fiction/non/fiction S5 Ep. 20: ‘A Spiritual-Industrial Complex’: SJ Sindu on Writing the Life of a Child God
Novelist SJ Sindu joins host V.V. Ganeshananthan live from the Tamil Worlds Initiative at the University of Toronto-Scarborough to discuss her new novel, Blue-Skinned Gods, and its protagonist, Kalki, a blue-skinned boy raised in an ashram as the tenth human incarnation of Vishnu. Sindu talks about depicting caste, gender, and heteronormative privilege within a rigid community; the destructive intersection of spirituality and capitalism; and how the age of digital misinformation has aided the Hindu right’s attempt to redefine South Asian history.
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This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Hannah Ward.
Selected readings for the episode:
Others
- Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai
- Tamil Worlds Initiative at the University of Toronto-Scarborough
- “Where Countries are Tinderboxes and Facebook is a Match,” New York Times, April 21, 2018
- The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- Marrying for a Future by Sidharthan Maunaguru
- The marriages in-between - Himal Southasian A review of Sidharthan Maunaguru’s Marrying for a Future: Transnational Sri Lankan Tamil Marriages in the Shadow of War by V.V. Ganeshananthan | Jan 29, 2020
- Garrard Conley and SJ Sindu on the Mainstreaming of Queer Identity, Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 26
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