Episode 13: ‘I Thought Memory Would Be Easy’ – Academic and Poetic Borderlands as Decolonial Projects of Recovery with Monica Mody

Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

In this episode, we meet East-West Psychology PhD, Monica Mody, who is a writer, poet, and educator aligned with earth-based and decolonial feminist perspectives. Monica speaks about her approaches to writing, scholarship, and poetry as a cross-genre, transdisciplinary practitioner, and we discuss her dissertation, titled “Claiming Voice, Vitality, and Authority in Post-secular South Asian Borderlands: A Critical Hermeneutics and Autohistoria/teoría for Decolonial Feminist Consciousness,” which received the 2020 Kore Award for Best Dissertation in Women and Mythology awarded by the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. Monica speaks about the importance of tracing and reconstructing her motherline story and how her creative process helps to tap into the voice of her ancestral memory and the voices of the ancestresess. She shares two of her poems and we discuss the role of poetics in her academic writing and what the intersection of knowledge and creativity looks like to her. We end with discussing Monica’s ideas about what she calls earth-ecstatic spirituality.

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Monica Mody is the author of Kala Pani (1913 Press), the forthcoming Bright Parallel (Copper Coin), and three chapbooks including Ordinary Annals (above/ground press). Her academic writing can be found in The Land Remembers Us: Women, Myth, and Nature, and Integral Review: A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis. Her poems appear in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets, Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing, Witness: The Red River Book of Poetry of Dissent, and &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing. Her poetry has also been published in Poetry International, Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Boston Review, and other literary journals. 

Besides a Ph.D. in East-West Psychology, Monica holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame, and a B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from the National Law School of India University. Among the awards she has received are the Sparks Prize Fellowship (Notre Dame), the Zora Neale Hurston Award (Naropa), and the Toto Award for Creative Writing. Monica has presented her work widely, including at the Parliament of World Religions, Symposia of the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, American Academy of Religion Western Region, Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conferences, and Oakland Summer School. She has been invited to read her poetry at events including Poetry with Prakriti, Bengaluru Poetry Festival, the Trauma and Catharsis Symposium on Performing the Asian Avant-Garde, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop—as well as been a part of art shows including Rites of Passage: 20/20 Vision. Monica was born in Ranchi, India, and currently lives in San Francisco, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone territory. She teaches as an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Mody, Monica. “Serpent, Earth, Healing, Initiation.” In The Land Remembers Us: Women, Myth, and Nature, edited by Sid Reger and Mary Jo Neitz, 3:275–92. 

Mody, Monica. “The Borderlands Feminine: A Feminist, Decolonial Framework for Re-Membering Motherlines in South Asia/Transnational Culture.” Integral Review 13, no. 1 (July 2017): 87–98. 

Mody, Monica. Kala Pani. San Marcos, CA: 1913 Press, 2013. 

Dr. Mody’s full-length poetry collection Bright Parallel is forthcoming from Copper Coin, and a chapbook Ordinary Annals from above/ground press. Her poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals including Indian Quarterly, Almost Island, Boston Review, and Poetry International, and in anthologies including Extinction Violin: The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Poets, What is Time: An Anthology of New Indian Writing, Hibiscus: Poems that Heal and Empower, and &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing.

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The EWP Podcast credits

Hosted by Stephen Julich (EWP adjunct faculty, program manager) and Jonathan Kay (PhD student, EWP assistant)

Produced, Edited and Mixed by: Jonathan Kay

Music at the end of the episode by Jonathan Kay and Monsoon: Tiger Eyes, by Monsoon’s on the album Mandala released on Monsoon-Music Record Label

Introduction Voiceover: Roche Wadehra