A talk by Author Gemini Wahhaj (Associate Professor of English at Lone Star College in Houston), on her new novel, The Children of this Madness, a complex tale of modern Bengalis, one that illuminates the recent histories not only of Bangladesh, but America and Iraq. Told in multiple voices over successive eras, this is the story of Nasir Uddin and his daughter Beena, and the intersection of their distant, vastly different lives.
Event moderated by Elora Shehabuddin, Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Global Studies; Director, Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, UC Berkeley. Moazzam Sheikh (author and translator) and Mirza Taslima Sultana (ISAS Visiting Scholar 2023-24 and Professor of Anthropology in Jahangirnagar University) will act as discussants.
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This event will be live streamed on the Center’s FB page: ChowdhuryCenter
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About the Book
In The Children of this Madness, Gemini Wahhaj pens a complex tale of modern Bengalis, one that illuminates the recent histories not only of Bangladesh, but America and Iraq. Told in multiple voices over successive eras, this is the story of Nasir Uddin and his daughter Beena, and the intersection of their distant, vastly different lives.
As the US war in Iraq plays out a world away, and Beena struggles to belong to Houston’s tony Bengali American community-many of whom serve the same corporate masters she sees destroying Iraq-recently widowed engineering professor Nasir Uddin journeys to America not only to see Beena and her new husband but the many former students who make up the immigrant community Beena has come to view with ambivalence. With subtlety, grace, and love, Wahhaj dramatizes this mingling of generations and cultures, and the search for an ever-elusive home that define the Bengali American experience.
About the Author
Gemini Wahhaj is the author of the novel The Children of this Madness (7.13 Books, Fall 2023) and the short-story collection Katy Family (Jackleg Press, Spring 2025). Her fiction is in or forthcoming in Granta, Chicago Quarterly Review, Press 53, Allium, Zone 3, Northwest Review, Cimarron Review, the Carolina Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, Chattahoochee Review, Apogee, Silk Road, Night Train, Cleaver, Concho River Review, Scoundrel Time, Arkansas Review, Valley Voices, and other magazines. She has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Houston, where she received the James A. Michener award for fiction (judged by Claudia Rankine) and the Cambor/Inprint fellowship. She is Associate Professor of English at Lone Star College in Houston.
Her short story collection Katy Family was a finalist for the Acacia Fiction Prize by Kallisto Gaia Press and the Hudson Prize by Black Lawrence Press, her novel was a finalist for the Big Moose Prize by Black Lawrence Press, and her YA novel was long listed for the Leap Frog Global Fiction Prize in YA. She received an honorable mention in Atlantic student writer contest 2006, an honorable mention in Glimmer Train fiction contest Spring 2005, Zone 3 Literary Award in 2021, and the prize for best undergraduate fiction at the University of Pennsylvania, judged by Philip Roth. An excerpt of her Young Adult manuscript The Girl Next Door was published in Exotic Gothic Volume 5 featuring Joyce Carol Oates. Formerly, she was senior editor at Feminist Economics and staff writer at the national newspaper The Daily Star in Bangladesh. She has edited articles for the Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Countries and is editor of Cat 5 Review (Cat5review.wordpress.com), a magazine of writing by community college students. She has a master’s degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University and a bachelor degree in materials science and engineering from The University of Pennsylvania, and she has worked at UNDP, CARE, and BRAC.
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Established in 2013 with a generous gift from the Subir & Malini Chowdhury Foundation, The Subir & Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies at UC Berkeley champions the study of Bangladesh’s cultures, peoples and history. The first of its kind in the US, the Center’s mission is to create an innovative model combining research, scholarships, the promotion of art and culture, and the building of ties between institutions in Bangladesh and the University of California.
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PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.
Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.
