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The Shelf Life: Champaca Bookstore Blog

August Recommendations — Feminism

recommendations

August Recommendations — Feminism

In her book Feminism: A Movement to End Sexist Oppression, bell hooks says that feminism is a thing you do (“I support feminist action”), and not a thing that you are (“I am a feminist”). This idea asks us to think: if feminism is action and not identity, how do the social structures in which we live impact our lives? What things can we do to make a better future, and what concrete actions can help us get closer to that future? 

We’ve put together a collection of feminist writing that explore the intersection of feminism with race, caste, and class. In this list are memoirs, ethnography, biography and poetry. 

We hope you will enjoy reading these books. Find them on our online store.

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Book Review — Carolina De Robertis' "Cantoras"

Nirica review

Book Review — Carolina De Robertis' "Cantoras"

This month, Nirica Srinivasan reviews Carolina De Robertis' Cantoras, a novel about resistance, love, and the power of the seaRead on for her thoughts about the book, and buy it on our online bookstore.  

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July Recommendations — Race & Immigration

recommendations

July Recommendations — Race & Immigration

Across the world right now, questions of freedom, citizenship, and human rights are reverberating. Race and racism are now central to many of these conversations, found in everyday instances of lived experience and embedded in societies and institutions as a whole. This month, we’ve compiled recommendations that speak to the experience of racism and the insider-outsider paradigm. We have chosen fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry that  talk of immigration and race in many of its forms. We find these books illuminating, at times heartbreaking and hopeful. We hope you like them too.

Find these books on our online store.

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Book Review — Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Water Dancer”

Kavya review

Book Review — Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Water Dancer”

This month, Kavya Murthy reviews Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer. Read on for her thoughts about the book, and buy it on our online bookstore

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Books for Now — “A Word with You, World,” by Siddalingaiah

event

Books for Now — “A Word with You, World,” by Siddalingaiah

In our second Books for Now session, we spent time with the autobiography of Dalit poet Siddalingiah Ooru Keri in its English translation, A Word with You, World.  Siddalingiah’s Ooru Keri, which was written in two parts in 1996 and the early 2000s. It was published in S.R. Ramakrishna’s translation by Navayana. Kavya Murthy recaps the event. Find the book in our online store.

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