Governing Bodies by Sangamithra Iyer

About the book:

As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water. As an animal rights activist, she advocates for a revolution in how we value and relate to other species. And as the child of immigrants from India, she searches for submerged histories.

Animated by a series of questions—How do we disentangle ourselves from systems of harm? Is it possible to grasp the scale of planetary sorrow and emerge with truth and love as our guides, rather than despair? What is the relationship between individual action and systemic change?—this memoir takes the form of three meandering rivers, each written as a letter. Addressing the first of them to her grandfather, Iyer assembles the story of a man who embraced Gandhi’s philosophy and went to work developing wells in Tamil Nadu. In a second letter, addressed to her father, she explores their shared interest in cultivating compassion for all beings. And then in a final letter, addressed to readers, she braids these explorations of her familial past with her own experiences as a woman of color and citizen of the world, always seeking ways to move beyond resignation and restore flow.

A lyrical story of lineages and an urgently needed reckoning with the ways bodies are both controlled and liberated, Governing Bodies is a timeless work with profoundly timely relevance.

About the author:

Sangamithra Iyer is an environmental planner, engineer, and writer. She is the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Café Royal Foundation Literature Grant and the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She is the founder of the Literary Animal Project, for which she was awarded a Culture and Animals Foundation Grant. She lives in Queens, New York, with her husband, Wan, and rescued pit bull, Asta.

Sunu P. Chandy will moderate a conversation about the book.

Sunu P. Chandy (she/her) is a social justice activist as a poet and a civil rights attorney. She is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, and lives in Washington, DC with her family. Sunu’s award-winning collection of poems, , was published by Regal House. Sunu’s work can be found in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Indian Poets and . Sunu is currently a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward, and serves on the board of the Transgender Law Center. Sunu has been named as one of the Queer Women of Washington.

Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. Please contact [email protected] with questions.

Dato de accesibilidad: Este evento toma lugar en el segundo piso y Lost City Books no tiene ascensor. Favor de contactar [email protected] con cualquiera duda.

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