Archives: Books

A long-forgotten figure from the history of women’s activism in early twentieth-century Malayali society, Kochattil Kalyanikkutty Amma suddenly pushed herself out of obscurity in 1993, when her autobiography, Pathikayum Vazhiyorathe Manideepangalum, won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi’s prestigious prize for the best autobiography in Malayalam.

As the book so poignantly revealed, she rebelled not just against traditional restrictions but also against the stern limits to mobility of body and mindset for women in modernity—and the rebellion was lifelong. She was a staunch champion of women’s rights over their bodies and loved to travel, freely indulging in the risky business of ‘loitering’ in foreign places in India and abroad, and writing about it.

She was a highly valued contributor on the Woman Question to the leading journals of her time and a much-revered and beloved teacher as well. She paid a huge price for this unabashed embrace of freedom. She was punished, and her life and political legacy were denigrated and rendered invisible by both the left and right in post-independence Kerala.

Undaunted, at the age of 83, she wrote her autobiography, self-published it, and won a coveted award.

The Sahitya Akademi functions in a building that was once the courtroom where she was unfairly punished and sent to jail—knowing that the prize would be awarded there, she said that it was poetic justice.

Wayfarer Woman and the Wayside Lamps is a tribute to a feminist foremother who fought her way out of the darkness that modern patriarchy in Kerala had confined her to.

Sumitra Mehrol was a mere child when she was struck with polio.

Her parents, struggling to make ends meet, coping with a growing family, were not able to give her the attention she needed to be fully cured. Nor was medical care readily available or a reliable diagnosis easy to access.

As a result, the illness remained largely unattended and Sumitra grew up with a disability, facing scorn, often insults, from many around her. When combined with the fact of her belonging to a Dalit family, something she began to understand as she grew into adulthood, Sumitra was left even more vulnerable.

‘All my life,’ she says, ‘I have intimately known the pain, the fear and the suffering of a life lived on the margins. I am a woman, a disabled person, a Dalit.’

In this honest, unsparing and deeply moving account, Sumitra describes her life and her struggle to cope. She speaks of what it means to have the aspiration to merely live an ordinary life, the desire to do ordinary things —study, have friends, fall in love, take up a job, marry, have children—and seeks answers from society for the rules it makes, the expectations it sets and the deep prejudices it hides.

Meet sisters Anjali and Pooja. They have a lot of questions about the changes their bodies have begun going through and they’ve enlisted friends, mothers and even a myth-busting didi (she’s a doctor!) in their search for answers. Join the adventure to find out what they’ve learned!

In this book, you will get:
– 110+ pages of stories with full-colour illustrations
– Guides to help you become a Menstrual Health Educator
– Games, projects, and DIY instructions to make your own pads
– A glossary of new and interesting words

In a current era marked by carceral logics, authoritarianism, and white supremacy, there has never been a greater need for the tools and inspiration that radical feminism provides.

In Insurgent Visions, Chandra Talpade Mohanty explores methods of anticapitalist resistance to radically transform everyday life. She presents insurgent feminism—a theory and praxis with which to contest and replace the practices of violence grounded in racialized gender relations. Insurgent feminism unsettles existing power structures in order to enact new relationships and forge new subjectivities, epistemologies, and communities.

Drawing on organizing efforts in the US-Mexico borderlands, Palestine/Israel, and Kashmir, as well as on abolitionist and Dalit feminisms, Mohanty contends that the knowledge that emerges from the experiences of marginalized groups who are struggling for economic, racial, and social justice is key for imagining feminist futures. She also turns to the neoliberal landscape of higher education in the United States and the difficulties of instituting transformative antiracist and anti-imperialist feminist knowledge building.

Mapping new challenges for radical praxis, Mohanty reconfigures feminist studies while offering a model for decolonial cross-border organizing and solidarity.

A warm, practical, and deeply human guide to communicating with more confidence, presence, and connection—from internationally acclaimed speaker and communication coach Vinh Giang.

What if the biggest thing holding you back isn’t your talent, intelligence, or hard work—but your ability to connect?

In Before We Forget How to Connect, Vinh Giang shows that communication is not a gift reserved for the naturally charismatic. It is a skill. A set of learnable tools. And once you begin to master them, your relationships deepen, your confidence grows, and your ideas finally land the way they deserve to.

Drawing on his journey from a shy child of Vietnamese refugees to one of the world’s most sought-after communication coaches, Vinh teaches readers how to “play the instrument” they were born with: their voice, body, stories, and capacity to listen. With his signature warmth, humor, and unforgettable storytelling, he reveals how small, deliberate changes in the way we speak, move, share, and hear one another can transform the way people experience us—and the way we experience ourselves.

Through practical exercises and memorable stories, readers will learn how to use their voice with more presence and influence, strengthen body language, tell stories that move people, and listen in a way that builds real trust.

Inside the book, readers will learn how to: • Use their voice with greater presence, emotion, clarity, and influence
• Strengthen body language, including posture, gestures, facial expression, movement, and eye contact
• Tell stories that build trust, create emotional connection, and make ideas memorable
• Listen beyond words by noticing emotion, tone, and body language
• Build everyday communication habits that help feel more confident in meetings, relationships, presentations, and difficult conversations

Because connection is not lost. It is simply waiting to be remembered.

What if your digestive issues aren’t the real culprit but rather your body’s cry for help?

Drawing on years of clinical experience and evidence-based nutrition, this practical guide reveals how gut health influences far more than digestion. It explores the powerful connections between the gut, immunity, hormones, energy, brain health, skin, and mood, showing how seemingly unrelated symptoms often derive from the same underlying imbalance.

Unlike conventional health guides that focus on managing individual symptoms, this book takes a whole-body approach to restoring health from the inside out. Through clear explanations, practical strategies, and easy-to-implement advice, you will learn how simple, sustainable changes in diet, lifestyle, and daily habits restore balance, support your microbiome, and create lasting improvements.

Whether you’re struggling with chronic digestive issues, looking to improve your family’s health, or want to feel your best, this book offers clear, jargon-free guidance you can put into practice immediately.

In all their tomorrows, they were together . . .
In all their tomorrows, they were happy and fulfilled . . .
In all their tomorrows, grief, anger and resentment did not have a place . . .
And in all their todays, they’ve worked for these tomorrows . . .

Sayantani and Indranil will find ways to keep their family afloat.

Abir and Veda will live the lives they’ve wanted and won’t let distance tear them apart.
Mira longs for a home she should have had.

This saga of love, and love alone, is the story of middle-class Indian families that struggle and aspire and dream and yet never go so far as to lose their grip on their dear ones. A cross-generational tale, All Our Tomorrows engagingly brings alive characters who constantly navigate values and feelings to find an ideal life. And who finally realize that tomorrow is nothing, if not a collective outcome of days lived today.