Author: Yashica Dutt
Publ: Aleph Book Co.
Book Blurb
Dalit student Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide in January of 2016 started many charged conversations around caste-based discrimination in universities in India. For Yashica Dutt, a journalist living in New York, this was the moment to stop living a lie and admit something – that she had hidden from friends and colleagues for over a decade – that she was Dalit. In Coming Out as Dalit, Dutt recounts the exhausting burden of living with the secret, terrified of being found out, and dealing with the crushing guilt of denying her history.
In this personal memoir that is at the same time a history of the Dalit people, she writes about the journey of coming to terms with her identity and chronicles the Dalit movement. She writes about the consequences of the lack of access to education and culture; the paucity of Dalit voices in mainstream media; and attempts to answer crucial questions about caste and privilege.
Woven from personal narratives from her life as well as that of other Dalits, this book forces us to confront the injustices of caste and serves as a call to action. Yashica Dutt is a New York-based journalist who writes on gender, identity and culture. She was previously a principal correspondent with Brunch and Hindustan Times and is the founder of www.dalitdiscrimination.tumblr.com
