A Letter Home: Nepali and Tibetan Women Tell Their Stories

Following a lively gallery tour led by museum educator Tashi Chodron, Nepali women’s social justice group Adhikaar, together with writers, Meera Nair and Muna Gurung, and the creative writing experts at Kundiman will present “A Letter Home,” a dynamic evening of spoken word and storytelling from ten Nepali and Tibetan women. They will present autobiographical letters written in response to Nepal’s 2015 earthquake that creatively express their experiences as women, immigrants, domestic workers, daughters, mothers, and more. This communal presentation of art is designed not only to record Asian American history but also generate a dialogue to spark change.

About the Participants

Adhikaar, which means “rights” in Nepali, is a Queens, New York-based, women-led non-profit. Since 2005 Adhikaar has been committed to serving and organizing the Nepali and Tibetan speaking communities and ensuring their voices are heard in the broader social justice movement. Through their services they have built leadership and power in the efforts to improve conditions across low-wage industries. They have assisted thousands of individuals and families, trained hundreds of new leaders, and successfully changed policies and created new laws at the local, state, national, and international levels, including the New York State Domestic Workers Bill of Rights and the International Domestic Workers’ Convention.

Meera Nair is the author of Video (NY: Pantheon), which received the Sixth Annual Asian American Literary Award and was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and the children’s books Maya Saves The Day (India: Duckbill) and Maya In a Right Royal Mess. Her work has appeared on NPR and in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Muna Gurung is a writer and educator who splits her time between Kathmandu and NYC. A 2015 Margins Fellow and founder of KathaSatha, Muna currently directs a high school writing center in NYC. Her fiction and non-fiction writings have appeared in The Margins, HimalSouthasian, La.Lit, VelaMag, No Tokens and PIX; her translated works can be found in the literary magazine Words Without Borders.

Kundiman.org is dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian American literature. Kundiman offers a comprehensive spectrum of arts programming that gives writers opportunities to inscribe their own stories, transforming and enriching the American literary landscape. Kundiman sees literature not only as vehicle for cultural expression but also as an instrument for political dialogue and self-empowerment.

Presented with Adhikaar