Writing Gender Writing Self Memory, Memoir and Autobiography (Aparna Lanjewar Bose

WRITING GENDER WRITING SELF
Life Writings/Narratives and studies in gender have been posing critical

challenges to fetishizing the manner of canon formations and
curriculum propriety. This book engages with these and other
challenges turning our customary gaze towards women especially
marginal, enabling us to interrogate the established pedagogical
practices that accentuates the continuing denial of their agency.
Reproduction of the cultural modes of narrativization based on
memory and experience becomes a mode of reclaiming the agency.
These challenge the homogenising singularity of communitarian
notions besides dominant gender constructs using visual, textual,
popular, historical, cultural and gender modes enabling one to rethink
our received theoretical frameworks.
This edited volume brings together 21 essays on life writings
produced by both well-established and emerging writers in the ﬁeld
of literature written by scholars from countries like India, Pakistan,
China, USA, Iran, Yemen and Australia, to name just a few. Many of
the essays in this book focus on how the progress of the self is often
impeded by the society it ﬁnds itself in. With an enlightening foreword
by Dr. E.V. Ramakrishnan and a detailed, critical introduction by
Aparna Lanjewar Bose, this anthology is useful for all those who wish
to learn more about this genre of writing.
Aparna Lanjewar Bose is a writer, poet, critic and translator. She is

the author of 2 volumes of poetry In the Days of Cages and Kuch Yu
Bhi. She has published a collection of poetry translations from Marathi
to English titled Red Slogans on the Green Grass and has edited a
collection of Marathi poems and short stories titled Wadal Uthnar
Aahey and Pakshin Ani Chakravyuh respectively.
Professionally, she has taught at University of Nagpur and at the
Post Graduate teaching Department of English, University of Mumbai
for more than one and a half decade. She currently teaches at The
English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.
WRITING GENDER WRITING SELF
Memory, Memoir and Autobiography
Edited and Introduced by
A PA R N A L A N J EWA R B O S E
MANOHAR
First published 2020
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To all those who dare to incision and
peel layers of their skin to bleed
so that all the rest
may heal. . . .
Contents
Foreword 11
Acknowledgements 23
Introduction 25
1. (Re)Positioning the ‘Other’: Perspectives on

Marathi Dalit and Black Women Writings
APARNA LANJEWAR BOSE 49
2. What the Text Does not Say: Significant Absence
and the Self in Arathi Menon’s Leaving Home
with Half a Fridge
GOURI KAPOOR 87
3. Retracing the Discourse of Referential Truth in Claude
Cahun and Alison Bechdel’s Visual Narratives
NILAKSHI GOSWAMI 101
4. Humorous Women’s Memoirs in the Entertainment
Industry
DEEPSHIKHA MINZ 121
5. A Case for Homosexuality: Reading Anchee
Min’s Red Azalea as a Political Autobiography
NANDINI PRADEEP J. 133
6. Self, Time and Death as Autobiographical Elements
in Performance Art
SANDHYA DEEPTHI 141
7. Intersecting Terrains of Personal and Politics:
An Arab Feminist Reading of Fadwa Tuqan’s
A Mountainous Journey
BOOPATHI PALANISAMY 153
8 Contents
8 . Subverting Literary Space: From [His]stories
to [Her]story in Writings of Kamala Das,
Sally Morgan and Melba Pattillo Beals
SHYAMA SAJEEV 165
9 . Daughter of the East and the Perils of
(Self )Idealization
VINITA CHATURVEDI 177
10. Identity and Self-Representation in Taslima
Nasreen’s My Girlhood
ARCHANA GUPTA 189
11. Sexuality, Self and Body: Reading Michèle
Roberts’ Memoir Paper Houses
BALJEET KAUR 203
12. Vocalizing the Voiceless: Struggle for a Personal
Voice in Maxine Hong Kingston’s TheWoman
Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
MUNIRA T. 215
13. Lifting ‘the Quilt’: Ismat Chughtai’s A Life in
Words and the Subversion of the Normative
SASWATA KUSARI 229
14. Indian Nationalism and Hindu Widowhood:
Contesting Margins in Indira Goswami’s
Adha Lekha Dastabej
NILAKSHI GOSWAMI 241
15. Veiled Voices: Semi-autobiographies of Yemeni
Writers Nadia al-Kawkabani and Shatha al-Khateeb
HATEM MOHAMMED HATEM AL-SHAMEA 257
16. Breaking the Silence: Tehmina Durrani’s My
Feudal Lord
RUBINA IQBAL 265
17. Re-Reading Azar Nafisi’s memoir Things I’ve
Been Silent About
SHAISTA MANSOOR 277
Contents 9
18. Rational Femininity and the Mode of Hijra
Autobiographies: The Affects of Being a
Gendered Object
NANDINI PRADEEP J. 287
19. Marginalized Sexual Identity: A Flash Point of
Body/Desire/Politics
DEEPINDERJEET RANDHAWA 301
20. Self narratives of working Class women: Voices
from the Global South
SHOMA SEN 311
21. Of Being Ants amongst Elephants: The Anecdotes
and the Antidotes
APARNA LANJEWAR BOSE 321
List of Contributors 353
Index 357
Foreword
Negotiating the Radical Otherness of
the New Subject: The Political Turn
in Autobiography
Autobiography as a genre has been grudgingly given a place in the

