Kamala Harris’ mother Shyamala Gopalan was a breast cancer specialist
Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination today in Chicago and remembered her Indian-origin mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris before a rapturous crowd. Taking center stage on the final day of the Democratic Party convention, she said her mother was just 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an “unwavering dream to be the scientist who would cure breast cancer.”
“My mother Shyamala Harris had one of her own. I miss her every day – especially now. And I know she’s looking down tonight and smiling,” she told the gathering in Chicago.
“… It was mainly my mother who raised us. Before she could finally afford to buy a house, she rented a small apartment in the East Bay. In the Bay you either live in the hills or the plains. We lived in the flats – a beautiful working-class neighborhood with firefighters, nurses and construction workers, all proudly tending their lawns,” Ms Harris added.
Shyamala Gopalan Harris was a breast cancer specialist who emigrated from Tamil Nadu in 1960 to earn a doctorate in endocrinology from the University of California Berkeley.
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“When she finished school, she was going to return home for a traditional arranged marriage, but as fate would have it, she met my father, Donald Harris, a student from Jamaica. They fell in love and got married, and that act of self-determination made my sister, Maya, and me,” Ms. Harris said in her speech.
Kamala’s sister, Maya Harris, also spoke at the Chicago event, recalling how their mother moved to the US from India to pursue a better life and encouraged her daughters to be “the authors of our own stories.”
“Mom’s journey and the opportunity she wanted for Kamala and me – that’s a distinctly American story,” she said.
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She also said that if their late mother were here, she would say how proud she was of her daughter. Then, without missing a beat, she said, “That’s enough. You have work to do.”
Kamala Harris’ India connection
Kamala Harris, 59, was born in 1964 in Oakland, California to Afro-Jamaican Donald Harris, who came to the US to study economics, and Shyamala Gopalan.
Her parents met at the University of California, a center of student activism while participating in the civil rights movement.
Donald Harris is a professor emeritus at Stanford University, while Shyamala Gopalan died of cancer on February 11, 2009, a year before Kamala was elected attorney general of California.
After the couple divorced, Shyamala Gopalan raised Kamala and her younger sister Maya.
She took them on trips to India and often expressed affection or frustration in Tamil, Kamala wrote in her 2019 book, “The Truths We Hold.”
Kamala Harris has often spoken about her connection with India and the influence of her maternal grandfather, PV Gopalan.
PV Gopalan left Thulasendrapuram, a village in Tamil Nadu, decades ago, but residents say the family has maintained close ties and regularly donated to the temple’s upkeep.
Earlier today, Kamala Harris formally accepted the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nomination to run against her Republican rival Donald Trump. Ms. Harris emerged as the Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden, 81, was forced to drop out of the race for the White House last month. If successful, she will become the first female American president.
