Sayantani DasGupta on Identity, Resistance, and the Personal Rakkhosh

How do you create celebration out of despair? Someone whose work and thinking I've been privileged to follow over the years, physician, teacher, and now children's writer Sayantani DasGupta explores these overlapping terrains in her article, Nothing About Us Without Us: Writing #OwnVoices Fantasy in The Age of Black PantherExcerpt:

...when I was young, I rarely saw myself celebrated, or even portrayed at all, in books, media, or the wider culture. As the saying goes, “it’s hard to be what you cannot see,” and since I hardly saw myself at all, I almost became convinced that maybe I shouldn’t even be – in other words, that I should make myself small, quiet, and nearly invisible.

Small, quiet, and nearly invisible no more. Racism and intolerance are the demons in our world. Supernatural solutions are the tools of fantasy but the real stuff? For young Kiranmala as for all of us humans, that comes from within. From resistance and community and a refusal to be silent.Congratulations, Sayantani, on your beautiful new book. May your voice ring many bells among young readers and the  people who care about them.