pantheon of literature only recently though it has existed in various
forms in many languages from the medieval period. It is still not
accorded the recognition it deserves, as it is considered a minor
form, not imaginative enough to be considered ‘literary’ and not
factual enough to qualify as ‘history’. However, after the advent of
theory in the last decades of the twentieth century, the perception
of autobiography as a ‘lower’ form of literature has undergone a
change. Essentially, this shift has meant a movement from ‘auto’
(self ) to ‘bio’ (life) and ‘graphy’ (writing). The act of narration shapes
the self. While earlier theories of autobiography saw the genre as ‘a
shaping of the past’ (Pascal 1960: 9), more recent theories view it
as a shaping of the self itself. The emphasis on ‘graphy’ implies a
concern with the act of narration. Narration is not a transparent act
of representation as it is mediated by the location of the subject.
Does the self exist before it is narrated? The more recent theoretical
positions imply that the narrative strategies chosen determine the
shape of the relationship between the self and society. Since the
editor of this volume, Aparna Lanjewar Bose, has dwelt in detail
on the recent developments in theories of autobiography exhaus
tively in her introduction, I will confine myself to placing the
volume in a larger perspective. She makes it clear that not every
author of autobiography has the same access to language, or the
field of the literary. One of the modern classics in the genre of
autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya
Angelou shows the complex nature of the self that is mediated by
12 Foreword
questions of race, gender and region/nation that form a complex
web of power relations. It is not a triumphal narrative documenting
the journey towards the self ’s achievements. As the autobiogra
phies analysed in this volume of critical studies demonstrate, the
hegemonic nature of socio-political and cultural forces render the
speaking subject from the margins invisible. Their works cannot
but be political and in that sense, we are dealing with the political
turn in the history of autobiography.
As in other genres, the canonical tradition in autobiography is
male-centred and Euro-centric. We seldom speak of Sapho’s poems
or Baburnama (fifteenth century) in any discussion of the develop
ment of autobiography. It is true that St. Augustine’s Confessions,
written in Latin around AD 400, defined some of the enduring
features of the genre: a concern with interior self, search for an
anchoring belief that can stand the test of time, reflection on one’s
sinful past, assertion of the reality of evil and a striking awareness
of temporality as a template of existence which is always in flux.
However, it was with the advent of Enlightenment modernity that
the autobiographical mode came into its own. There was an attempt
to integrate the personal mode of knowing the world with an ethical
vision of life, thereby transforming the act of self-narration into a
project of self-creation. During the late eighteenth and early nine
teenth century several autobiographies which subsequently became
classics appeared: among them were the works of Benjamin Franklin
(written between 1771 and 1790), Rousseau (1782), Edward
Gibbon (1791) and Goethe (1831). By the time Rousseau wrote
his The Confessions (1782), the Romantic ideal of an authentic self
had become a driving force behind the writing of autobiography.
He proclaims his ‘uniqueness’ in the very opening sentence of his
autobiography: ‘I am not made like any of those I have seen; I
venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in
existence. If I am not better, at least I am different’ (Rousseau
1953:1). He lays bare his sexual indulgences with remarkable
objectivity. His attempts to understand himself, leads him to a
moment of self-recognition where he confesses to the singularity
of his own self. He cannot be measured against anyone but him
self. Rousseau also emphasizes the elusive nature of his own true
Foreword 13
self. Roy Pascal rightly observes that ‘his (Rousseau’s) self could be
grasped only in a historical narrative’ (Pascal 1960: 41). It is with
Rousseau that autobiography undergoes a major change. The quest
for authentic inner self is a theme that runs through many genres
from late eighteenth century onwards. An autobiographical poem
like The Prelude (1850) is the product of the moment when the
autobiographic tradition blends with the Romantic impulse. Here
it is important to emphasize that autobiographical mode seeps
into many genres from the lyric to drama, and from travelogue to
the novel.
In India, the encounter with the colonial modernity resulted in
a clash of sensibilities. The social reformist movement took many
shapes across the country, necessitating an evaluation of tradition
from the perspective of the secular-modern values. The first auto
biography in Malayalam was written by a member of the Cochin
(now known as Kochi) royal family, Prince Ramavarma, who got
converted himself into Christianity and became Jacob Ramavarma.
It was published by Basel Mission Press, Tellicherry in 1874.
The question of self-conversion calls for an explanation as the
new self looks critically at the old self. A similar moment of self-
transformation runs through many of the Indian autobiographies
published in the late nineteenth century. My Story: The Autobiography
of a Hindu Widow by Parvatibai Athvale (1870-1955) is a travelogue
in the autobiographical mode, as the journey in the outer world
also becomes a voyage into one’s own self. It was translated into
English in 1930 by Justin E. Abbot. The emergence of an indi
vidual self which recognizes the oppressed state of Indian women
from her first hand experiences as a widow was what made the
narrative possible. Pandita Ramabai’s conversion to Christianity is
an example of the strong desire to reinvent oneself that ran through
this turbulent period of social reforms. A similar concern with the
emerging individual self can be seen in Binodini Dasi’s My Story
and My Life as an Actress where her life as an actress, perceived as
disreputable, gives her a public persona that could challenge the
social stereotypes. Autobiography becomes a confluence of several
narratives at its moment of inception in India: social reforms, gender
stereotypes, caste oppression, and public role of women. It was
14 Foreword
woman’s autobiography that became the medium of articulating a
feminist consciousness, though they spoke the language of reforms.
Strangely, autobiography which was concerned with the private
self increasingly became in India a mode of claiming public space
and the lines between the private and the public became increas
ingly blurred. The self in the making was as much a site of
the political currents in the public sphere as the psychological
conflicts in the private domain.
This is further underlined by what is perhaps the most cel
ebrated Indian autobiography of the twentieth century, namely
The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927) by Mahatma Gandhi.
Gandhi, for all his traditionalism, was a product of Enlighten
ment modernity and the imprint of Western concerns with the
authentic self that runs through writers like Rousseau can be de
tected in his narrative. He puts himself on trial against a scale of
values which are considered universal and timeless. He feels that
not everything can be communicated through the medium of the
autobiography. He comments: ‘there are some things which are
known only to oneself and one’s Maker. These are clearly incom
municable’ (Gandhi 1993: xxvii). The idea of ‘experimentation’ is
modern and Gandhi, as A.D. Mishra suggests, ‘experimented with
food, apparel, medicine, personal hygiene, social customs, language,
public sanitation and sex’ (Mishra 2012:93). The symbolism of
his deeds was carefully crafted to create a narrative of an Indian self
that can withstand the assaults of imperialism. In that sense, his
autobiography cuts across both private and public worlds. Auto
biography becomes the mode of imagining not merely a private
self, but a larger national discourse. In the subsequent history
of autobiography in India, this dimension of autobiographical
narrative comes into play repeatedly. Whenever there is a major
phase of transition in Indian sensibility, the way it sees the world
and feels it, it is autobiography that heralds and accelerates it and
gives it content and direction. In the period between the 1960s
and the present, autobiography has become the cultural medium
that brings together personal affirmation, social dissent and political
subversion.
What was essentially a European genre came to be rewritten in
Foreword 15
the 1960s under the combined influence of Afro-American and
Feminist thought. In my essay on ‘Self and Society: the Dalit Sub
ject and the Discourse of Autobiography’ I have traced these
changes in detail (Ramakrishnan 2013: 64-7). For the present I
will briefly comment on the Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), a
book which redefined the mode and medium in the 1960s.
Malcolm X had become a celebrity speaker as a leader of the
Nation of Islam founded by Elijah Muhammad by the 1950s. He
had overcome a traumatized childhood after his father got lynched
and his mother lost her mental balance. He shows how the state
social agency destroyed the family by scattering them. His mother
remained in the state mental hospital for the next twenty six years.
Malcolm was good at studies, but his English teacher who recog
nized his talent advised him to be a carpenter when he expressed a
desire to be a lawyer. That moment tinged by racist stereotypes
marks the beginning of his journey towards a degenerate life of
crime and drugs. He drifts into a haze of drug-induced stupor,
with no sense of who he was or where he was going. He comments,
‘In the ghettoes the white man has built for us, he had forced us
not to aspire to greater things, but to view everyday living as sur
vival, and in that kind of community, survival is what is respected’
(Malcolm X 1995: 177). He was a hustler, a robber and a dreaded
criminal called ‘Detroit Red’. Finally, he lands in jail and it was
there that he began transforming himself by educating himself.
He learnt about the Nation of Islam from his brother and joined
it. Norfolk Prison Colony’s library became his university. He com
pared his self-transformation to that of St. Paul and said: ‘the truth
can be quickly received, or received at all, only by the sinner who
knows and admits that he is guilty of having sinned much. Stated
another way: only guilt admitted accepts truth’ (257). It was the
enormity of his previous life’s guilt that prepared him to accept
the truth. As an orator, he had such a reputation at the peak of his
career as a leader of the Nation of Islam that (it was said) he could
start or stop a riot with his speech. This command of language was
something he cultivated with painstaking study. His disagreement
with Elijah Muhammad, the subsequent ex-communication from
the Nation of Islam, and the violent death that followed, are part
16 Foreword
of the modern American history. What makes this autobiography
remarkable is its spontaneous energy and passionate commitment
to the black cause. While documenting the black lives at their
darkest, he is aware that racism is a political problem that can be
solved through black mobilization of power alone. The political
turn in this autobiography can be traced to the turbulence of the
1960s when Afro-American movement, civil rights movement,
feminist movement, students protest, counter-culture, etc., col
lectively authored a vocabulary of resistance to the international
white-male centred militarist capitalist hegemony. He argued that
Blacks constituted a separate nation and their problem was not
civil rights but human rights. The vision of Malcolm X of the
Black way of life, Black music, Black culture raises the autobiography
to a visionary document about the emancipation of the Black com
munity.
Most of theoretical deviations on autobiography come in the
period after the Seventies. The insights provided by a long array of
writers from Derrida to Judith Butler animate the studies that are
presented here. Their theoretical interventions were necessitated
by the negation of the basic tenets of autobiography as a European
genre that explored the dark recesses of the self. You cannot read
Malcolm X without coming to terms with the larger issue of racist
violence that drives the American dream. It took a series of auto
biographical works by authors such as Richard Wright, Ralph
Ellison (the novel, Invisible Man is largely autobiographical), James
Baldwin, Ntozake Shange, Maya Angelou and Alice Walker and
many others to realize the potential of the black poetics in the
autobiographical mode inaugurated by Malcolm X. This shift in
the sensibility that defines the autobiographical project has a bearing
on the large number of autobiographical works discussed in this
volume of essays. They raise three related questions that need to be
answered. Why do communities or sections of society far removed
from the mainstream increasingly use autobiography as their mode
of expression in our times? How do we read autobiographies which
do not conform to the classical mode of the genre? Lastly what
constitutes the significance of the present emergence of autobio
graphy as a major literary genre? In a way, they are interrelated
Foreword 17
questions. We will try to answer these questions with some ex

