"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” - Atticus to Scout in 
To Kill A Mockingbird

Pooja is the editor of Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America (Seal Press, December 2004), an anthology of essays by women that explores through a child's lens the sometimes savage, sometimes innocent, and always complex, ways in which race shapes American lives and families.

Not since Scout relayed her innocent, yet stark, fictional awakening to racial injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird has the influence of race on the world of children been painted with such delicate clarity as in this collection. Including the perspectives of women of color, white women, and those caught in between, Under Her Skin traces themes related to double lives, fear, envy, lineage, and family, broadening our understanding of the often-painful subject of racial difference. Essays include the reflections of a woman whose girlhood is spent deciphering levels of oppression-from her Jewish family's internment in the camps to her own treatment of their African-American maids; a radical parallel forged between a half-Nigerian narrator and three generations of Finnish male immigrants whom she claims as kin; and the startling connection of a white fourteen year old to Emmett Till through the photograph found on his lifeless body. The first book of its kind to include the impact of racial awareness on women of all colors, Under Her Skin is a diverse exploration of how race shapes, and sometimes shatters, lives. It embodies a vital and unique contribution to the national discussion on race.