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Come September
In this acclaimed Lannan foundation lecture from September 2002, Roy speaks poetically to power on the US’ War on Terror, globalization, the misuses of nationalism, and the growing chasm between the rich and poor. With lyricism and passion, Roy combines her literary talents and encyclopedic knowledge to expose injustice and provide hope for a future world.
"Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead."—From the CD
Arundhati Roy is an outspoken critic of globalization and American influence. She has authored four books, -including The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize. This summer, she will accept the Lannan Award for Cultural Freedom.
"Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead."—From the CD
Arundhati Roy is an outspoken critic of globalization and American influence. She has authored four books, -including The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize. This summer, she will accept the Lannan Award for Cultural Freedom.
80 pages, Audio CD
First published September 1, 2004
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About the author
Arundhati Roy
99 books13.8k followersArundhati Roy is an Indian writer who is also an activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays.
For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002.
For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 10, 2008
oh her precision with language and brilliance and beauty is so so good.
she ends her brilliant lecture with a story of speaking with a cynical woman and deciding the best way to respond to her was to write on a napkin the following:
"To love and to be loved, to never forget your own insignificance, to never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of the life around you, to seek joy in the saddest places, to pursue beauty to its lair, to never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple, to respect strength never power, above all to watch to try and understand to never look away and to never never forget."
she ends her brilliant lecture with a story of speaking with a cynical woman and deciding the best way to respond to her was to write on a napkin the following:
"To love and to be loved, to never forget your own insignificance, to never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of the life around you, to seek joy in the saddest places, to pursue beauty to its lair, to never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple, to respect strength never power, above all to watch to try and understand to never look away and to never never forget."
March 24, 2007
Actually this is a speech she gave and it is incredible! You can find it online though, no need to buy it!
June 20, 2011
An interesting lecture on power, powerlessness and the relationship between the two. Usually, I find her a "tantrumy" child with her broad-brush disapproval for any point of view but her own and constant bashing of corporations as profit seeking pariahs who, along with corrupt politicians, are solely responsible for the plight of whichever new adivasi group or dam or what-not she has adopted as her personal issue.
I read this again after a long time and again, found it engaging and well written. And thankfully, for once, she acknowledges the idea that there can be no single story, just points of view, and she's merely presenting her own. Overall, its a quick read, and a decently researched piece on America's ironic obsession with September 11 coupled with its inability to comprehend the havoc that has been wrought on other parts of the world, often at the hands of their own leaders in Septembers past.
I read this again after a long time and again, found it engaging and well written. And thankfully, for once, she acknowledges the idea that there can be no single story, just points of view, and she's merely presenting her own. Overall, its a quick read, and a decently researched piece on America's ironic obsession with September 11 coupled with its inability to comprehend the havoc that has been wrought on other parts of the world, often at the hands of their own leaders in Septembers past.
October 8, 2025
Absolutely blasts away the false facade of the US "War on Terror" that has continued since the early 2000s and connects it to all the imperial, colonial capitalism both before and since. Some quotes that hit me hard:
"The men in suits are in an unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down on us and cruise missiles skid across the skies, while nuclear weapons are stockpiled to make the world a safer place, contracts are being signed, patents are being plundered, water is being privatized, and democracies are being undermined."
"Standing here today, it's hard for me to say this, but the American Way of Life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America."
And the last lines for me are an all-timer to never forget if you ever want to just cling to hope: "Perhaps things will get worse and then better. Perhaps there's a small god up in heaven readying herself for us. Another world is not only possible, she's on her way. Maybe many of us won't be here to gree her, but on a quiet day, if I listen carefully, I can hear her breathing."
"The men in suits are in an unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down on us and cruise missiles skid across the skies, while nuclear weapons are stockpiled to make the world a safer place, contracts are being signed, patents are being plundered, water is being privatized, and democracies are being undermined."
"Standing here today, it's hard for me to say this, but the American Way of Life is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America."
And the last lines for me are an all-timer to never forget if you ever want to just cling to hope: "Perhaps things will get worse and then better. Perhaps there's a small god up in heaven readying herself for us. Another world is not only possible, she's on her way. Maybe many of us won't be here to gree her, but on a quiet day, if I listen carefully, I can hear her breathing."
July 30, 2020
Good book
January 19, 2021
Listened to this speech in addition to reading the essay and really appreciate the thoughtfulness of every word, sentence formation, etc.!
