Author: Deepti Priya Mehrotra
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 260
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143029703
Description
Home truths, the first book of its kind, focuses on single mothers and explores their lives, with their attendant dilemmas and challenges. Lucid and forthright, this seminal work draws attention to truths that usually lie buried in the rubble of daily life and conventional social sciences.
The author details a phenomenon that is fast becoming common. Deftly using a free-flowing narrative, she raises questions about marriage, children and relationships.It gives insight into silence and dissent, sexuality, motherhood, rights and responsibilities.
In the vast canvas that the author explores are the stories of seventeen single mothers –women rearing their children outside the normal structure of marriage –who may be divorced, widowed, separated or unmarried. Through their radically different personal histories, which are usually unheard, they challenge received knowledge and subvert entrenched patriarchies, and emerge as quintessential survivors. Being ordinary women with extraordinary courage, they challenge the dichotomy between home and world, women and men, emotion and rationality.
A must for those interested in gender issues, family and women’s studies, Home Truths is refreshingly unusual, with truths relevant to all of us-mothers or not, single or not, women or not.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
PART I: THE TERRAIN
PART II: THE STORIES
Nafisa: The Way Home
Sabina: Creating A Life
Babli: Razor’s Edge
Rajshree: My Girls Will Study
Parul: Love, and Other Complications
Priya: A Drop in the Ocean
Darshana: Poison in Her Veins
Rupali: Shelter -in Vrindavan?
Afsha: Enduring Loss
Mita: Beyond Why Me?
Sapna: I Am the Mother, I am the Father
Jamila: Marry Again? Will It Look Graceful?
Anna: Pragmatic Dreamer
Pratima: Rice, and Curry Too
Meena: A Dancer’s Life
Rani: Abiding strength
Eva: Adopting Alone
PART III: REFLECTIONS AND INSIGHTS
Silence, Speech and Dissent
Survival
Motherhood
Women-Headed Families
Sexuality
Gender
Rights and Alliances
Epilogue
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography