Full Description
Tilt is an unflinching feminist novel about the devastating histories that haunt us, and the unexpected beauty of facing our pasts.
Part critical international relations theory, part radical pedagogy, part academic feminist novel, Tilt follows a fictionalized Indian-American professor, Kavya, as she grapples with family violence and estrangement that she traces to her grandparents' experiences during colonialism. Inspired by bell hooks' view of teaching as politically transformative, Kavya crafts lesson plans to think through the suffering that she and so many others experience as a result of being descended from communities who endured systematic violence. She analyzes intergenerational trauma as a framework for how the wounds of oppressive political orders and hierarchies are "stored" in contemporary geopolitics, thereby keeping such oppression alive. When Kavya discovers her family's infliction of caste harm and how global practitioners have coopted "intergenerational trauma" to diagnose and "fix" marginalized communities, she turns to a tool of these very communities, "futurist worldbuilding" through speculative imagination, art, and play, to radically confront both familial/kinship destruction and systems of oppression.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One: Autumn
Tilt
Skin
Run
Gift Basket
Betray
Anchor
Remember
Tell Me a Story
Breakthrough
Dear Board of Directors
Humiliate
Chapter Two: Winter
Tell Me It's Okay
Echo
Burn
Leave
Confess
Derail
Reunite
Dear Colleague X
Save
Chapter Three: Spring
Speak
Shatter
Dream
Tell Me the Truth
Chapter Four: Summer
Monsters
Dear Principal X
Singapore
Disassociate
Slow Down
Play
Dear Abuela and Ajji
Finish Line
Stay
Tell Me Anything
Swim
Drown
Forgive
Bibliography
About the Author
