Politics & Prose at Busboys and Poets, Brookland, presents Deepa Iyer as she discusses her book We Too Sing America.
Iyer, a lawyer focusing on immigrant and civil rights issues, was the activist-in-residence in the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland in 2014. She’s also served as executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together, where she helped organize the National Coalition of South Asian Organizations. In her first book, she draws on her extensive social justice experience to discuss post-9/11 racism in the U.S. Looking at hate crimes ranging from killings to protests against Islamic centers to state-encouraged racial profiling, surveillance, and registration programs, Iyer asks whether hate crimes should be treated as domestic terrorism. She also looks at the valuable work of groups like Black Lives Matter in countering the hostility to people of color.
