Her second novel, a work of auto-fiction, When I Hit You: Or, The Portrait of the Writer As A Young Wife (2017) drew upon her own experience within an abusive marriage, while her third novel, Exquisite Cadavers (2019) is a work of experimental fiction in which the writer dissects her own creative process revealing how her ideas are worked into fiction. It is a terrible shocking story, framed by a humorous narrator who talks directly to us of people fighting for justice. The workers, striking for better pay and conditions, were locked in a hut and burned alive.

Her critically acclaimed first novel, The Gypsy Goddess (2014) is a stunning and deeply faithful account of the murder of 44 low-caste labourers and their families in a Tamil village in 1968. They currently live in East London with their two sons. In 2011, she was married briefly – four months – to a man who subjected her to physical and psychological violence and in 2013 she met her current partner, with whom she moved to the UK in 2016. My poetry speaks like my people, my poetry speaks for my people.' My poetry smells of blood, my poetry salutes sacrifice.

When interviewed on her poetic works Kandasamy said “ My poetry is naked, my poetry is in tears, my poetry screams in anger, my poetry writhes in pain. Her debut collection of poems, Touch (2006) was themed around caste and untouchability, and her second collection, Ms Militancy (2010) was an explosive, feminist reclaiming of Tamil and Hindu myths. Thus, in her late teens (2002), she was the editor of The Dalit, a bimonthly “ that provided a platform to record atrocities, condemn oppressive hierarchies and document the forgotten heritage.” the people belonging to the lowest caste, the “untouchables”.

Her parents’ involvement in the anti-caste struggle led Meena to work alongside the Dalit movement, a religious as well as socio-political movement which challenges the caste system in India and promotes the rights of the Dalits, i.e. Kandasamy was born in 1984 in Chennai, India, the daughter of a mixed-caste Tamil marriage.

Ms militancy by meena kandasamy