Radical Spirits: India's First Woman Doctor and Her American Champions

Nandini Patwardhan grew up in India and has lived in the United States for the last thirty five years. A math major by training and a software developer by vocation, she is a writer by avocation. She started writing personal essays as a way to record her experiences as an Indian mom raising American kids. Soon, writing became her way of getting to the heart of her deepest convictions. A little later, she realized that her personal essays were like letters from her old self to her current self.

In writing Radical Spirits, Patwardhan the has illuminated forgotten but important aspects of Indian as well as American history, especially women's history. Hailing from the same cultural milieu and as a native speaker of Marathi, she ably synthesized the Indian side of Joshee's story. As a longtime US resident, she was able to contextualize the cultural and social forces prevalent in the US at the time that the story unfolds. In short, Patwardhan used her insider-outsider perspective in both countries she calls home-India and the United States-to tell the story of Indian and American Radical Spirits.

I became hooked early on when I read the letters exchanged by Anandi Joshee and her many American champions. Her grit and grace and their thoughtfulness and open-mindedness were inspiring and humbling. Even though work on the book took almost a decade, I persevered because I felt compelled to share their story with the world.