Charis and Agnes Scott College welcome Anjali Enjeti in conversation with Anoa Changa for a celebration of Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change. In our current era of great political strife, this timely collection by Enjeti, a journalist and organizer, paves the way for a path forward, one where identity drives coalition-building and social change. This event is co-sponsored by Raksha, Inc a Georgia-based nonprofit with a mission to promote a stronger and healthier South Asian community through confidential support services, education, and advocacy. Raksha works towards healing, empowerment, and justice for survivors of violence.

A move at age ten from a Detroit suburb to Chattanooga in 1984 thrusts Anjali Enjeti into what feels like a new world replete with Confederate flags, Bible verses, and whiteness. It is here that she learns how to get her bearings as a mixed-race brown girl in the Deep South and begins to understand how identity can inspire, inform, and shape a commitment to activism. Her own evolution is a bumpy one, and along the way, Enjeti, racially targeted as a child, must wrestle with her own complicity in white supremacy and bigotry as an adult.

The twenty essays of her debut collection, Southbound, tackle white feminism at a national feminist organization, the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the South, voter suppression, gun violence, and the gun sense movement, the whitewashing of southern literature, the 1982 racialized killing of Vincent Chin, social media's role in political accountability, evangelical Christianity's marriage to extremism, and the rise of nationalism worldwide.

Anjali Enjeti is an award-winning essayist who writes about books, politics, and social justice. Her work has appeared in the AtlantaJournal-Constitution, Al Jazeera, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and other venues. Her debut novel,The Parted Earth, will be released in the spring of 2021. She teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Reinhardt University and lives with her family near Atlanta.

Anoa Changa is an independent journalist based in Atlanta. Anoa focuses on electoral justice, voting rights, and politics. Anoa is an innovator of electoral justice as a reported beat. An organizer by nature and retired attorney, Anoa has a strong sense of equity and justice. She has bylines in The Appeal, Essence, NewsOne, Scalawag Magazine, Dame Magazine, Huffington Post, and Rewire. News.

This event is free and open to all people, especially to those who have no income or low income right now, but we encourage and appreciate a solidarity donation in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Charis Circle's mission is to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/CharisCircle?code=chariscirclepage

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Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change-- Anjali Enjeti in conversation with Anoa Changa