COMING OUT AS DALIT (HB)

Dalit student Rohith Vemula?s
tragic suicide in January 2016 started many charged conversations around
caste-based discrimination in universities in India. For Yashica Dutt, a
journalist living in New York, this was the moment to stop living a lie, and
admit to something that she had hidden from friends and colleagues for over a
decade?that she was Dalit. In Coming Out as Dalit, Dutt recounts the
exhausting burden of living with the secret and how she was terrified of
being found out. She talks about the tremendous feeling of empowerment she
experienced when she finally stood up for herself and her community and
shrugged off the fake upper-caste identity she?d had to construct for
herself. As she began to understand the inequities of the caste system, she
also had to deal with the crushing guilt of denying her history and the
struggles of her grandparents and the many Dalit reformers who fought for
equal rights.? In this personal memoir
that is also a narrative of the Dalits, she writes about the journey of
coming to terms with her identity and takes us through the history of the
Dalit movement; the consequences of her community?s lack of access to
education and culture; the need for reservation; the paucity of Dalit voices
in mainstream media; Dalit women?s movements and their ongoing contributions;
and attempts to answer crucial questions about caste and privilege. Woven
from personal narratives from her own life as well as that of other Dalits,
this book forces us to confront the injustices of caste and also serves as a
call to action.