Alumni Edition: Dhru & Maria

08/18/23 • 31 min

Our guests in this episode are Dhruti (Dhru) Gopaluni and Maria Cristina Chicuen. Both came to the U.S. at age six, Dhru from Radmadri, Andhra Pradesh, India, and Maria from Havana, Cuba. Their conversation touches on the ways studying at Stanford exposed them to people, cuisines, and ways of being from around the world—pushing them to redefine their own identities and relationship to their respective cultures. Dhru is a Management Program Analyst at NASA. Maria is a Principal at Kivvit. Both graduated from Stanford in 2017.

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Alumni Edition: Sheela & Sonja

Our guests in this episode are Sheela Chari and Sonja Srinivasan. Both grew up Indian American in parts of the US where few shared their cultural heritage. Together, they discuss their trajectories as writers, their relationship to the Tamil language and cooking, and representations of Indian characters and stories in literature. Sheela is a fiction and middle grade writer and faculty member at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Sonja is a fiction writer, opera singer, and freelance editor and academic. Both graduated from Stanford in 1995.