Join the University of Iowa (UI) Jewish Studies Network, an International Programs affinity group, as they host Samira K. Mehta for the reading of her book at Prairie Lights Books.

Her book, The Racism of People Who Love You, is a collection of essays published by Beacon Press in 2023. These essays integrate cultural criticism and personal experiences about multicultural, multiracial South Asian identity to give voice to multiracial experience and to think robustly about the challenges and possibilities of such lives. Oprah Daily described The Racism of People Who Love You as “the epitome of a book meeting a moment.”

This reading is co-sponsored by the Jewish Studies Network, International Programs, Prairie Lights Books, the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, the South Asian Studies Program, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, the African American Studies Program, the Latino/o/x Studies Program, and the Departments of American Studies; Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies; History; and Religious Studies.

Samira K. Mehta is an associate professor of Women and Gender Studies and the director of Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research and teaching focus on the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, including the politics of family life and reproduction in the United States. Her first book, Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), was a National Jewish Book Awards finalist.