Mathangi Subramanian, Ed.D., is a writer, educator, and activist. She previously served as senior policy adviser to former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, an assistant vice president at Sesame Workshop, and a public school teacher in Texas and New York. She has received numerous honors, including a Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship and a Jacob Javits Fellowship.
Heaven is a thirty-year-old slum hidden between brand-new, high-rise apartment buildings and technology incubators in contemporary Bangalore. In this tight-knit community, five girls on the cusp of womanhood-a politically driven graffiti artist; a transgender Christian convert; a blind girl who loves to dance; and the queer daughter of a hijabi union leader-forge an unbreakable bond.
When the local government threatens to demolish their tin shacks in order to build a shopping mall, the girls and their mothers refuse to be erased. Together they wage war on the bulldozers sent to bury their homes, and, ultimately, on the city that wishes that families like them would remain hidden forever.
Elegant, poetic, and vibrant, A People's History of Heaven takes a clear-eyed look at adversity and geography and dazzles in its depiction of love and female friendship.
