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Mathangi Subramanian at Belmont Books

March 28, 2019 | 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Free

A politically driven graffiti artist. A transgender Christian convert. A blind girl who loves to dance. A queer daughter of a hijabi union leader. These are some of the young women who live in a Bangalore slum known as Heaven, young women whom readers will come to love in the moving, atmospheric, and deeply inspiring debut, A People’s History of Heaven.

Welcome to Heaven, a thirty‑year‑old slum hidden between brand‑new high‑rise apartment buildings and technology incubators in contemporary Bangalore, one of India’s fastest‑growing cities. In Heaven, you will come to know a community made up almost entirely of women, mothers and daughters who have been abandoned by their men when no male heir was produced. Living hand‑to‑mouth and constantly struggling against the city government who wants to bulldoze their homes and build yet more glass high‑rises, these women, young and old, gladly support one another, sharing whatever they can.

A People’s History of Heaven centers on five best friends, girls who go to school together, a diverse group who love and accept one another unconditionally, pulling one another through crises and providing emotional, physical, and financial support. Together they wage war on the bulldozers that would bury their homes, and, ultimately, on the city that does not care what happens to them.

This is a story about geography, history, and strength, about love and friendship, about fighting for the people and places we love‑‑even if no one else knows they exist. Elegant, poetic, bursting with color, Mathangi Subramanian’s novel is a moving and celebratory story of girls on the cusp of adulthood who find joy just in the basic act of living.

 

 

Subramanian is an award-winning Indian American writer, author, and educator. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Teachers College of Columbia University, and the recipient of a Fulbright as well as other fellowships. Her writing has previously appeared in the Washington Post, Quartz, Al Jazeera America, and elsewhere. This is her first work of literary fiction.

Details

Date:
March 28, 2019
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Cost:
Free
Event Categories:
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Event Tags:
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Website:
https://www.belmontbooks.com/event/mathangi-subramanian-peoples-history-heaven-0

Organizer

Belmont Books
Phone:
(617) 932-1496
Email:
info@belmontbooks.com
Website:
http://www.belmontbooks.com

Venue

Belmont Books
79 Leonard Street
Belmont, MA 02478
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Phone:
(617) 932-1496
Website:
http://www.belmontbooks.com

Did You Know?

Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.