Contemporary Women’s Writing in India

Edited by Varun Gulati and Maratt Mythili Anoop - Contributions by Mudita Agnihotri; Rachel Bari; Sutapa Biswas; Mukuta Borah; Paul Boyce; Pramod Kumar Das; Neetu Devi; Anju Jagpal; Narayan Jena; Shyamkiran Kaur; Shashikantha Koudur; Bhavesh Kumar; Anand Mahanand; Ambika G. Mallya; Gauri Mandapaka; Poonam Pahuja; Sarannya Pillai; Etienne Rassendren; Meenakshi Saini; Kaustavi Sarkar; Rajinder Kumar Sen; Ashutosh Singh; Anjali Verma and Shalini Vohra

The word doyenne signifies the various expressions of female, feminine, and feminist aspects of contemporary literature in India, through multiple theoretical frameworks. Contemporary Women’s Writing in India is an edited collection dealing with a range of these issues set in the society of Indian culture. Indian women’s literature is still a fertile ground for critical enquiry. There are three sections in the collection: Section I deals with specific instances in history, historical constructions, and representations of gender. Section II offers a varied spectrum of feminist critical discourse on contemporary Indian women’s writing, intersecting with the frameworks of post-colonial theory, deconstruction, perspectives on race and ethnicity, and eco-feminism. Section III touches upon the notion of the woman’s body and psyche through the varied perspectives of psychoanalysis, feminism, and post-feminism. By thoroughly exploring a range of issues, Contemporary Women’s Writing promises to take the reader by the hand, and journey through the unfamiliar but refreshing landscape of women’s literature in India.

Lexington Books

Pages: 180 • Trim: 6½ x 9⅛

978-1-4985-0210-8 • Hardback • December 2014 • $120.00 • (£92.00)

978-1-4985-0211-5 • eBook • December 2014 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Asian / Indic, Literary Criticism / Feminist, Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Social Science / World / Asia

Contemporary Women’s Writing in India

Hardback

eBook

Summary

The word doyenne signifies the various expressions of female, feminine, and feminist aspects of contemporary literature in India, through multiple theoretical frameworks. Contemporary Women’s Writing in India is an edited collection dealing with a range of these issues set in the society of Indian culture. Indian women’s literature is still a fertile ground for critical enquiry. There are three sections in the collection: Section I deals with specific instances in history, historical constructions, and representations of gender. Section II offers a varied spectrum of feminist critical discourse on contemporary Indian women’s writing, intersecting with the frameworks of post-colonial theory, deconstruction, perspectives on race and ethnicity, and eco-feminism. Section III touches upon the notion of the woman’s body and psyche through the varied perspectives of psychoanalysis, feminism, and post-feminism. By thoroughly exploring a range of issues, Contemporary Women’s Writing promises to take the reader by the hand, and journey through the unfamiliar but refreshing landscape of women’s literature in India.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 180 • Trim: 6½ x 9⅛

978-1-4985-0210-8 • Hardback • December 2014 • $120.00 • (£92.00)

978-1-4985-0211-5 • eBook • December 2014 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Asian / Indic, Literary Criticism / Feminist, Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Social Science / World / Asia

Author

Mythili Anoop teaches at Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management University.

Varun Gulati has taught English literature and language for ten years in colleges and universities across India.

Table of Contents

Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Varun Gulati and Mythili Anoop
Section I
Ch 01 Herstory: Nayantara Sahgal’s Prison and Chocolate
Rachel Bari
Ch 02 Producing Nation: Gender and the Idea of India
Etienne Rassendren
Ch 03 Where is ‘home’? A Study of Taslima Nasreen’s Homecoming and Asif Currombhoy’s The Refugee
Anju Jagpal
Ch 04 Scar(r)ed Women: Reading Fictional Representations of Women Afflicted by Insurgent Conflict
Mukuta Borah
Ch 05 Caught in the Crossfire of History: Social Reality of Post-colonial India in Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day
Pramod Kumar Das and Narayan Jena
Section II
Ch 06 Assertion of ‘Self’: A Feminist Discourse in Manju Kapur’s
Difficult Daughters and A Married Woman
Sutapa Biswas
Ch 07 Deconstructing the Stereotypes: A study of Jhuma Lahiri’s “Unaccustomed Earth” and Ismat Chugtai’s “The Quilt”
Gauri Mandapaka
Ch08 The Alienated Self: Ashima in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake
Shyamkiran Kaur, Rajinder K. Sen, and Poonam Pahuja
Ch 09 Between Silence and Scream: A Study of Violence against Women in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out
Bhavesh Kumar and Anand Mahanand
Ch 10 Negotiating with Pluralities: Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in the Writings of Shani Mootoo
Neetu Devi and Ashutosh Singh
Ch 11 Identity Crises in Namita Gokhle’s Paro: Dreams of Passion
Shalini Vohra, Mudita Agnihotri, and Meenakshi Sain
Section III
Ch 12 Psychoanalytical Study of the Selective Characters of Ladies Coupe
Anjali Verma, Prerna Jatav
Ch 13 Mahari Then and Now: Queering Performativity in Odissi
Kaustavi Sarkar
Ch 14 Sarah Aboobackar’s Sahana: A Saga of Mute Body
Ambika G. Mallya and Shashikantha Koudur
Ch 15 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions: An Écriture Féminine
Sarannya V Pillai
Index
About the Contributors

Reviews

Contemporary Indian Women’s Writing surveys numerous English and non- English works by Indian women writers from fresh comparative perspectives, and in light of largely feminist approaches that, in some cases, also admirably challenge Western feminist habits of mind. To those unfamiliar with Indian women’s literature, this collection will serve as a helpful introduction to canonical authors, and to regions such as Orissa and Bengal that generally get short shrift in literary surveys.
— Contemporary Women's Writing

Contemporary Women’s Writing in India

Contemporary Women’s Writing in India

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