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Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Breaking Out: An Indian Woman's American Journey
Description: Padma Desai grew up in the 1930s in the provincial world of Surat, India, where she had a sheltered and strict upbringing in a traditional Gujarati Anavil Brahmin family. Her academic brilliance won her a scholarship to Bombay University, where the first heady taste of freedom in the big city led to tragic consequences—seduction by a fellow student whom she was then compelled to marry. In a failed attempt to end this disastrous first marriage, she converted to Christianity.A scholarship to America in 1955 launched her on her long journey to liberation from the burdens and co...