The Aseem Chhabra Show

A family’s journey from 5 villages to 5 continents

Minal Hajratwala, a Bay Area-based journalist and activist, just released her first book–an autobiographical exploration of the lives of her large family. To research her book, “Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents,” Minal spent seven years visiting distant cousins, aunts and uncles to string together this important study of the Indian Diaspora. The book is published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Alice Walker gave a quote for the book saying: “I love Minal Hajratwala’s book Leaving India. It is what I imagine India itself to be like: incomparable, sprawling, rich, surprising, very old and wise and forever capable of re-creating itself, no matter where pieces of it land.”

In a Washington Post review, Sadia Shepard writes that “Hajratwala’s goal is to tease out where personal motives for migration intersect with the forces of politics and economics, to ‘find the meeting place where character intersects with history.’”

Minal will be reading in NYC on Monday, March 23, from 6:00pm-7:30pm at the Corner Bookstore. The store is located at 1313 Madison Avenue (between E 92nd and E
93rd St). More event around the country can be found on Minal’s website.

Part I, The idea behind the book:

Part II, The author reads from a section of her book:

Part III: Will be published Monday, March 30.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Writers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.