Reading by Nishant Batsha

740 University Avenue,Rochester NY 14607

05 January, 2023

Description

Spanning from the lush terrain of the South Pacific to the golden hills of San Francisco, Mother Ocean Father Nation is an entrancing debut about how one family, at the mercy of a nation broken by legacies of power and oppression, forges a path to find a home once again. “Heartrending in its domestic drama, illuminating and instructive in its exploration of the political as personal, Mother Ocean Father Nation is a memorable work of fiction to place beside the work of Nishant Batsha’s gifted contemporaries Mohsin Hamid, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and others bravely bearing witness to a world suddenly and tragically dividing into ‘native-born’ and ‘refugees’—the overwhelming political drama of our time.” — Joyce Carol Oates Nishant Batsha is a writer of fiction and histories, currently at work on a second novel set in California and New York at the dawn of World War I. He holds a PhD in history from Columbia University; his academic research focused on Indian indentured labor in Trinidad and Fiji. His writing has been supported by the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Prelinger Library, and the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. He lives in Buffalo, NY, with his wife and two children. Joshua Dubler is an associate professor of religion at University of Rochester, where he directs the Rochester Education Justice Initiative, which fosters higher educational opportunities for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in the Rochester area. He is the author of Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison (FSG, 2013), and co-author of Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons (Oxford, 2019). This is a hybrid event held at Writers & Books, 740 University Ave Rochester, NY and streamed via Zoom. Register for this event at wab.org Reserve your in-person or Zoom ticket. Choose the ticket price that’s right for you: Free, $5, $10, $15 or $20 More Information