Author: Lalithambika Antherjanam
Translator(s): Gita Krishnakutty
Publisher: Stree
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 188
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8185604118
Description
Cast me out if you will. This is the challenge thrown out to the jury of namboodiri Brahmin patriarchs by the protagonist in Kuttassammatham (The Admission of Guilt) as she concludes a brilliant defence in which she shifts the focus of attention from her crime to the severe oppression of namboodiri women, especially widows.
The stories and the autobiographical fragments in this collection are engaged and critical accounts of life in namboodiri households. Set in the thirties, forties and fifties, these texts bring alive the world into which Lalithambika Antherjanam (1909-1985) was born. They record in vivid detail the physical incarceration, the mental agony and the terrorizing disciplinary holds of rituals of purity with an intimacy that can only come from one who writes from experience. Yet these stories are also accounts of individual women’s protests, and these range from the ones that shake the polity, to ones that subtly re-order the immediate world. Surprisingly little known outside Kerala, her work provides invaluable insight into the little documented social reform and nationalist movements of Kerala. The introduction places the author and her work in the cultural history of Kerala.
REVIEW
Simultaneously a work of great cultural interest to scholars, a courageous exploration of women's rights, and a work of poignant literary merit.
-Sara Suleri Goodyear, Professor of English, Yale University
Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword by Susie Tharu
Introduction by Gita Krishnankutty
PART I - STORIES
The Power of Fate
In the Moonlight
The Goddess of Revenge
Admission of Guilt
Within the Folds of Seclusion
Wooden Cradles
The Devi and Her Devotee
Life and Death
A Leaf in the Whirlwind
Come Back
Daughter of Humanity
The Boon
Fulfillment
Dhirendu Majumdar’s Mother
PART II - MEMOIR
Childhood Memories
A Writers Is Born
A Woman Writer’s Reply
Lessons from Experience
An Account of a Performance
Sesame Seeds, flowers, Water
Glossary
Bibliography