Sonakshi Srivastava Awarded Prestigious 2024 ASLE Grant

Sonakshi Srivastava, Senior Writing Tutor at the Centre for Writing and Communication (CWC), has been awarded the 2024 ASLE Translation Grant for her work on the Hindi translation of Mera Pedh Banna (How I Became a Tree) by Sumana Roy. The ASLE Translation Grant not only recognises Sonakshi’s talent but also underscores the importance of her work in a world increasingly attuned to environmental issues. By translating How I Became a Tree into Hindi, she bridges linguistic and cultural barriers, ensuring this compelling narrative resonates with readers and scholars across India.

Her achievement stands as a testament to the remarkable talent within the Ashoka community and serves as a reminder of literature’s transformative power to connect, inspire, and inform.

About the ASLE Grant

The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) annually awards Subvention and Translation Grants to support innovative projects in ecocriticism and environmental humanities. These grants fund initiatives such as art installations, documentary film projects, digital humanities web projects, and the publication or translation of books and articles into English or from English into other languages.

Sonakshi’s project was among the five ASLE member projects that were awarded grants for 2024. This year’s Subvention Grants were awarded to:

• Kate Huber, Assistant Professor in the Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg University (Netherlands)
• Andrea Knutson, Associate Professor of English and Environmental Humanities, Oakland University (SE Michigan)
• Chijioke K. Onah, Ph.D. candidate in Literatures-in-English, Cornell University

The Translation Grants were awarded to:

• Sonakshi Srivastava, Senior Writing Tutor, Ashoka University
• Sean Manning, a translator from Spanish and French

Mera Pedh Banna (How I Became a Tree)

Sumana Roy’s How I Became a Tree is a compelling narrative that weaves together memoir, ecocriticism, indigenous philosophy, and science. Richly layered with intertextuality, the book organically weaves together fragments that blur the boundaries between human and nonhuman, prompting readers to extend their attention and care to trees and nature.

The book’s acclaimed success in English warranted a Hindi translation to make it accessible to a wider audience, particularly to scholars of Hindi ecocriticism and enthusiasts of Plant Humanities who might otherwise be unable to engage with the text due to the language barrier.

Sonakshi’s Literary Journey

An enthusiast of environmental humanities and discard studies, Sonakshi Srivastava is also the Translations Editor at the Usawa Literary Review and an educational arm assistant at Asymptote. She has also previously been a translation fellow in the South Asia Speaks programme.

Ashoka University is proud to celebrate this well-deserved honour and looks forward to seeing her project make a meaningful impact.