Meena Kandasamy - Poetics of Resistance
Meena Kandasamy will explore the profound intersections of poetry and political resistance in her upcoming presentation on "Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You". This event offers a compelling examination of how literature becomes a powerful instrument of social and political commentary in contemporary India.
The event will unfold in three distinct segments:
- A carefully curated poetry reading that brings the raw energy of Kandasamy's work to life
- An in-depth talk examining the role of literary expression in chronicling and embodying resistance
- An interactive Q&A session
Kandasamy will delve into the ways poetry can serve as a form of resistance, unpacking the complex relationships between language, power, and social transformation. Her work confronts uncomfortable truths about political silencing, caste dynamics, and the ongoing struggle for social justice in India.
Hosted by the South Asian Studies Council at the Yale MacMillan Center and the Asian American Cultural Center, this event promises an illuminating exploration of how words can become a tool for understanding, challenging, and reimagining social and political landscapes.
Speakers
Described by the Independent as a ‘one-woman, agit-prop literary-political movement’, Meena Kandasamy is a poet, writer, translator, anti-caste activist and academic based in India. Her extensive corpus includes two poetry collections, Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), the Women's Prize short-listed When I Hit You (2017) and Exquisite Cadavers (2019). In 2022, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) and was also awarded the PEN Hermann Kesten Prize for her writing and work as a ‘fearless fighter for democracy, human rights and the free word.’ Her latest published work is Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You, a collection of her political poetry written in the last decade.
Nitika is a human rights lawyer and researcher, currently pursuing an Ph.D. in History at Yale University. She has received her LL.M. at Harvard Law School and her research focuses on criminal justice, mental health and queer rights.
Nitika publishes widely on criminal law issues, including fair trial rights, and arbitrary detention. She has led numerous fact-finding investigations into human rights violations with one of India’s leading civil liberties coalitions. Nitika has led national advocacy campaigns and authored several policy reports on gender and sexuality rights.
Her work has been featured by The New York Times and Al Jazeera, and my writing has appeared in Economic and Political Weekly, The Caravan and The Indian Express, among others.
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