Ants Among Elephants, Sujatha Gidla
Ants Among Elephants, Sujatha Gidla
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Ants Among Elephants
An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

Author: Sujatha Gidla

Narrator: Soneela Nankani

Unabridged: 12 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/22/2018

Synopsis

Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary—and yet how typical—her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible transformation from student and labor organizer to famous poet and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother's battles with caste and women's oppression.

A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up.

About Sujatha Gidla

Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable in Andhra Pradesh, India. She studied physics at the Regional Engineering College, Warangal. Her writing has appeared in The Oxford India Anthology of Telugu Dalit Writing. She lives in New York and works as a conductor on the subway.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Nandakishore on March 22, 2020

This is not a five-star book by my usual standards. Yet I am giving it the full rating... because it opened a window to a life which I can never imagine living. Sujatha Gidla is my age. While I was living my pampered life as the young member of an upper-caste, upper class family in Kerala (my only wo......more

Goodreads review by Subashini on September 30, 2017

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars, so went with 3.5 stars rounded up. But what the hell do stars matter, in the end. I would recommend this book to anyone, and especially so if you want to learn about the ingrained brutality and injustice of the caste system in India. It's also a great look at radical......more

Goodreads review by Jerrodm on September 06, 2018

As an American English reader with an admittedly limited background in Indian history and culture, I found this book hard to read. That said, I learned a lot from it and would recommend it to people who are interested in learning about the ways that caste continues to operate in Indian society, and......more

Goodreads review by Pond on August 08, 2017

**SPOILER ALERT** This is a stunning biography of an untouchable family involved in the Naxalite insurgency in 1940-70's India. The author's uncle was a leader in this revolutionary movement and the author herself, now working as a subway conductor in New York City, was a student agitator in her yout......more

Goodreads review by Arthi on September 02, 2017

This book is a difficult read for a practicing Hindu. I felt guilty all through its 300 odd pages. But the story is not about that guilt. It's far far more important. What it means to be an untouchable in India. Sujata Gidla writes factual prose. The emotions are there, layered throughout. The passi......more

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