this book exemplifies the kinds of pedagogies of crossing that move us from static critiques of power and privilege, and public and private, to creative experiments with various forms of speaking with, and to, and against, that challenges assumptions about where and how knowledge is produced, and leaves us with new ways of listening and imagining how to grapple with the pains and possibilities of moving from here to next.“ — Koni Benson, historian, organiser and educator
“A marvelous book. Abhinaya, Kalpana, Lakshmi, Madhumita, Pooja, Samyuktha, and Satya embody a praxis of playful listening as they weave together the stories of their lives, labor, and bodies. In building conversations about how they were disciplined and exploited and in voicing their critiques, dreams, and (un)freedoms, these women enact a solidarity where laughter and rage become inseparable in a journey of unlearning and relearning together. Madhushree’s illustrations ensure that once a reader enters Muthu’s room, she cannot leave without being moved and transformed.“ — Richa Nagar, author of the trilogy Playing With Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism Through Seven Lives in India, Muddying the Waters: Co-authoring Feminisms Across Scholarship and Activism, and Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability
“Mobile Girls Kootam asks us to listen — to young labouring women, who leave their rural and small town homes for cities and industrial hubs and negotiate with skill and intelligence the travails of the assembly line and sweatshop, the protest and the picket line. Their conversations with each other, and with the women who put this book together, invite us into troubled yet rich inner worlds, where women ponder over food, love, sex, men, the body, wages, work, marriage caste, family... Labouring lives, we realise, are not only about exploitation and suffering, equally they are about self-making, comradeship and the quest for happiness.“ — V. Geetha, feminist historian and writer
"This rich volume deepens understanding on the theory and practice of feminist evaluation. It offers insights on whether programmes and policies can address gender inequities, especially when they are designed, implemented, and evaluated in systems that are deeply inequitable. The authors grapple with, and push against, the limitations of traditional evaluation frameworks. They explore institutional factors and barriers which shape and impede individual agency, choice, aspirations, and behaviours, and offer new approaches, insights, tools, and frameworks for other evaluation theorists and practitioners...Spanning feminist and Dalit theory, evaluation theory, gender programming, and covering a range of different sectoral programme cases while also moving between the conceptual and practical, this rich volume offers both new insights and practical tools for deepening feminist evaluation practice." — Katherine Hay, Deputy Director, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
“Generously studded with jewel-bright Urdu and Farsi verses, ably translated by the author's granddaughter Shahana Raza, the narrative retains the flavour of its Urdu original. It reminds us of a time when even those with little formal education had a wide frame of literary references and a world view that was eclectic and liberal.“ — India Today
“But, what makes this memoir an important one, is also her professional strides at AIR. When AIR launched its Urdu service, she began taking on more programming work, leading a Women and Children's show, analysing news, broadcasting short bulletins, and also producing a five-minute show called Dekhi-Suni. In her memoir, she writes about this very matter-of-factly.“ — Midday
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