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Voice of the Marginalised

By on December 22, 2014

US-based author and journalist SONIA FALEIRO’s desire to understand the world has led her to take up the cause of the marginalised people in India

Her award-winning novel ‘The Girl’ launched Sonia Faleiro’s writing career. It was the journalist’s desire to understand the world that made her explore the inequality in India.

She soon found compelled to become a voice for the marginalised people in the country, prompting her development as a non-fiction writer with her book, Beautiful Thing:

Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars.

The book was named Book of the Year by The Economist, The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus, and The Observer; Mumbai Book of the Year by CNN and Subcontinental Book of the Year by Time Out. It was also The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year 2011 and one of National Public Radio’s Five Best Travel Memoirs 2012.

Her writing and photographs have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Granta, The Guardian and Vogue. In 2011, she was awarded the Karmaveer Puraskaar for Social Justice ‘for drawing attention to India’s most vulnerable and writing about them with sensitivity, humanity

and integrity’.

Her work has formed part of many anthologies, alongside writers such as Salman Rushdie, William Dalrymple, Vikram Seth and Shobhaa De, in which she has written about rural women (Reimagining India: Unlocking the potential of Asia’s next superpower), migrant workers in the Gulf (Ox Travels), Mumbai’s transsexual community (India Shining, India Changing: Contemporary Stories), violence against women (AIDS Sutra), Goa (Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa), and more.

Faleiro, who traces her roots to Raia, is also the co-founder of the global writers’ co-operative Deca and frequently writes for The New York Times. She currently lives in San Francisco, USA.

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