amples from contemporary autobiographies from India.
Kamala Das’s Ente Katha (My Story, 1974) is a modern classic in
Indian autobiography. It appeared in Malayalam in book form
in 1974 before which it was serialized in a prominent literary
weekly. The English version appeared in 1976 and it differs from
the Malayalam version in many ways. The Malayalam version
has 27 chapters while the English version has 50 chapters. P.P.
Raveendran comments: ‘In moving from Malayalam to English,
the autobiography, however, has become more linear and convent
ional with the chapters now rearranged to make a more chrono
logical life story’ (Raveendran 2017: 85). The reception of the
book in Malayalam points to the fault-lines that marked the literary
field of Malayalam which were not visible earlier. The patriarchal
nature of the Malayalam literary establishment was grasped by
women writers much earlier, but now Kamala Das (who wrote in
Malayalam under the pen name ‘Madhavikutty’) laid it bare by
provoking critics to comment on her work. Though it was received in
the larger context of modernism, Kamala Das had serious differences
with its aesthetic and literary sensibility (Devika 2013: 123-6). She
questioned the prevailing notions of womanhood by highlighting
desire as a site of woman’s self-creation and self-transformation.
The body as the seat of desire was not profane but a valuable me
dium of constructing the self. She used the discourse of Radha and
Krishna to bring in a subliminal/subversive layer of spirituality in
the discourse of intimacy and desire. By straying into forbidden
realms of pleasure, she rejected stereotypes on which the discourse
of romantic love and the idea of domestic woman were based.
Devika rightly argues that (in the context of Kamala Das’s autobio
graphy) ‘we must raise the question of a female modernism afresh
from a feminist perspective, whether women authors in Malyalam
have created “a female or feminist modernism” and how it differs
from the male version’ (131-2).
Earlier we had noted that the women writers of the late nine
teenth century and early twentieth century took care to cloak their
feminist consciousness in reformist discourse. In Kamala Das this
pact with the male-centred discourse is finally laid to rest. In
18 Foreword
effect, it demonstrates that the man-woman relationship has be
come patron-client relation. Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha had noted
how woman becomes idealized in the nationalist discourse from
the late nineteenth century onwards. The subjectivity of women
gets erased from literary works from this time onwards (Tharu and
Lalita 1991: 1-39). What happened in the Sixties was a breaching
of the fraudulent nature of the nationalist consensus. This is the
time firmly entrenched stereotypes were subverted by Dalit writers,
feminist writers and political activists belonging to a large spectrum
of beliefs. The autobiographies of the subsequent period need to
be read between the lines, and also historically. A writer such as
Kamala Das transcends the limits set by patriarchal expectations,
through transgression. This is also seen in Dalit autobiographies
when they invalidate the prescriptive codes that constitute certain
subjectivities as legitimate. Authors like Laxman Mane, Sharan
Kumar Limbale firmly set the Dalit body in the locus of the social
history of caste differences. Reading the autobiographies discussed
in the present volume demands historical awareness regarding the
directions taken by nation, race, language, caste, region, religion,
sexuality, etc. They are implicated in several discourses and the
voice from the margins always has a critical relation with the domi
nant, hegemonic narratives that circulate in the domain of culture
and politics. This is particularly true when the autobiographical
narratives represent entire minority communities who are considered
outside the legitimate political frame. We recognize that the testi
monials by Rigoberta Manchu or Domitila, both political activists
who have been arrested and tortured by their respective govern
ments have a sense of urgency and immediacy that is visible in
their oral narratives. They not only question official truths but
problematize the very nature of the truth claims in modern times.
Some of these elements are visible in Dalit or Queer/Gay or Trans-
gender autobiographies as well. Above all, they call into question
the very idea of the literary we have constructed over the centuries
using the poetics of the hegemonic ideologies including those which
have been celebrated as ‘emancipatory’. This is why ‘reading’ these
autobiographies demand not only historical awareness but a certain
willingness to question the prevailing notions of the literary. We
Foreword 19
need to remember that ‘literature’ is a category that is implicated
in the institutional space regulated by official authorities and elit
ist classes.
The significance of the emergence of autobiography as a signifi
cant form in contemporary culture should not be lost on us. The
publication of important texts from several countries and societies
are signs of a shift in the order of things. While examining the
recent autobiographies published in Malayalam in my book, Anu
bhavangale Aarkkanu Peti? (Who is Afraid of Experience?, 2012), I
noted that in the autobiographies by C.K. Janu, a tribal activist,
Sister Jesme, a nun who left the church, Pokkudan, an environ
mental activist who was a communist party worker, etc., the
critique was directed against the political parties and the church
which wielded considerable power across all fields of life in Kerala.
They wrote their works by endangering themselves. In Malayalam
anubhavam (experience) has become a new literary genre. There
has been a steady stream of autobiographical writings from sections
of society previously excluded from literacy and literature in the
last three decades. This shows how those voices repressed earlier
are emerging into the clear light of day through first-person singu
lar narratives. It is a medium that now threatens the stability of
conventional systems of thought. The moment of the new autobio
graphy marks the return of the repressed into the open. Even from
Europe one comes across texts like Voices from Chernobyl (2013) by
Ingrid Storholmen which stands testimony to one of the worst
nuclear disasters of our times. It combines autobiography with
reportage and novelistic narrative but essentially it communicates
anubhavam (experience) to a world which has lost its capacity to
feel. The magnitude of the devastation of the kind we cannot
imagine can only be conveyed by the most factual, unadorned
prose which becomes the unmediated voice of those voiceless who
perished in the tragedy.
The present volume is a timely reminder of the range and reach
of the new autobiography across cultures and languages. It presents
insightful discussions on a variety of themes and issues that concern
the recent political turn in autobiography. It takes up the alter
native histories presented by Dalit and Afro-American autobiogra
20 Foreword
phy, elaborates on the contribution of Indian woman writers such
as Kamala Das, Ismat Chughtai and Indira Goswami, highlights
the struggles of little known women artists in the fields of enter
tainment and performance, and examines the visual narratives of
women constructing their selves through innovative use of comics
and photographs. Autobiographies by writers from the transgender
community, working class women, migrants and refugees alert us
to the role of ideologies in the silencing of women. The present
volume also brings together women writers from Bangladesh,
Yemen, Pakistan, Palestine and China, thus providing a trans-Asian
frame of comparison for the study of the new autobiography. I am
convinced that this volume will be a valuable addition from India
to the growing critical scholarship on autobiography.
REFERENCES
Angelou, Maya, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam Books,
1969.
Athavale, Parvatibai, My Story: The Autobiography of a Hindu Widow, tr. Justin
Abbot, New York: G.P. Putnam’s, 1930.
Augustine, St., The Confession of St. Augustine, tr. Sir Tobie Mathew, London:
Fontana Books, 1923.
Das, Kamala, My Story, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1976.
Devika, J., Womanwriting = Manreading, Delhi: Penguin, 2013.
Gandhi, Mohandas K., An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with
Truth, Boston: Beacon Press, 1927.
Mishra, Anil Dutta, Reading Gandhi, New Delhi: Pearson, 2012.
Pascal, Roy, 1960, Design and Truth in Autobiography, London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1960.
Peyre, Henry, 1963, Literature and Sincerity, New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1963.
Ramakrishnan, E.V., Locating Indian Literature: Texts, Traditions, Translations,
Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2011.
——, Anubhavangale Aarkkanu Peti? (Who is Afraid of Experience), Kottayan:
D.C. Books, 2012.
Raveendran, P.P., Kamala Das (Makers of Indian Literature), New Delhi: Sahitya
Akademi, 2017.
Foreword 21
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Confessions, tr. J.M.Cohen, Penguin Books,
London, 1953.
Storholmen, Ingrid. Voices from Chernobyl, translated from the Norwegian by
Marietta Taralrud Maddrell, New York: Haper Perennial, 2009.
Tharu, Susie and K. Lalita, Women Writing in India, vols. I and II, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1991.
E.V. RAMAKRISHNAN
Acknowledgements
How do I not acknowledge. . . ?

Prof. E.V. Ramakrishnan to whom I owe countless gratitude,
for his unflinching support and cooperation.
Friends, critics and scholars who have contributed through their
areas of expertise and interests.
All my research scholars from the English and Foreign Languages
University, who have been part of this project right from its incep
tion to contribution.
Some, who with me, sat through the strenuous and rigorous
process of scrupulous selection & scrutiny at unthinkable hours.
Sabitha Lakhmanan for saying it through art.
My boy Ayaan for unconditional mobility and learning to cope
up with my incorrigible work obsessions.
Finally, Siddharth and Mr. Ramesh Jain of Manohar Publishers
& Distributors for taking a chance.
APARNA LANJEWAR BOSE
Introduction
Writing (Them)Selves: Women’s
Autobiographies around the World
A PA R N A L A N J E WA R B O S E
Autobiography has been at the centre of debates, which, drawing

