Room 208 Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Ambedkar Initiative, Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS)
Moderated by Anupama Rao (History and MESAAS; Director, ICLS; Convenor, Ambedkar Initiative)
Meena Kandasamy will delve into her translation, The Book of Desire from the Thirukkural, a classical Tamil text of the Sangam era by the poet Thiruvalluvar. Kandasamy’s translation is a radical reimagining that centers decolonial and feminist perspectives. By interrogating the patriarchal and Brahminical frameworks that have historically shaped interpretations of the Thirukkural, she reclaims the text’s subversive potential and its relevance to contemporary struggles for gender and caste equality.
Kandasamy will discuss the challenges of translating a text that is often revered as a moral and ethical guide, while critiquing the complicity of its commentators in perpetuating hierarchical social structures. Kandasamy will share how she views her rendering as a site of resistance and empowerment, and the backlash she has faced for her translation. This talk will be followed by a reading of selected verses from The Book of Desire.
Meena Kandasamy is a poet, writer, translator, anti-caste activist and academic based in India. Her extensive corpus includes two poetry collections, Touch (2006) and Ms Militancy (2010), as well as three novels, The Gypsy Goddess (2014), the Women’s Prize short-listed When I Hit You (2017) and Exquisite Cadavers (2019). In 2022, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (FRSL) and was also awarded the PEN Hermann Kesten Prize for her writing and work as a “fearless fighter for democracy, human rights and the free word.” Her recent books include The Orders Were To Rape You: Tigresses in the Tamil Eelam Struggle (2021), The Book of Desire, Tirukkural: Verses of the Kamattu-p-pal (2023), Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You (2024), A Wise One, A Warrior (2025)
