Transnational Literature Series: Ravi Shankar with Linda Jaivin

About this event

This event will take place virtually on Zoom. Click the button above to register.

Join the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith for a virtual event with Dr. Ravi Shankar to discuss and celebrate the release of his new memoir Correctional. He will be in conversation with writer Linda Jaivin.

The first time Ravi Shankar was arrested, he spoke out against racist policing on National Public Radio and successfully sued the city of New York. The second time, he was incarcerated when his promotion to full professor was finalized. During his ninety-day pretrial confinement at the Hartford Correctional Center—a level 4, high-security urban jail in Connecticut—he met men who shared harrowing and heart-felt stories. The experience taught him about the persistence of structural racism, the limitations of mass media, and the pervasive traumas of twenty-first-century daily life.

Shankar’s bold and complex self-portrait—and portrait of America—challenges us to rethink our complicity in the criminal justice system and mental health policies that perpetuate inequity and harm. Correctional dives into the inner workings of his mind and heart, framing his unexpected encounters with law and order through the lenses of race, class, privilege, and his bicultural upbringing as the first and only son of South Indian immigrants. Vignettes from his early life set the scene for his spectacular fall and subsequent struggle to come to terms with his own demons. Many of them, it turns out, are also our own.

Dr. Ravi Shankar is a Pushcart prize-winning poet, translator and professor who has published fifteen books, including the Muse India award-winning translations Andal: The Autobiography of a Goddess and The Many Uses of Mint: New and Selected Poems 1997-2017. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he co-edited W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has taught and performed around the world and appeared in print, radio, and TV in such venues as The New York Times, NPR, BBC and the PBS Newshour. He has won awards to the Corporation of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, fellowships from the Rhode Island and Connecticut Council on the Arts, founded one of the oldest electronic journals of the arts Drunken Boat, is Chairman of the Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT) and recently finished his PhD from the University of Sydney. He teaches creative writing at Tufts University.

Moderator Linda Jaivin is an American-born, internationally published Australian essayist, novelist, translator, cultural commentator, travel writer and specialist writer on China. Her books include The Shortest History of China as well as the memoir The Monkey and the Dragon, the long-form Quarterly Essay Found in Translation and seven novels including The Infernal Optimist, which is set in an Australian immigration detention centre. Her website is www.lindajaivin.com.au.