Meenal Shrivastava lives as an uninvited guest in the unceded Coast Salish territory, on an (almost) acreage in North Saanich, BC. She is the author of a non-fiction novel, co-editor of a genre-bending anthology, and the writer of sundry academic publications as a professor of political economy and global studies at Athabasca University. Her life's journey so far span across India, South Africa, and Canada. Three very different spatial contexts, which made her recognize the unique power of stories in making issues of social science research immediate and personal.
In 'Amma’s Daughters: A Memoir' (AU Press, 2018), her first work of creative non-fiction, she blended together archival research, interviews, and her mother and grandmother’s writings to tell the stories of some of the many remarkable women who fought for the freedom of their people. Their stories are a reminder of the erasure of women's role in the story-writing of mass movements and historical moments. They are also a reminder that ordinary people’s lives transform, and are in turn transformed by historical events, and thus we need constant reminders of our stakes in any major social-political change. This open-source book can be downloaded for free through the Athabasca University Press website.
She has also co-edited a collection of creative writings and art with a group of inspiring editors and authors. The twenty-five contributors of 'Write in Power: An Anthology of the Personal and the Political' (The Hidden Pen Collective, 2021) are women or non-binary persons of South Asian origin living in India, Bangladesh, Canada, UK, and US. The genre defying autoethnographic accounts in this collection speak to the complex intersections of the personal and the political. All proceeds from the sales of the book go directly to the Haadibadi Trust (Bangalore) towards their work of building free publically owned community libraries and creating spaces for learning and expression through theatre.
In her spare time, she is learning watercolour painting, and writes narrative essays, photo-stories, and poems which are hosted on her personal blog.