mainly on French theories of psychoanalysis, post-structuralism
and feminism, have interrogated the self-evident nature of the subject
and knowledge. On the one hand, autobiography is perceived to
be as ineffable and irreducible as the self it figures. James Olney
wrote ‘Definition of autobiography as a literary genre seems to me
virtually impossible’ (1972: 38). On the other hand, critics like,
Philppe Lejeune and Georges Gusdorf believed that the form must
provide both ‘conditions and limits’ if it is to be containable and
identifiable as an authoritative form of ‘truth-telling’ which is clearly
distinguishable from fiction.1 According to Lejeune, the author of
an autobiography implicitly declares that he is the person he says
he is and that the author and the protagonist are the same (202);
for Roy Pascal, an early critic of the genre, autobiography depends
on ‘the seriousness of the author, the seriousness of his personality
and his intention in writing’ (60). For Karl Weintraub, an autobio
graphy can only be understood if the ‘place’ the authors them
selves occupy in relation to their lives can be reconstructed by the
reader. According to Jacques Derrida, it is in the very notion of a
genre to constitute itself in terms of ‘norms and interdictions’:
‘Thus, as soon as genre announces itself, one must respect a norm,
one must not cross a line of demarcation, one must not risk impurity,
anomaly or monstrosity’ (1980: 203-4). However, it is also part
of Derrida’s argument that every time a text designates itself as
belonging to a genre—calls itself an autobiography, for instance—
26 Aparna Lanjewar Bose
it does so through a statement which is not itself autobiographical.
Hence a title which refers to a text as an ‘autobiography’ does not
itself belong to the genre of autobiography. This may seem a rather
pedantic point, but it leads Derrida to conclude that there is always
‘an inclusion and exclusion with regard to genre in general’.2
Feminist critics writing about autobiography in the 1980s en
countered an obvious gap: the absence of women’s texts from an
accepted canon of autobiographical writing, a canon which placed
the ‘confessional’ texts of Saint Augustine and Rousseau at its centre.
As with other genres, it was not that women did not produce
autobiographical writing but that it was deemed to be unimportant,
crude, or illegitimate, failing to live up to the necessary test of
‘great writing’. Therefore, feminist critics sought validation for
women’s experience in a not dissimilar way, by using autobiographi
cal texts as reference for life. It is also important to recognize here
the part played by autobiography in changing or reconfiguring
the theoretical issues. The autobiography has been one of the most
important sites of feminist debate precisely because it demonstrates
that there are many different ways of writing the subject. The turn
to autobiographical texts within feminism, therefore, also enabled
critics to replay the problem of the subject in ways that are often
experimental, which seemed to lie outside the terms of theory as it
was currently thought.
Julia Swindells has provided a more wide-ranging but similarly
optimistic account of the new radical uses of autobiography: ‘Auto
biography now has the potential to be the text of the oppressed
and the culturally displaced, forging a right to speak both for and
beyond the individual. People in a position of powerlessness, women,
black people, working-class people—have more than begun to insert
themselves into the culture via autobiography, via the assertion of
a ‘personal’ voice, which speaks beyond itself ’ (7). The idea that
autobiography can become ‘the text of the oppressed’, articulating
through one person’s experiences, which may be representative of
a particular marginalized group, is an important one: autobiography
becomes both a way of testifying to oppression and empowering
the subject through their cultural inscription and recognition. Yet
this politicization of the subject, though it addresses it, by no
means solves the problem of ‘difference’, since the claim to speak
Introduction 27
for others is always problematic and can also elide further differ
ences under an assumed representativity.
The autobiography is a form of witnessing which ‘matters to
others’. Shoshana Felman’s book What Does a Woman Want? provides
us with a connection or bridge between the topics of personal
criticism and testimonial writing along with raising crucial questions
about the relation of autobiography to history. Situating her own
writing in relation to personal criticism, Felman asks the difficult
question of how we know that the ‘personal’ voice that the critic is
speaking in is her own. ‘Getting personal’, does not, according to
her, ‘guarantee that the story we narrate is wholly ours or that it
is narrated in our own voice’ (14). Felman is far from denying the
importance of autobiography or that reading and writing has a
relation to our lives that ‘matters’. The problem is rather where
autobiography is situated if, as Felman believes, our story cannot
be ‘self-present’ to us, under the conscious control of the subject.
Felman points not to autobiographical moments within texts but
rather to moments of resistance or hesitation between discourses—
between theory and autobiography, for instance— which she sees
as testifying to surprising irruptions of the Other. Whereas it may
be impossible to gain direct access to ourselves, through personal
criticism, for instance, it may be possible through a ‘bond of read
ing’ to access the story of the Other in these hesitations or resis
tances, a story which has yet to be told or understood.
Framed as a feminist argument, and as pertaining particularly
to women’s lives and writing, Felman argues, it is because women
have been trained to see themselves as objects and have been posi
tioned as Other that ‘none of us, as women, has as yet, precisely,
an autobiography’. What she proposes is autobiography as a form
of testifying, to be distinguished from confession, which involves
the speaker and the listener in a shared project to recover ‘some
thing the speaking subject is not—and cannot be—in possession
of ’ (14-16). Leaving the particular feminist slant of Felman’s argu
ment I turn back to her earlier work on testimony. It is because
Felman sees feminine existence as corresponding in some ways to
traumatized existence that she suggests it cannot simply be re
membered and narrated. According to Felman, testimony implies
a relationship to events as evidence of truth without being able to
provide ‘a completed statement, a totalizable account of those
events’. To testify, in its legal sense, is to produce one’s speech or
one’s story as part of a larger verdict yet to be made.3 Testimony is
called for in a situation where the truth is not clear, where there is
already a ‘crisis of truth’: ‘The trial both derives from and proceeds
by, a crisis of evidence, which the verdict must resolve’ (5-6). For
Felman, testimony has become increasingly important in ‘recent
cultural accounts of ourselves’ because it issues from and relates to
the traumas of contemporary history, events like the Second World
War, the Holocaust, the nuclear bomb, which overwhelm our ability
to assimilate them and which exceed our capacity to understand
(1993: 14).
Autobiography has gained currency and access increasingly in
literary, cultural and historical scholarship, drawing attention to
the ways in which the self is conceived, represented and recreated
historically. Its production and reception in the recent decades
testifies to the ongoing struggle of women for autonomy and agency
in a society with predefined gender roles. Conventionally it is
associated with some subjective idealism, which can never really
be segmented as private and public. The very possibility of an
autobiography earmarks certain tropes and binaries around which
the subject primarily navigates: the self and other; the private and
public; margin and centre; the interior and exterior; inclusion and
exclusion; fidelity and lies, etc. Employed effectively by women
writers to write themselves into history, it not just embodies
representations of the self but encompasses the desire to reclaim
certain vital aspects of the culture where women lives are reduced
to insignificance. In engaging itself in the self representative ‘I’ it
certainly tests the limits of truth marking the boundaries between
truth and fiction.
The autobiographical genre doesn’t restrict itself to a standardized
nomenclature and called differently as life stories, memoirs, testi
monials, personal accounts. These provide space to record and share,
life and lived experiences for posterity and emerge as a major source
of collective memory, some qualifying as social and literary docu
mentations of alternate histories and resistance movements thereby
debunking available dominant histories recorded by privileged
groups of historians. These in recent times, have become more
Introduction 29
viable mediums to construct lost identities and potentially recast
ing as national narratives. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s theori
zation of these life narratives in their numerous individual and
joint ventures encompass a pluralistic representation of the indi
vidual self through the collective idea of self. These explicate
the socio-political, cultural milieu of the place of its production.
Writing and reading autobiographies have been considered by the
psychoanalytical practitioners as instruments of healing in the
ongoing quest to relocate and recognise their life and story.
II: THE SELF, SUBJECTIVITY, SEXUALITY, TEXTUALITY,

RELATIONALITY AND EXPERIENCE
Women’s autobiographies are now a privileged site for rethinking

