Author: Malashri Lal
Shormishtha Panja/Sumanyu Satpathy
Editor(s): Malashri Lal / Shormishtha Panja etc
Publisher: Macmillan
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 279
ISBN/UPC (if available): 1403924058
Description
Signifying the Self-Women and Literature is a collection of essays that explores the multifarious expressions of feminism in India. It is divided into five sections: women’s autobiography, writing by Dalit women of Bengal, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh; regional and global issues in women’s writing; same-sex love in women’s literature & film and the male gaze.
Dealing with texts as disparate as Tagore’s early twentieth century novel Choker Bali and Deepa Mehta’s contemporary film Fire, short stories by Assamese women writers, fiction by Mahasweta Devi, poetry by contemporary Bengali women poets, autobiographical writing by Ismat Chugtai and Bama-the collection is an important new interrogation of feminism and what it means to Indian writers. It will be of use to scholars and concerned readers alike.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PART I: WRITING LIVES
Domain, Domination and Domesticity: Nationalism, Gender and Women’s Writing in Colonial India
Rabati’s Sister: Early Oriya Women’s Writing
I-ing Ismat: Autobiographical Ismat Chughtai
PART II: DALIT PERSPECTIVES
Visionary cartography: Imaginary Maps by Mahasweta Devi
Songs and Stories of Dalit Women in Gujarat
Caste, Religion and Gender: Forms of Oppression in Telugu Dalit Women’s Poetry
Caste and Gender Interface in Tamil Dalit Discourse
PART III: LOCAL TO GLOBAL
Insurgency and Women Writers of Assam
Feminism and Contemporary Bengali Women’s Poetry
Multilocality: International Themes in Women’t Short Stories in English
PART IV: SAME-SEX LOVE
Lesbianism as Resistance: Sex, Gender and Identity Politics in Deepa Mehta’ Fire
At all times Near: Love Between Women in Two Medieval Indian Devotional Texts
PART V: THE MALE GAZE
Rabindranath Tagore’s Chokher Bali: The New Woman, Conjugality and The Heterogeneity of Home
Distorted Female Characters in the Early Fiction of Salman Rushdie
The Page and the Stage: The Representation of Women in Two Plays by Mahesh Dattani
Notes
Notes on the Contributors
Index