4.0
The Trauma of Caste
ByPublisher Description
Instant Amazon Best Seller and Hot New Release
For readers of Caste and Radical Dharma, an urgent call to action to end caste apartheid, grounded in Dalit feminist abolition and engaged Buddhism.
“Dalit” is the name that we chose for ourselves when Brahminism declared us “untouchable.” Dalit means broken. Broken by suffering. Broken by caste: the world’s oldest, longest-running dominator system...yet although “Dalit” means broken, it also means resilient.
Caste—one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world—is thriving. Despite the ban on Untouchability 70 years ago, caste impacts 1.9 billion people in the world. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in the U.S., too—erupting online with rape and death threats, showing up at work, and forcing countless Dalits to live in fear of being outed.
Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan puts forth a call to awaken and act, not just for readers in South Asia, but all around the world. She ties Dalit oppression to fights for liberation among Black, Indigenous, Latinx, femme, and Queer communities, examining caste from a feminist, abolitionist, and Dalit Buddhist perspective--and laying bare the grief, trauma, rage, and stolen futures enacted by Brahminical social structures on the caste-oppressed.
Soundararajan’s work includes embodiment exercises, reflections, and meditations to help readers explore their own relationship to caste and marginalization—and to step into their power as healing activists and changemakers. She offers skills for cultivating wellness within dynamics of false separation, sharing how both oppressor and oppressed can heal the wounds of caste and transform collective suffering. Incisive and urgent, The Trauma of Caste is an activating beacon of healing and liberation, written by one of the world’s most needed voices in the fight to end caste apartheid.
For readers of Caste and Radical Dharma, an urgent call to action to end caste apartheid, grounded in Dalit feminist abolition and engaged Buddhism.
“Dalit” is the name that we chose for ourselves when Brahminism declared us “untouchable.” Dalit means broken. Broken by suffering. Broken by caste: the world’s oldest, longest-running dominator system...yet although “Dalit” means broken, it also means resilient.
Caste—one of the oldest systems of exclusion in the world—is thriving. Despite the ban on Untouchability 70 years ago, caste impacts 1.9 billion people in the world. Every 15 minutes, a crime is perpetrated against a Dalit person. The average age of death for Dalit women is just 39. And the wreckages of caste are replicated here in the U.S., too—erupting online with rape and death threats, showing up at work, and forcing countless Dalits to live in fear of being outed.
Dalit American activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan puts forth a call to awaken and act, not just for readers in South Asia, but all around the world. She ties Dalit oppression to fights for liberation among Black, Indigenous, Latinx, femme, and Queer communities, examining caste from a feminist, abolitionist, and Dalit Buddhist perspective--and laying bare the grief, trauma, rage, and stolen futures enacted by Brahminical social structures on the caste-oppressed.
Soundararajan’s work includes embodiment exercises, reflections, and meditations to help readers explore their own relationship to caste and marginalization—and to step into their power as healing activists and changemakers. She offers skills for cultivating wellness within dynamics of false separation, sharing how both oppressor and oppressed can heal the wounds of caste and transform collective suffering. Incisive and urgent, The Trauma of Caste is an activating beacon of healing and liberation, written by one of the world’s most needed voices in the fight to end caste apartheid.
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4.0
“Trauma of Caste is riveting, deeply unsettling, and very important. Reading this as someone from a "dominant" caste was painful in ways I hadn’t fully anticipated. Soundararajan asks us to sit with discomfort, to examine how caste operates not only as a historical system of oppression but as a living, breathing structure that shapes everyday interactions, institutions, and opportunities.
One of the most striking aspects of the book is how seamlessly she weaves caste trauma with racial segregation in the United States, particularly Jim Crow laws (which also influenced the Nuremberg laws). The parallels are chilling. It becomes impossible to dismiss caste as a “cultural issue” or a relic of the past when viewed alongside America’s own brutal history of racial hierarchy.
With remarkable clarity, the author writes how trauma is passed down generationally and how dominant groups are conditioned to normalize inequity (that we are witnessing at horrific levels today).
This book left me grieving, not only for the harm inflicted on Dalit communities, but for the ways social constructs like caste and race have distorted our shared humanity. If dismantling these systems begins anywhere, it begins with truth, listening, and the willingness to stay uncomfortable.
Trauma of Caste is not an easy read, but it is an essential one. Especially for those of us who have benefited from systems we did not choose but must now choose to confront.”
About Thenmozhi Soundararajan
THENMOZHI SOUNDARARAJAN is a Dalit American artist, community organizer, technologist, and theorist. She is the co-founder and ED of Equality Labs, the largest Dalit civil rights organization. Her work has been recognized by the White House, The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, The Museum of Contemporary Art and The Sorbonne.
Other books by Thenmozhi Soundararajan
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