issues of writing at the intersection of feminist post-colonial and
post-modern critical theories. And if feminism has revolutionized
the social, literal and cultural theoretical spheres; the texts and
theorizations on women’s autobiographies have played an impor
tant role, in revising our conceptualization and understanding of
women’s life issues such as growing up female, voicing a female
subjectivity, textuality and sexuality. As a genre it has been em
ployed by women writers to write themselves into history, making
their impact felt in literary and cultural theories besides feminism as
an unacknowledged mode of making visible the formerly invisible
subjects. Theirs is a huge body of academic apparatus growing
around this previously humble genre. With the growth of studies
on gender, ethnicity and allied topics, a demand has cropped up
for texts speaking of diverse issues and experiences. Women’s auto
biographies entail narratives of self discovery authorizing new
subjects claiming kinship to a literature of possibilities. For women
reading other women’s autobiographies, it ‘mirrors’ their own
unvoiced aspirations. By incorporating their unspoken feminine
experiences in telling their own stories, women have revised the
content and purpose of autobiographical writing and have carved
a place within social, political, literary and artistic movements.
Starting from the 1970s when these women’s assertions were
loud and clear, it served a different purpose for each. Germaine
Greer’s The Female Eunuch blended autobiography with theory to
demonstrate that personal is political, Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics
claimed experience as the foundation of a theory while for Angela
Davis ‘life stories’ enabled her to expose racism on one hand and
misogyny inherent in Black writings on the other. While feminist
critics question the absence of women’s texts and voices in literary
culture, they staked the claim that there was/has been an extensive
women’s literary tradition if one analysed the ‘lesser genres’ like
the memoirs, journals, diaries and other modes of private writings.
An archive was built through recovery of some of these texts. Aca
demic scholarship on the subject too has been largely complicit in
these traditional cultural practices that ‘othered’ women’s writings
in relation to men’s writings. This is evinced by the uninformed
references in reviews and scholarship, too often condescending and
debilitating. In Autobiographical Writing by Women edited by Mary
Mason and Carol Green, Mason argues in her introduction to the
book that women’s alterity informs their establishment of identity
as relational rather than individuating process. Susan Freidman
expanded on Mason’s argument for ‘relationality’ by applying it to
multicultural texts and psychoanalytic theory. She considered other
women’s autobiography was an expression of ‘fluid boundaries’ they
experience psychologically. There have been multiple anthologies
and volumes that call for expansion of women’s autobiographical
canon.
Estelle Jelenik debates that the differences between sexes is mani
fest in both content and style of autobiography and the contrast is
visible on several aspects (xi). While on content level men distance
themselves in their autobiographies which are ‘success stories and
histories of their eras’ focussing on professional lives, women’s writ
ings were more inclined to personal and domestic details and to
describe their connect to other people (10). Men ‘idealise their lives
or cast them into heroic moulds to project their universal import’
women by contrast seek to authenticate themselves in stories re
vealing ‘a self consciousness and need to sift through their lives for
explanation and understanding’ employing understatement to mask
their feelings and tend to play down the public aspects of their
lives (14-15). At the level of temporality men shape their lives into
a coherent linearity, harmony and orderliness as contrasted to women’s
Introduction 31
‘disconnected, fragmentary pattern of diffusion and diversity’. This
pattern is recreated by the socially conditioned multidimensional
roles of women. Their narratives mime the everyday quality of their
lives.
Jelinek’s introduction in its essentializing of gendered experience
excludes other differences in women’s autobiographies. Possibly,
the focus on women’s experience as the true feminist ‘content’ of
women’s autobiography enhanced critical interventions but also
essentialized women. The experiential approach opposes all women
to all men setting up a structure of resistance and self-authorization
through collective critique and political action based on assumed
universal subordination. This model informed the second wave of
feminism besides their credo of collective sisterhood of all women,
undifferentiated in its subordination and evident in their unproble
matic use of the term ‘we’. This gets challenged by women of
colour, announcing their differences in the profitable plurality
of voices and also voicing the problematic of such a collective
assumption.
Since the focus was largely on white Euro-American tradition,
Sidonie Smith’s A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography debated that in
an androcentric tradition, autobiographical authorization was un
available to most women. As they were historically absent in both
public sphere and modes of written narrative, women were com
pelled to tell their stories differently. Theories on female textuality
have to recognize that the patriarchal culture had fictionalized
‘woman’, and in response, women’s autobiographies challenged
the gender ideologies around them in order to write their life nar
ratives posing certain key questions like these. How does a woman
authorize a claim to her writing? How does she negotiate gendered
fiction of self-representation? Smith’s interest was in the historical
specificity of the double-voiced structure of women’s narratives as
it reveals the tensions between their desire for narrative authority
and their concern about excessive self-exposure.
Francoise Lionnet contends that historically silenced subjects
like women and colonized peoples create ‘braided’ texts of many
voices that speak their cultural locations dialogically. In privileg
ing difference, plurality and voices, new subjects emerged. By
centring their investigations on histories of women’s subjectivity
in dialogue with one another, both Smith’s and Lionnet’s approach
set forth the required frameworks to assert women’s autobiography
as a legitimate field of analysis and practice. Bella Brodszki and
Celeste Schenck’s Life/Lines: Theorising Women’s Autobiography ex
pands the concept of textuality to women’s films, self-portraits and
poetry. Suggesting a globalized concept of women’s writing, they
called for revisioning the post-structuralist theory to assert the ‘im
perative situating of the female subject in spite of the post-
modernist campaign against the sovereign self ’ with attention to
female specificity as against female essentialism and ‘pure textuality’.
These critics disputed a theorizing that allowed the woman reader
the emotional satisfaction of a referential world of women’s lives
(14).
The Euro-American critic lacks the linguistic skill to engage
with the wealth of autobiographical writings produced in other
countries. Critics from the Third World endorse the nuanced and
vigorous tradition that includes histories and testimonies as well
as other genres of self-reflexivity. Post-colonial studies in the 1980s
provoked a serious engagement with the women’s status as multiplely
colonized. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s De/colonising the Sub
ject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography (1992) and
Francoise Lionnet and Ronnie Scharfman in Post Colonial Condi
tions: Exiles, Migrations and Nomadisms (1992, 2 vols) have all
gathered essays that reformulate women’s issues and subjectivities
at diasporic sites. Barbara Harlow’s Resistance Literature (1987)
and Francoise Lionnet’s Post Colonial Representations (1995) have
propounded issues while also examining practices that relate
subjectivity to material and economic conditions of women’s lives
altering terms entrenched in Anglo-American Autobiography.
The numerous translations of women’s autobiographies on global
scale as part of the post-colonial translation project has further given
impetus to international and indigenous feminist movements.
Newer analytical tools have got stimulated with post-modernist
theorizing. Sidonie Smith in her book Subjectivity, Identity and the
Body (1993) has explored the interconnection between subjectivity
and autobiographical practice and shows how women excluded
Introduction 33
from official discourse, use autobiography to ‘talk back’, to em
body subjectivity and to inhabit and inflect a range of subjective
‘I’s. Such critiques, informed by feminist theoretical debates and
post-modernism have opened up avenues for interpretations and
analysis of women autobiographical practices within a global frame
work. Nancy Chodorow reaffirmed in psychoanalytical terms that
‘women are less individuated than men and have more flexible ego
boundaries’ (44) while Mary G. Mason in her essay ‘The Other
Voice: Autobiographies by Women Writers’ stresses that female
identity is grounded in relationship producing textual self-repre
sentations contrasting with masculine self-representations.4
Though the Lacanian impact is undeniable, the old notion of
‘self ’ has been redefined as an illusory ego construct and displaced
by a new concept of ‘the subject’ that is split and always in the
process of constituting itself through others. This has found re
fraction amongst some French theorists like Cixous, Kristeva,
Irrigiray who have influenced the (re)readings of women’s autobio
graphies thereby providing tools to confront patriarchal structures
in locating them deep within the unconscious and the subject’s
core relationship with language itself. They encourage readers
to read away from agreement and look for significant gaps and
silences within the texts and to become sceptical of previously ad
missible notions in the autobiography theory such as a unified
concept of selfhood and narrative linearity. Michel Foucault’s em
phasis on the discursivity of texts, on historically specific regimes
of truth, knowledge and on genealogy has impacted scholars study
ing autobiographical practices. The Foucauldian analysis has been
used to critique the very notion of women’s experience, the romance
of the ‘authentic’ women’s voice and recourse to transparent notion
of ‘truth’ of the autobiographical experience and the truth teller
status of the autobiographer.
Joan W. Scott in her essay ‘Experience’ has challenged the un
derlying status of experience as an analytical ground and calls for
historicizing experience. ‘Experience is at once always already an
interpretation and is in need of interpretation.’5 To read women’s
autobiographical texts is to attend to the historically and cultur
ally specific discourses of identity through which women become
the speaking subjects. And to historicize experience is to erode the
holding power of the concept of the universal ‘woman’. In fact, the
most informed critique of the Universal woman came from women
of colour who focussed on the cultural productions of the subjects
marginalized for race/ethnicity. They contested theories implicitly
white, bourgeois and Western, attempting to speak on their behalf
and positing a universal woman, questioned the complacent as
sumption of ‘white women as the normative’. Cherrie Moraga and
Gloria Anzaldua in In this Bridge Called my Back have brought
together multiple voices to endorse the complexity of multiple
differences. Theorists of difference, as they are called, have explored
alternate notion of subjectivity not based on the unique individual
but complex collective identifications which may be indigenous,
diasporic or ‘pan’ collective as hypothesized by Spivak and Mohanty.
The focus is on foregrounding questions such as these. Who is
speaking? How have they been spoken for through dominant cul
tural representations and what must they do to be heard? Thus
they are providing tools to articulate how dominant cultural values
have been internalized by the oppressed subjects. This theoriza
tion is not hermitically sealed or high and dry but a theory at ‘the
bone and in the flesh’ level.
In multicultural practices women’s writings have repeatedly
cautioned against the inadequacy and reification of any simple
models of difference to explore the complexity of lived or narrated
lives. Marianne Hirsch suggested that ‘Subjects are constituted and
differentiated in relation to a variety of screens—class, race, gender,
sexuality, age, nationality and familiarity—and can attempt to mani
pulate and modify the functions of the image/screen’ (120). In
theorizing of difference, this call to complexity, multiplies these
differences and raises newer issues of priority among heterogeneous
differences. There has been a proliferation in the categories of
differences, and also the insistence upon their inscrutable connect
to each other. But what remains to be seen is how these can be
specified productively without relegating to reductionism.
Post-modern critiques have enabled a rethinking of the term
identity politics, arguing that race and ethnicity are not things in
themselves but historically specific social constructs, materially
Introduction 35
realized through discursive practices of everyday life, so too is
‘woman’. Judith Butler argues that identity whether sexual or other,
is always produced and sustained by cultural norms, by noting
the ‘tacit cruelties that sustain coherent identities’ (Bodies 115).
She points to the limits of identity politics. As Butler observes, if
subjects are irreducibly multiple, prioritizing one identification
such as gender at the expense of the other is not only reductive it is
paralysing. ‘What appear within such enumerative categories are
rather, conditions of articulation for each other’ (117). Identities
imbricated in and constituted by one another, need to contribute
to a politics rather than policing.6 This politics would be aimed at
empowering subjects and also overcoming cultural imperatives that
sustain fictions of coherence.
In women’s writings from global locations outside the US through
critique of Western imperialism, post-coloniality has registered the
continuing legacies of colonial histories and the contemporary, or
neo-colonial, reorganization of global capitalism. The subjectivity
of the colonized peoples has been constituted through the pro
cesses of colonial conquest and consequent bureaucratization of
imperial power. The shift in focus on the ‘colonized subject’ and
what is supposedly marginal or minority discourse, has ignited the
rethinking of paradigms of subjectivity. The primary site for such
a re-examination has been the autobiographical discourse, in the
‘coming to voice’ of previously silenced subjects. Newer terms are
emerging to capture the complex dimensions of de/colonization
and multicultural subjectivity.
A variety of descriptive words, mandates the subjects of the ‘in
between’ such as hybrid, marginal, diasporic, multicultural, border,
mestiza, nomadic, minoritized, ‘third space’. And each of these
terms have their own historical and theoretical scaffolding. Post
colonial critics of autobiography tend to draw our attention to the
narrative practices in multiple geographical and global locations.
Also newer models of transnationalism and transculturation have
unfolded initiating critiques of the readings framed by the Western
interpretative approach. This has subsequently led to the shift from
the term ‘women autobiographies’ to ‘women’s personal narratives’
or ‘women’s life writings’. This tendential shift marks a deviation
from the uncritical Western understanding of the subject of auto
biography. Though the theory on the whole is not monolithic, the
term post-colonial remains contentious, as the segregation of periods
do get caught up in a teleological framing of history that eventu
ally privileges the subjects’ moments of Western encounter. Lionnet
says that it remains crucial for critics to both analyse and represent
‘the subjective experience of muted groups within social structures
that rarely allow them to speak as subjects and agents of knowl
edge’ and retain an ‘awareness of the multicultural and multiracial
dimensions of various strands of feminism both inside and outside
the academy’ (188).
The metaphors of ‘coming to voice’ or ‘voicing female subjectivity’
resonates in the theoretical framework of Bakhtin who elaborated
the concept of dialogism and heteroglossia. He claimed that
‘every word is directed towards an answer’ claimed the internal
dialogism of the word. Words are argumentative ‘plunging’ into
the ‘inexhaustible wealth and contradictory multiplicity’ of mean
ings. For him language is the medium for consciousness; thus sub
jectivity is understood as dialogical, in that it is always implicated
in the ‘process of social interaction’. According to Mae Henderson,
Bakhtin’s theory links ‘psyche, language and social interaction’,
heteroglossia provides a means to join theories of consciousness to
theories of culture and refocus questions on textuality. The indi
viduals’ language is always language permeated by the voices of
others, voices out of the sociocultural field. Dialogism supports
the claim that there are always other voices in the text, that even
the most monologic of texts can be read for heteroglossia and that
the autobiographical subject is a subject of the play of voices.
Dialogism is particularly illuminating for discussions of women’s
autobiographical voices. The theorizing by Lionnet and Henderson
demonstrates the enabling potential of theories of heteroglossia in
discussion of women’s autobiography. Henderson has in ‘Speaking
Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics and the Black Women Writers’
Literary Tradition’ emphasized ‘glossalalia’ and the multiple voices
in which black women writers enunciate a complex subjectivity
that employs the discourse of the other and as the other, contest
the dominant discourse.7
Introduction 37
Julia Watson interrogates the unspeakable as a category ‘used to
designate a sexual difference that remains unspoken, and therefore
invisible’. Both the lesbian and heterosexual desire remained
unspoken.8 Queer theories are shifting the debate from sexual pre
ference to issues of ‘performativity’. Women as a homogeneous
category is often charged of rescinding the essential differences
between women in relation to race, class, caste, sexuality and ethni
city. The second wave feminism saw only a certain category bene
fiting from the significant inclusion and sense of entitlement to
the detrimental erasure and exclusion of multiple ‘other’ groups
among women. These inclusions could never generate answers to
the exclusionist hegemonic meta-structures. Second, it seemed
rather surreal to synthesize all existing differences to collude into a
concept of ‘global sisterhood’.
Post-modernism interrogates the very existence of a coherent
stable subject thereby problematizing traditional gender constructs,
contending that it’s essentialist to assume gender and sex as fixed
categories and also that women suffer oppression similar in nature.
The possibility of absolutist and objectivist is grilled and the
disconnect between body and gender is endorsed. This indeed
provides the necessary conceptual framework of resistance and
rejection of universalist notions of human nature and existence.
Post-modernism and third wave feminism is attributed with chal
lenging the unitary notions of woman, the monolithic feminist
formulations and the binary assumptions in gender reconstruc
tions, undermining these with complex identities of which gender
is one of the elements along with race, caste, class, religion and
sexual orientation. Thus, addressing the erasures of multiple dif
ferences, diversities, and contradictions of women’s experiences,
enabling it to be non-universalist, pluralistic and heterogeneous.
Given the directions which feminist and post-feminist theorizing
have undertaken, all those essential features which once proved as
the benchmarks of women’s autobiographies have been called into
question and defied as relegating to gender essentialisms.
Post-colonial approaches too aim at theorizing differences and
diversities of the ‘other’ against the blanket universalization of op
pression. The concept of women modelled to define all women
irrespective of differences obliterates certain specificities. While
critics like Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak move the focus from the
issue of sexual difference to cultural difference between the Third
World and First World, Chandra Talpade Mohanty challenges
the very notion of patriarchy, gender or sexual difference that is
applied cross culturally, thus, questioning the totalizing tangen
tial shift of Western feminist practices. In the Indian context the
‘native’ women who is often stereotyped as being without agency,
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan suggests the possibility of exploring the
victimized subject position of the native women as a site for alter
nate subjectivities.9 The issues raised by the Third World feminist
have less to do with examination of cultural difference than with
the different notion of feminism itself.
Jyotiba Phule’s analysis of caste and gender or Dr. Ambedkar’s
treatises on ‘Women and Counter Revolution’, ‘The Riddle of the
Woman’, ‘The Rise and Fall of Hindu Women’ and principles en
shrined in the Uniform Civil Code, further anticipates the central
debate of Dalit feminism. Caste and gender are not mutually ex
clusive but interconnected. The concordant voice of Indian femi
nism ideologically ‘Savarna’, showing solidarity with oppressed
Indian groups, is challenged by Dalit feminism as appropriating,
colonizing and patronizing. The mainstream feminist practices,
have failed to incorporate marginalized gender groups and there
fore testimonies and narratives emerging from the latter offer a
counter-narrative, challenging selective memory and indisputable
histories of both the women’s movement and themselves. Post
colonial feminism has provided scope towards multiplicity and
polyphony. Thus several critics have eruditely interpreted auto
biographies in relation to the prevalent theories and significant
critical interventions have enabled the reframing of critical per
spectives and the ongoing debates on the subject.
This anthology attempts to foreground the subjectivities and
personal lives of women and brings together well researched
articles on various genres and subgenres within autobiography
considering women’s invisibility in official historical records. The
explorations by women of alternate materials and models and their
re-mappings of identity whether fragmented, fractured, hybrid,
Introduction 39
collective through the textual or visual interface forms the crux of
this venture. Originally it was envisioned as a project for doctoral
scholars, enabling them to draw from the multiplicity of resources
available within their respective fields of investigations. However,
the canvas expanded, the scope widened, when academicians from
various Indian universities became equally keen to participate in
the project. The uniqueness about the project was to harness home
grown wisdom into a book form encompassing diverse exploratory
areas but avoiding repetitions in subject material to ensure hetero
geneity and to open vistas for future contentions and explorations.
The first paper in the anthology is by Aparna Lanjewar Bose. It
makes a comparative analysis of Marathi Dalit women writers and
Black women writers of autobiographies from a feminist stand
point thereby attempting a holistic, humanistic and gendered
understanding of oppression, of subjugation, of ‘otherness’ and
how it necessitates a whole process of non-fashionable honest cre
ation. These writers in a dialogic mode speak of identities in a
language that dismantles the andromorphic modes but also re
veals limitations of gynocentric discourses for a broader inclusivity
within feminism. The paper highlights how race, gender, caste
and class are integrated concerns awaiting social transformation
therefore intersectionality of all these synthesize their multiple
oppressions and experiences which, on one hand dismisses a mono
lithic construction and sweeping generalizations of being a homo
genized category of woman and on the other hand challenges the
privileged exclusivity of Black/Dalit male experience of marginali
zation. The thematic concerns, preoccupations of women writers
like Babytai Kamble, Sarvagod, Shantabai Kamble, Dani, Pawar
and others are compared to that of Black women writers like Ida
Wells, Alice Walker, Cooper, Maya Angelou and others to analyse
whether these groups challenge the stereotypical perception of
marginal or reinforce prototypical view of the male oppressor against
the backdrop of Dalit Feminist/aesthetical and Black feminist/
aesthetical discourse.
The second paper by Gouri Kapoor focuses on a divorce memoir
by Aarathi Menon Leaving Home with Half a Fridge and explicitly
explores the concerns of women going through a breakdown in
marital relationship or coping with the changes it brings. It up
dates multiple discussions on self, institutions of marriage, family,
relationships and life after divorce for a heterosexual woman in
India.
Nilakshi Goswami’s scholarly paper on Claude Cahun and Alison
Bechdel’s visual narratives makes a compelling analysis of self-por
traits as the complex and convoluted genre of self representation
and examines the manner through which the notions of subjective
reality and objective historical accounts are explored, echoing the
challenges these artists pose to traditional gender roles and sexuality.
Photography and comics are upheld as befitting mediums to convey
truth.
The fourth paper by Deepshikha Minz deals with Humorous
Women’s Memoirs in the entertainment industry and adds to the
study of feminist comedy. Examining the eloquence and didacti
cism of humour in the works of two celebrities namely Tina Fey’s
Bossypants and Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without
Me?, it explores the impact on readers as bestsellers worldwide and
how they challenge the traditional rhetorical strategies and humour
techniques to address women’s issues.
The next paper by Nandini Pradeep is titled ‘A Case for Homo
sexuality: Reading Anchee Min’s Red Anzalea as a Political Auto
biography’. Possibly one of the first Chinese memoirs to delve upon
bisexual and homosexual tendencies, Min’s work deals with a
commoner’s struggle with Mao’s China, the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution and the intolerance towards those defying
the national narrative despite its oppressive structure. The paper
engages with the questions of politics, gender and autobiography
while addressing the position of women in the then Chinese
society.
The sixth paper is by Sandhya Deepthi on ‘Self, Time and Death
as Autobiographical Elements in Performance Art’. It is an inter
esting paper that explores the autobiographical in the feminist
performance art and reflects on it as an active form of self-expres
sion that pushes the boundaries of body, self, death and time.
These are ideas adopted and experimented by major feminist per
formance artists of late 1990s within a theoretical and theatrical
Introduction 41
framework. It looks at the works of Marina Abramovic and other
performance artists who have used art as an insurgent weapon to
challenge spaces of gender and body.
Boopathi Palanisamy’s well-researched paper ‘An Arab Feminist
Reading of Fadwa Tuqan’s A Mountainous Journey’ surveys the per
sonal as well as political predicament of the Palestinian women in
particular and Arab women in general by foregrounding how they
negotiate between private and public spheres due to familial and
social constraints. The national liberations movements silenced
women voices rendering them dormant in the endeavour to re
claim lost homeland. This autobiography is analysed against the
backdrop of Arab feminist theories.
Shyama Sajeev’s paper unravels crucial issues in the study of
three women’s narratives: Kamala Das’ My Story, Sally Morgan’s
My Place and Melba Pattillo Beals’ Warriors Don’t Cry. Hitherto
absent in historical representation, these life writings by women
marked the dawn of a new era, where their most crucial issues are
brought to the forefront and become the centre.
Vinita Gupta Chaturvedi’s paper titled ‘Daughter of the East and
Perils of (Self)Idealizations’ unravels the spirited life account of the
first democratically elected woman prime minister of Pakistan,
Benazir Bhutto. The study problamatizes political autobiographies
as agenda oriented, the strategies involved in self-representations,
the unavoidable pitfalls of self-aggrandizement that relegates to
essentializations.
The tenth paper is contributed by Archana Gupta which ex
plores women’s body as well as politics and patriarchal controls of
body and mind of Bangladeshi women, looking at Taslima Nasreen’s
My Girlhood. On one side it blatantly exposes the oppressive tradi
tions and hypocrisies of Islamicists, on the other, it depicts the
construction of feminity within the prevalent hostile institutions.
Baljeet Kaur’s paper ‘Sexuality, Self and Body: Reading Michele
Roberts’ Memoir Paper Houses’ advances a modern feminist argu
ment about women’s ability to question and subvert gender norms
by exploring the writer’s sartorial politics while also reflecting on
her ability to shatter certain assumptions and misconceptions about
feminists themselves.
Munira T’s contribution is towards ‘Vocalizing the Voiceless:
Struggle for a Personal Voice in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman
Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts’, which discusses the
racial marginality of growing up female and Chinese American.
Blending the Cantonese tradition of talk story with the Western
form of autobiography, the focus is on finding a voice in forced
silences.
Saswata Kusari’s paper titled “Lifting ‘the Quilt”: Ismat Chughtai’s
A Life in Words and Subversion of the Normative’ reflects on the
fiercely reticent and subversive spirit of the author. The paper also
attempts to expose the facades of Victorian morality and how sexu
ality became a censured, pejorative, tabooed and medico-judicial
topic during this era. Moreover, the paper attempts to explore the
fiercely reticent and subversive spirit of Chughtai and how, through
her risqué narrations, she negotiates with the heteropatriarchal
society and drives home her anti-colonial agenda.
Nilakshi Goswami’s research paper ‘Indian Nationalism and
Hindu Widowhood: Contesting Margins in Indira Goswami’s Adha
Lekha Dastabej (1990)’ delves into the systematic oppression of
the female body and the plight of the destitute widows in Vrinda
van, while probing into the underlying foundation of the rituals
and religious ethics and the unquestioned beliefs which perpetuate
female oppression. It brings out the symbolic domination of women
and the female body representation as subject to the hegemony of
patriarchal nationalism.
The next paper titled ‘Veiled Voices: Semi-Autobiographies of
Yemini Writers Nadia al-Kawkabani and Shatha al-Khateeb’ is re
searched by Hatem Mohammed Hatem Al-Shamea. It critically
examines Yemeni women’s literary challenge against the traditional
taboo that prohibits women’s writings, particularly about their
own private world. By delving into the seminal works of Nadia al-
Kawkabani and Shatha al-Khateeb, the research here maps out the
Yemeni women’s situation and their sufferings.
Rubina Iqbal’s paper ‘Breaking the Silence: Tehmina Durrani’s
My Feudal Lord ’ becomes a counter-narrative in a society where
women remain silent because of cultural obligations. Reconceptuali
zing the relation between gender and class, it captures the political
Introduction 43
and cultural history of Pakistan from Subaltern perspectives. The
paper analyses how Durrani’s memoir is not only an onslaught on
regressive patriarchy that is thriving on the silence of Muslim women
for centuries, but also becomes a fierce advocacy of true democracy.
Shaista Mansoor’s contribution ‘Re-Reading Azar Nafisi’s memoir
Things I’ve Been Silent About ’ probes into the personal and political
view of the author, blending her family history with the history
and contemporary scenario of Iran. It looks into the pre-and post
revolutionary Iran, role of literature in turbulent times of Iran and
effects of Islamic revolution in vivid details.
Nandini Pradeep J. in her well-oriented paper ‘Rational Femi
ninity and the Mode of Hijra Autobiographies: The Affects of
Being a Gendered Object’ scouts through Hijra autobiographies
written by transgender women from across India: Me Hijra, Me
Laxmi by Laxminarayan Tripathi, The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life
Story by A. Revathi and I am Vidya: A Transgender’s Autobiography
by Living Smile Vidya. Transgender autobiographies discard the
dilemma of heteronormativity in popular discourses. This paper
analyses the element of femininity in this increasingly popular
and relevant genre of literature rather new to the Indian literary
scene.
Deepinderjeet Randhawa in her paper ‘Marginalized Sexual
Identity: A Flash Point of Body/Desire/Politics’ scrutinizes margi
nalized sexual identity as a flash-point of body/desire/politics, by
analysing how the hegemonic heterosexual network of power struc
tures pushes the desire/performance of the homosexual/lesbian/
trans-sexual/transgender to the margins by labelling him/her as
the ‘queer’ or ‘deviant’. This Queer and Deviant is the other, the
radical otherness/strangeness that the heteronormative gaze fails
to recognize.
The next paper by Shoma Sen ‘Self Narratives of Working Class
Women: Voices from the Global South’ delves into Baby Haldar’s
autobiographical work A Life Less Ordinary and Domitila Barrios
de Chungara’s oral narrative Let Me Speak apart from probing into
two narratives by sex workers, The Road of Lost Innocence by Somaly
Mam and Autobiography of a Sex Worker by Nalini Jameela. This
paper analyses how class, race, caste and religion intercept patriar
chy at different times, in different nations in the developing coun
tries in the world.
The last paper in this anthology by Aparna Lanjewar Bose titled
‘Of Being Ants amongst the Elephants: Anecdotes and Antidotes’
dissects the different warring factions of the Communist parties
threadbare through the perspectival bio-sketch of the Andhra revo
lutionary, S.M. Satyamurthi, his romance and divorce with the
left parties that form the component of the narrative retold by his
Indian-American niece, Sujatha Gidla. While reflecting on the
multiple facets and myriad sides of Indian politics, it presents the
anecdotal bearing of a cosmopolitan ex-untouchable family, fight
ing up the repressive hierarchical caste order through conversion
to Christianity. The paper elicits multiple debates and discussions
on politics of identity politics and both caste and class dynamics.
Thus the whole creative enterprise, in its modest attempts ex
plores women’s life writings across the globe, endeavours to fore
ground the multiplicity of feminine experiences/narratives and in
the process amalgamates a world of writing with multiple voices
that still remain largely unheard. Through the whole process it is
not merely the silenced and marginalized voices finding means to
vocalize their personal experiences, but renders anchorage to any
ordinary individual to memorialize their existence.
NOTES
1. Georges Gusdorf, in James Olney, ed., Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and

