Book of the Month: ‘Dalit Women and the Fullness of Life’ by Christina Dhanuja – meet the author

Each month, eShe Book Club picks one Book of the Month, and hosts the author for an online discussion. Our pick of the month for May 2026 is Christina Dhanuja’s new release Dalit Women and the Fullness of Life (Penguin India, 2026).

Drawing on both personal experience and broader social realities, Dhanuja explores how caste works not just as a deeply unjust structural system but as something deeply internalised as well – shaping how people see themselves, how they relate to others, and the choices they make.

The book also turns to contexts that often get left out of caste conversations, including Dalit Christian identity, and looks closely at how faith, community and gender intersect in everyday life.

Caste is fundamentally an artificial construct, with no basis in science or sense – a sham to be precise.

– Christina Dhanuja

Written over several years and across cities including New York, Chennai and Visakhapatnam, Dhanuja takes us on a personal and political journey, one that seeks to document not just conditions of survival, but the pursuit of a fuller life.

eShe Book Club discussion #3

eShe readers and Book Club members will get the opportunity to interact with Christina Dhanuja on Zoom and share their views about her new book. All discussions will be recorded and shared on our social-media pages, including as a podcast.

Date: 23 May 2026, Saturday
Time: 7.30 am PST / 10.30 am EST / 3.30 pm UTC / 8 pm India

Christina Dhanuja is an Indian writer, researcher and social-justice practitioner whose work focuses on the intersections of caste, gender, faith and inequality.

She is a co-founder of the #DalitHistoryMonth project, a public-history initiative that amplifies Dalit voices and histories. She is also a founding member and convenor of the Global Campaign for Dalit Women, which works on issues like caste violence, climate justice and economic marginalisation.

Dhanuja often advises organisations, universities and nonprofits on caste equity, diversity and inclusion, and her work has taken her across India, China, Singapore and the Netherlands. She is currently based in New York.

Her writing has appeared in several prestigious outlets, often engaging with questions of identity, power and lived experience. She’s part of a newer generation of Dalit feminist thinkers trying to reshape how caste – and especially Dalit womanhood – is written about and understood.

Dhanuja’s debut book, Dalit Women and the Fullness of Life (2026), blends memoir and social analysis to explore the inner lives, agency and complexity of Dalit women beyond stereotypical narratives of victimhood. It was developed over several years following an article she wrote in 2020.

Whether academic or literary, writing on Dalit women often restricts itself either to structural analysis or stories of suffering and resilience. Both are necessary, but they often miss the more intimate textures of everyday life – how desire is felt, how relationships are negotiated, how faith complicates identity, or how selfhood itself is pieced together.

That’s the space Dhanuja steps into. Her book resists any neat, singular narrative. Instead, it holds together contradictions: strength and vulnerability, solidarity and loneliness, belief and doubt. The effect is less a linear argument and more a layered, lived-in map.

“How does one take pride in the Dalit assertion and not be stereotyped? How does one identify as Dalit and still be more?”

– Christina Dhanuja

One of the book’s sharper insights lies in how it traces caste as something internal, not just structural. Dhanuja shows how it seeps into self-worth, shapes emotional reflexes, and deviously informs everyday choices – who to trust, where to belong, what feels possible.

What also sets the book apart is its attention to underexplored terrains, particularly the role of faith in shaping community and self-understanding. Blending memoir with analysis, Dhanuja uses the personal not as confession but as a way of thinking – opening up conversations that are often left out, and insisting that Dalit lives be seen in their full, complicated range, not just at the point of crisis.

eShe Book Club is where we get together in a stimulating online space to discuss, share and spotlight books by contemporary South Asian women writers. Join our Discord group (app login required), participate with book suggestions, share your views and reviews, promote your own writing, or just drop in for book recommendations! Click here.