In this edition of Madison Book Beat, host Andrew Thomas speaks with JK Cheema on her new memoir, The Black Attache: Vignettes from a Life (2023, Calumet Editions).

Born in 1942 to a Sikh family in Lahore, Cheema witnessed history in the making as the subcontinent of India was being divided into the separate countries of India and Pakistan. After moving to the United States to earn Master’s degrees in Social Work and Public Health and a PhD Social Sciences, Cheema joined the United States Agency for International Development as a career Foreign Service Officer in 1991 where she worked until her retirement in 2012. During her career, she oversaw development programs in Burkina Faso, Kazakhstan, and Armenia, to name only a few locales. For retirement, Cheema settled in Madison, Wisconsin, where she founded “A Place to Be,” a salon for creative conversation and dialogue on Willy Street. As a collection of vignettes, The Black Attache offers glimpses and reflections on Cheema’s life experiences, foregrounding writing as a necessary aid to remembering the past and as an indispensable antidote to loneliness.