Critical. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
2. Jacques Derrida, ‘The Law of Genre’, Glyph, 7: 1980, pp. 202-29.
3. See also Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony, London and New
York: Routledge, 1992.
4. Mary. G. Mason, ‘The Other Voice: Autobiographies of Women Writers’,
in James Olney, Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
5. Jan. C. Scott, ‘Experience’, in Judith Butler and Joan C. Scott, eds., Feminist
Theorise the Political, New York: Routledge,1993, pp. 22-40.
6. See Judith Butler, Gender Trouble and the Subversion of Identity, New York:
Routledge, 1990, pp. 324-40.
7. Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, ‘Speaking in Tongues: Dialogics, Dialectics
Introduction 45
and the Black Woman Writers Tradition’, in Cheryl A. Wall, Changing our
Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory and Writing by Black Women, New
Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989, pp. 116-42.
8. See Julia Watson, ‘Unspeakable Differences: The Politics of Gender in Lesbian
and Heterosexual Women’s Autobiographies’, in Sidonie Smith and Julia
Watson. De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s
Autobiography, eds., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992,
pp. 139-68.
9. Rajeshwari Sunder Rajan, ‘The Subject of Sati: Pain and Death in the
Contemporary Discourse on Sati’, in Real and Imagined Women: Gender
Culture and Post Colonialism, New York: Routledge, 2003, pp. 15-38.
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Broddzki, Bella and Celeste Schenck, Life/Lines: Theorising Women’s Auto
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Butler, Judith, Bodies that Matter, New York: Routledge, 1990.
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——, Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins, Chicago, IL,
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——, ‘Circumfession’, in Jacques Derrida with Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques
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Friedman, Susan Stanford, ‘Women’s Autobiobraphical Selves: Theory and Prac
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——, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter, Princeton:
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Mason, Mary. G. and Carol Hurd Green, Journeys: Autobiographical Writings by
Women, GK Hall: University of Virginia, 1979.
Mason, Mary G., ‘The Other Voice: Autobiographies of Women Writers’, in
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NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
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pp. 17-42.
Introduction 47
Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1972.
——, Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
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graphy, Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press, 1978.
CHAPTER 1
(Re)Positioning the ‘Other’:

