Our Bureau
Winter Park, Fl
Uma Menon, the young 20-year-old author and human rights advocate, has published her first children’s book. My Mother’s Tongues, was published by Candlewick Press in February 2024, and will be followed by Our Mothers’ Names in 2025. Her writing has been nominated thrice for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in over three dozen different publications, including The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and The Progressive. Her debut poetry book, Hands for Language, was published by Mawenzi House in 2020 and shortlisted for the 2019 International Erbacce-Prize.
Besides writing, Menon is an advocate for issues such as educational access, violence prevention, and immigration justice. She was a 2020-2021 Encore Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project, advocating for intergenerational social justice and representation. She also served as the 2019-2020 Youth Fellow for the International Human Rights Art Festival (IHRAF), where she collaborated with artists and activists across the world to advocate for human rights and started and edited IHRAF’s first Anthology of Youth Creativity on Human Rights & Social Justice.
The narrative revolves around Sumi, whose mother possesses the extraordinary ability to seamlessly switch between Malayalam and English, a linguistic prowess that Sumi marvels at and wonders if it might be a superpower. Through Sumi’s eyes, readers are taken on a delightful journey as the young protagonist recounts her mother’s migration from India and the evolution of her bilingual abilities, now intertwined like fine cloth.
Born in 2003 in Winter Park, Florida, where she attended Winter Park High school, Menon will graduate from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in Public and International Affairs in May 2024, and will subsequently attend law school.