October 29, 2024
Don't waste your money, this author can't write.
October 6, 2013
The theme of much of what I write, fiction as well as non-fiction, is the relationship between power and powerlessness and the endless, circular conflict they're engaged in. John Berger, that most wonderful writer, once wrote: Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one. There can never be a single story. There are only ways of seeing. So, when I tell a story, I tell it not as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another, but as a storyteller who wants to share her way of seeing. Though it might appear otherwise, my writing is not really about nations and histories, it's about power. About the paranoia and ruthlessness of power. About the physics of power. I believe that the accumulation of vast unfettered power by a state or a country, a corporation or an institution - or even an individual, a spouse, friend or sibling - regardless of ideology, results in excesses such as the ones I will recount here.
Brilliant, nuanced speech. Utterly fantastic.
Brilliant, nuanced speech. Utterly fantastic.
August 6, 2012
Well, I was already floored by Arundhati since The God of Small Things. No novel after that. Only non-fiction. Any which way, she is a terrible creature to miss.
In Come September , she sweeps it again. With the most serene of the iron, she'd form the sword, if she were a blacksmith. She talks about countries - majorly US - with power and how does that kind of power look like. She, first, gives everybody their share of sympathy, taking the majority of it away that- one might think belong to the people of US only- and then gradually lifts the curtain from the nuisance that some of the people at US have indulged in the recent past. Not only US, though.
But the thing that just seeps into you is the way all this is done. She writes brilliantly. And that is all to it. It is beautiful, soft, intelligent and effective. Many things are going to stay with me from this. Come what May.
In Come September , she sweeps it again. With the most serene of the iron, she'd form the sword, if she were a blacksmith. She talks about countries - majorly US - with power and how does that kind of power look like. She, first, gives everybody their share of sympathy, taking the majority of it away that- one might think belong to the people of US only- and then gradually lifts the curtain from the nuisance that some of the people at US have indulged in the recent past. Not only US, though.
But the thing that just seeps into you is the way all this is done. She writes brilliantly. And that is all to it. It is beautiful, soft, intelligent and effective. Many things are going to stay with me from this. Come what May.
November 26, 2024
My eyes feel much wider and my heart hurts more, yet my mind—sheltered as it has been for so long—is filled with hope to encounter such another mind as Arundhati Roy's. I read The God of Small Things for a British Literature class in my early college years and remember being impacted by it. Yet there is so much to it that I did not understand then and am only beginning to understand now. I found this piece among the other CDs at a secondhand store just a few weeks ago. This lecture, Come September, is a short appendix to The God of Small Things in many ways. It's a history lesson. It's a call to arms. And to lay down your arms. It's clarion. And complicated. And dangerous. Twenty years later, it's still dangerous. I think everyone should hear it.
January 9, 2008
Wow, my first reading of Roy's work. Intense, beautiful, heart-breaking, reality (unfortunately). If you can stand to find out the effect of the policies and politics that the U.S. government espouses around the world, read Roy.
March 15, 2008
This is one of her better speeches, probably the best, actually. Her other ones aren't really worth it. But this one kicks ass. Her voice is so pretty, but her words are fuckin' daggers. Daggers, yo.
October 11, 2025
Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.
November 11, 2008
You can feel the wellspring of people rising to their feet after Howard Zinn's introduction. Beautifully written. Beautifully spoken. Beautifully ass-kicking.
February 2, 2011
One of the most poignant, lucid and powerful speeches ever given.
November 24, 2012
Heard the Come September speech. breathtaking.
May 12, 2014
shaped my politics a great deal then and probably more than i give it credit for now
October 6, 2015
Arundhati Roy's 'Come September' is a scathing treatise on globalisation, nationalism and US hypocrisy — carried off with warmth and humour.
June 1, 2016
Indispensable - listen online.
Read
October 19, 2016Very well phrased and some insights too about the state of the world and America's place in it.
April 12, 2017
I listened to this essay and it is a wonderfully constructed piece of prose that captures so many world tragedies that happen around September in all corners of the world. Roy emphasizes the arrogance of Americans who only know of our September tragedy and them impact on our world and our reaction and our ego/ethno-centric views. She ends by saying that the American way of living is unsustainable because it does not acknowledge the rest of the world. It is a breathtaking essay which once again I should not have done in an audio book because it is too much to absorb in a 1 hour speech!
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews