Yashica Dutt
Moderator: Roanna Gonsalves
In her memoir Coming Out as Dalit, Yashica Dutt recounts her mother’s ambitions to overcome poverty by passing herself and her family off as Brahmin. Under these extremely stressful circumstances Dutt was a success, a well-educated professional, who didn’t know how to live. Her book is an account of refusing to ‘pass’ and the larger implications of the upper-class idea that India is ‘past’ caste.
Yashica Dutt (she/her) is a leading anti-caste expert, journalist and the award-winning author of the non-fiction memoir, Coming Out as Dalit. Dutt recently won India’s Sahitya Akademi Yuva Pursukar and her work has been published in the New York Times, Foreign Policy and The Atlantic.
Image credit: Calvin Tso
Roanna Gonsalves is the award-winning Indian Australian author of the acclaimed collection of short fiction The Permanent Resident (UWAP) published in India as Sunita De Souza Goes To Sydney (Speaking Tiger). Her four-part radio series On the Tip of a Billion Tongues, commissioned and broadcast by ABC RN’s Earshot program, is an acerbic portrayal of contemporary India through its multilingual writers.
Adam Liaw and Hetty McKinnon
Moderator: Benjamin Law
Food begins at home, and in this session two celebrity chefs talk about family meals. In To Asia, With Love Hetty McKinnon celebrates the food of her Chinese childhood in Australia. In Tonight’s Dinner Adam Liaw once again makes Asian food ea...
Paige Clark and Jamie Marina Lau
Moderator: Jennifer Wong
In Paige Clark’s story collection She is Haunted a widow dresses as her husband in order to avoid grieving, and another bargains with God to keep her unborn child. In Jamie Marina Lau’s Gunk Baby a girl opens a healing centre in a mall, l...
Dorcas Tang, Michelle Aung Thin and Wing Kuang
Moderator: Jacqueline Lo
There is a particular place where racism and sex collide – too often it is in ideas about Asian women’s bodies. Michelle Aung Thin is a novelist and academic who has written about Myanmar, women and refugees. Dorcas Tang is ...
