Episode 38: Sailaja Joshi Talks Mango and Marigold Press
CEO & Founder of Mango and Marigold Press (formally Bharat Babies) Sailaja Joshi sits down and chats with me about building her company literally starting from scratch.
Joshi founded Mango and Marigold Press in 2014, a publishing company that aims to fill bookshelves across America with age-appropriate, culturally sensitive and visually vibrant books that tell tales of brown kids growing up in diasporic communities. After becoming pregnant with her first child, Joshi realized that there were no books out there targeting kids in the South Asian diaspora. So she decided to do something about it.
She discusses how she started off her journey by Googling "How to write a children's book", why she never felt quite at home in the US, and the details of her thesis in college focusing on beauty and race. We talk about her tattoos, what it was like seeing our daughters react to a woman of color in the White House, and why she views her publishing company as a form of protest.
@mangoandmarigoldpress www.mangoandmarigoldpress.com