Minal Hajratwala (born 1971) is a writer, performer, poet, and

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

n descent. She was born in 1971 in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, US, and was raised in

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

and suburban

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

. She is a graduate of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

Career

She is the author of ''Leaving India: My Family's Journey From Five Villages to Five Continents'' (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), which

Alice Walker Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was aw ...

has called "incomparable," and ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' has characterized as "searingly honest." She researched and wrote the book during a seven-year period, traveling the world to interview more than 75 members of her extended family. Hajratwala's creative work has appeared in journals, anthologies, and theater spaces and has received recognition and support from the

Sundance Institute Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and composers f ...

, the Jon Sims Center for the Arts, the SerpentSource Foundation, and the

Hedgebrook Hedgebrook is a rural retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, Washington, founded in 1988. Hedgebrook's artist-in-residence program accepts up to 80 writers each year, who spend two to four weeks in residence working on their diverse writi ...

writing retreat for women, where she serves on the Alumnae Leadership Council. For

World AIDS Day World AIDS Day, designated on 1 December every year since 1988, is an international day dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection and mourning those who have died of the disease. The acquired immun ...

in 1999, the

Asian Art Museum of San Francisco The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco – Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture"About"
Asian Art Museum website. ...

commissioned her one-woman show, "Avatars: Gods for a New Millennium." She previously worked as a journalist at the ''

San Jose Mercury News ''The Mercury News'' (formerly ''San Jose Mercury News'', often locally known as ''The Merc'') is a morning daily newspaper published in San Jose, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is published by the Bay Area News Group, a subsidiar ...

'' for eight years, was a board member of the

National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, is an American professional association dedicated to unbiased coverage of LGBTQ issues in the media. It is based in Washington, D.C., and the membership consists primarily of journalists, students, edu ...

, and was a National Arts Journalism Program fellow at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

's Graduate School of Journalism in 2000-01. In June 2011 Hajratwala and Tom MacMaster, creator of

Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari ''A Gay Girl In Damascus'' was a weblog purportedly by Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari who was in fact a fictional character and hoax persona created and maintained by American Tom MacMaster. The identity was presented as a Syrian-American blogger ...

, engaged in an online dispute over the posting of MacMaster's manuscript.Mackey, Robert.
While Posing as a Syrian Lesbian, Male Blogger Tried to Get a Book Deal
" ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. June 22, 2011. Retrieved on July 6, 2011. Hajratwala is the founder of Unicorn Club, "a magical sanctuary where authors of color (and allies who really mean it!) finish our gorgeous, urgently needed books."

Works

*2009 ''Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents'' *2010 '' Out! Stories from The New Queer India'' (editor) *2015 ''Bountiful Instructions for Enlightenment''

References

External links

Official websiteUnicorn Club"The Heart Breaks"
by Minal Hajratwala, published in ''Lion's Roar'' (July 27, 2021)
Interview
with Public Radio International's ''The World'' (March 31, 2009) {{DEFAULTSORT:Hajratwala, Minal Living people Lambda Literary Award winners American women writers of Indian descent American women poets Stanford University alumni American LGBT rights activists American people of Gujarati descent 1971 births The Mercury News people American women non-fiction writers 21st-century American poets 21st-century American women writers