#48. The Challenges of Being a Single Woman in India

Sarah Lamb is a professor of cultural anthropology at Brandeis University, who focuses on how people construct their socio-cultural world and identity from the interlocking multiple dimensions of age, gender, the body, family, religion, and nation. From the points of view of those she studies, she explores the experiences and the often taken-for-granted assumptions of people in West Bengal, India and also among Indian immigrants as well as older white Americans in the San Francisco, Boston, and Bible Belt areas of the United States. Sarah is the author of several books and is the recipient of several major grants and awards, including a 2019 to 2023 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. Her most recent book — Being Single in India: Stories of Gender, Exclusion, and Possibility — is the subject of today’s interview.

Recorded 8/1/23.