In 2021, activist, journalist, and author Anjali Enjeti published her new essay collection Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change, as well as her debut novelThe Parted Earth. In May that year, she discussed the former, and briefly the latter, with Kamil Ahsan, on Instagram Live.

The twenty essays of her debut collection tackle evangelical Christian extremism, white feminism at a national feminist organization, the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the South, voter suppression, gun violence and the gun sense movement, the whitewashing of southern literature, the 1982 racialized killing of Vincent Chin, social media’s role in political accountability, and the rise of nationalism worldwide.

Here, Enjeti discusses the bargain between evangelical Christianity and fascism in the United States, as well as her efforts as a grassroots organizer for They See Blue in Atlanta, Georgia.