Virtual Book Talk “Correctional: a Memoir” with prize-winning poet, translator and professor Ravi Shankar, PhD, Morris Public Library, Tuesday, February 7, 6:30 pm
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, 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.
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.
Dr. Ravi Shankar, is a Pushcart prize-winning poet, translator and professor who has published 15 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.
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 Counsel on the Arts, founded one of the oldest electronic journals of the arts Drunken Boat, and recently finished his PhD from the University of Sydney. His memoir “Correctional” was published in 2021 with University of Wisconsin Press.
To register for the FREE virtual event with the Library: https://morrispubliclibrary.net/library-calendar-event-registration/
