Achamma C. Chandersekaran has been active in many areas. She was a teacher in India and even to this day, after 40 years, when she goes back to her village, her former students greet their “Achamma Teacher” with respect and affection.
She came to the United States with a full scholarship to do her undergraduate studies. After getting her B.A. in English from Barat College, Lake Forest, Illinois in 1966 she got a Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Illinois. She did some course work towards a Ph. D. in Linguistics, but did not complete it. Later she went back to college and got an MBA in Finance from Drexel University in 1977.
Professionally, she worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce in many capacities for 24 years. As an International Trade Specialist for Education and Training Services, she traveled to many countries in the Middle East, the Far East, South America and South Africa proudly representing the Department to market the education and training services available in the United States as one of the best anywhere in the world.
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Achamma with late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi |
Achamma with former President, K.R. Narayan |
Achamma with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh |
Mrs. Chandersekaran has been active in the Indian American and Asian American communities to impress up on the members of the importance of political involvement in influencing policy decisions by elected officials and of working together, not as spectators, but as participant in the political process. As National President of the Indian American Forum for Political Education (Forum) (Link) and National Chair of the Asian American Voters Coalition (AAVC), she made both organizations stronger by establishing several State Chapters of the Forum and by successfully inviting the second-generation ethnic organizations to become members of AAVC. While President of the Forum, she took the initiative and laid the groundwork to establish a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi in Washington, D.C.
Mrs. Chandersekaran was co-translator, along with Dr. R.E. Asher, of three novellas by the late Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, for the UNESCO Program of Representative Works. The book published under the title "Me Grandad 'Ad an Elephant!" by the Edinburgh University Press in 1980 and by Penguin, India in 1995, was well received in India and elsewhere.It includes two more stories "Pathuma’s Goat" and "Childhood Friend" along with the title story. They are described as ‘stories of Muslim life in South India’.
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Achamma with President Bill Clinton |
Achamma with the late President Ronald Reagan |
Achamma with President Bush Senior |
Daughters of Kerala is Mrs. Chandersekaran’s first solo translation project.
A paper on Women’s Contribution to Malayalam Literature was presented at the Second World Malayalam Conference held in Washington DC in 1985. It discussed the contributions of three women writers–Lalithambika Antharjanam, Mary John Thottam and Madhavikutty. The authors were chosen for their different styles and themes.
