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Ahilan Arulanantham

Top Ten Books

Human rights lawyer Ahilan Arulanantham is the director of advocacy and legal director for the ACLU of Southern California. For his work protecting immigrants and minority communities from government oppression, he was recognized as a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient in 2016. His other awards include the 2010 Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award.

Below are Ahilan Arulanantham’s favorite books, available to purchase as a set or individually.
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10

Learning Politics from Sivaram: The Life and Death of a Revolutionary Tamil Journalist in Sri Lanka

Mark Whitaker

A compassionate book about a remarkable man (whom the author knew personally). Sivaram was a rigorous journalist, a sophisticated thinker on topics ranging from analytic philosophy to counterinsurgency theory, and a militant who fought for justice for the Tamil minority. Even if you know nothing about the Sri Lankan conflict, this book is worth reading just to understand how a person like Sivaram could have existed anywhere on Earth.

9

Impossible Subjects

Mae Ngai

This is the history of immigration law that has most influenced how I think about my work. Through a compelling mix of descriptive history and social analysis, it traces the origins of the concept of the illegal immigrant in our law and culture. Our nation’s immigration discourse would improve if people were less judgmental in their approach to the topic, and this history helped to set me in that direction.

8

Funny Boy

Shyam Selvadurai

A set of related vignettes telling the story of a boy who grows up as a gay Sri Lankan Tamil as the civil war starts in that country. In an understated but powerful way, it lays bare the intersectional systems of oppression operating in the main character’s life. This novel comes as close as any I have read to capturing the experiences of the Sri Lankan refugees I have known, and also speaks to the experience of displacement more broadly.
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Phoenix
From: $127.85
Please Kill Me

Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil
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Christopher Guest
$157.73
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America

Garry Wills
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Eric Ripert
From: $181.89
The Rosy Crucifixion: Sexus

Henry Miller
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Zac Posen
$339.94
The Stories of John Cheever

John Cheever
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Amber Tamblyn
$162.83
Autobiography of Red

Anne Carson
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Niki Caro
$168.90
1Q84

Haruki Murakami
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Invisible Man
$16.00
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Margherita Missoni Amos
From: $179.96
Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel García Márquez
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Jamie Lee Curtis
$143.82
Angle of Repose

Wallace Stegner