Perspectives on Marathi Dalit
and Black Women Writings
A PA R N A L A N J E WA R B O S E
I. INTRODUCTION
As we are marching ahead to greater avenues of establishing bonds

between different cultures and countries, the processes of assimilation
of cultures and cultural practices have begun like never before.
Since the boundaries of the world are merging, literatures too are
following the same trend of fusion. Such literatures help to under
stand interpersonal relations and tend to continually map ways and
means of improving interpersonal dialogues between communities
irrespective of race, caste, religion, politics, etc. By further enabling
the scope for improvement and providing essential tools, they help
in refashioning and remodelling our outlook. In a world of
multiculturalism and globalization they demolish boundaries of
region and nation by the very nature of their creative expression
filled with enriching experiences. In the era of globalization where
close encounters with other cultures is a reality forcing individuals
to negotiate differences, Mikhail Bakhtin’s emphasis on the plurality
of divergent viewpoints and cultural dialogism has shaped our
perspectives and provided tools to make sense of the nature of
existing differences.
India has always had an argumentative tradition and negotiated
diversity at all levels being a multi-religious, multi-cultural, multi
lingual society. It accommodates multiple races, castes, languages,
religions, cultures that are paradoxically distinct and simultaneously
interconnected as well as overlapping at multiple levels. Transla
tion no doubt has played an important role in negotiating power
relations between various socio-cultural forces and different
linguistic discourses. Similarly, literary trends have gone beyond
the boundaries of language, seeking to reinforce certain thematic,
stylistic and historical transaction with literatures in other lan
guages. The Bhakti movement, for instance, broke boundaries of
language and region. Similarly, linguistic and cultural heterogeneity
was established when the monopoly of Sanskrit was broken and
many other languages gained ascendance thereby liberating knowl
edge and making it accessible to all. It assumed different forms
and interpretations. However, if we investigate the polyphonic trad
itions, the problematic of dialogue marking the living traditions
of religion, culture and philosophy would be revealed. Numerous
questions can be asked as to whether there was any dialogue
between Sanskrit and other languages or whether classical Hindu
traditions shared any dialogic space with other reformative sys
tems of thought like Buddhism, Sikhism or Jainism for instance
or whether Bhakti and Sufi saints had a dialogic relation. We
also know that there had been a strong tradition of translation.
Colonialism brought an end to argumentation as the hegemonic
structures tended to create space for monologism. Hence it becomes
imperative today, when we have moved beyond post-colonialism,
to explore this cultural dialogism through constructive debates.
With the post-modernist thrust on liberation discourse, auto
biography has emerged as a significant genre. One of the major
contributions of postmodern and post-colonial discourse is giving
voice and, space to the marginalized. Whereas on the one hand there
is a response to colonization, on the other, there is a response to a
section of the society from within the country pushed to the mar
gins. However, in both the situations it is one group exercising
power over the other which is suppressed. Literary voices from
the margins have both challenged and altered the existing literary
traditions. The emergence of Dalit literature in India marks an
important phase of dialogism that is emancipatory. Since dialogue
is a dynamic process often charged with temporalities wherein the
(Re)Positioning the ‘Other’ 51
transformed subjects concerned move away from their assump
tions, the pertinence to study the way in which canons are formed
and how they need to be reviewed from the women’s perspectives,
becomes important.
Maharashtra has been a base for several revolutionary and re
formist movements including the Dalit movement. The roots of
the same had far-reaching consequences in other parts of the country
as well. Dalit literature forms the backbone of Indian literature
today and has enlivened it from the stereotypes it had relegated to
in the last few decades. The Dalit movement owes a lot to the
Black emancipation struggle in America just as the Black activists
identify themselves with the Dalits. Therefore, the thematic con
cerns of writers from both groups can be assessed and evaluated by
comparing and contrasting them. Equally significant is the litera
ture produced by women from both groups who tend to be the
most marginalized, and the significant ‘other’. Their struggle for a
platform entails the feminist consciousness of legitimizing their
rights as women and enables one to understand the universal nature
of struggle on the part of the oppressed and underprivileged of any
nation of the world.
This article dwells on an interesting area of literature—the African
American women’s writing and the Dalit women’s writing from
Maharashtra. By drawing parallels from both literatures, the
article attempts a holistic, humanistic and gendered understand
ing of oppression of ‘otherness’ and how it necessitates the whole
process of honest creation that underscores the need and impor
tance of compassion and mutual tolerance. Further addressing
women’s position with specific focus on the Black feminist and the
Dalit feminist standpoint it traces the prescriptive and normative
potencies in women’s writings, particularly autobiographies that
in a dialogic mode speak of their identities in a language that
dismantles andromorphic modes but also reveal the limitations
of gynocentric discourses for a much broader inclusivity within
feminism. These women carry the mantle of their own liberation
by persecuting the perverse aspects of discrimination.
These women are silenced, ignored and oppressed, not only by
institutions and structures but also by social movements whose
legitimization is largely derived from their opposition to oppression,
namely feminism. Do they contest the patriarchal edifice that as
sociates the privileged exclusivity of males with self-knowledge,
sovereignty and truth while positing women as different, unequal
and the ‘other’? Do they challenge the stereotypical perception of
the marginal? How do these women redefine the self and reposi
tion their ‘otherness’? Do they reinforce the prototypical view of
the male oppressor? Do they reinforce female presentations in their
narratology to highlight positive images? Do they render a more
holistic gendered interpretation ascribing specific meaning to their
experience, challenging the exclusiveness of male superiority that
reinforces gender stereotypes and sexual oppression in some form
or the other? Besides these, several more questions have been raised
and a comparative perspective would certainly make the study in
structive.
II. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND THE CONCEPT

OF ‘OTHERNESS’
Post-structuralists began to transform feminist thinking and auto

biography became the site for major theoretical debates. Women’s
autobiography has to be read as a strategic necessity at a particular
time rather than an end in itself. Shoshana Felman says autobio
graphy and theory have mingled within the same text, acting as a
form of resistance to one another. Autobiography was not just a
useful testing ground for feminist theories but also a productive
space for different notions of a female subject to emerge. To use
one’s experience as representative is to assert its political meaning,
to seek to offer a more general means of reflection on experience
and construction of female subjectivity. The question of course is
who is being represented and who is excluded or silenced.1 Susan
Friedman says autobiographical writings by women directly re
flect crucial differences about women’s sense of ‘self ’. The problem
with ‘individualistic paradigms’ is that they do not take into
account the central role that the collective consciousness of self
plays in the lives of women and minorities. The autobiography
can have a particular epistemological role; rather than construct
ing a self, it could be seen as providing a point of view through
material images, which allows new ways of interrogation of social
reality.2 Quite categorically then, autobiographies as Perkins sug
gests, have a ‘pedagogical’ element, enlightening the readers of the
wrongs in society which altered women’s lives against which they
decided to fight.3
In his book Design and Truth in Autobiography Roy Pascal
theorizes that as a genre it must be a presentation of truth in
characterization, relationship to the world and the point of view it
holds. Autobiographies attempt to resist cultural imperialism by
playing a significant role in decentering hegemonic histories and
subjectivities. It’s not just a testimonial account that is prime con
sideration but the manner in which these accounts are read, inter
preted and located institutionally.4 In his book, American Lives: An
Anthologies of Autobiographical Writing, Robert Sayre says that an
autobiography reveals not just the personal account of its author
but also reveals a lot about the assumed audiences. The focus then
becomes not merely to record ones history of struggle, conscious
ness of oppression, but also how these are recorded, received and
eventually disseminated which is of import.5
The condition of ‘otherness’ accounts for a person’s non-conformity
to social norms and the condition of exclusionary politics indulged
in either by the state or institutions invested with political and
social power. In a state of ‘otherness’ the person is alienated from
the centre and placed at the periphery. It is therefore a move of the
‘other’ from the so-called margins to the centre that repositions
them, marking a tendential movement from centrifugal to centri
petal. Post-colonial scholarship demonstrated the colonizer-
colonized or the dominator-dominated binary wherein the former
set out the task of domination, control and civilizing the latter-
the other. Counter to this, postmodernism perceives it as a pheno
menological and ontological progress for man and society. It is a
celebration of difference that positions the marginal to the centre
of analysis. Looking at the man-woman binary wherein the latter is
always downplayed as the subordinate inferior being. (Re)position
ing, thus, posits a challenge of placing the ‘other’ in proper objective
perspective.
Kelly Oliver says in ‘Witnessing Beyond Imagination’, ‘Being
othered, oppressed, subordinated or tortured affects the person at
the level of subjectivity, her sense of self both as a subject and
agent. Oppression and subjectification render individuals or groups
of people as “other” by objectifying them’ (7). Therefore the patho
logy of oppression creates a sort of need for recognition from the
dominant culture or from their oppressor—the group most unlikely
to recognize them. The only possibility for repair and healing of
the damaged subjectivity for the oppressed would be to bear witness
to the subordination and become a speaking subject. He further
argues that ‘oppression makes people into faceless objects or lesser
subjects. This lack of visage in objects renders them invisible in
political and ethical sense’ (149). The sort of oppression that uses
hypervisiblity and invisibility works on the basis of lack of re
cognition of similarities. And with the advent of recognition of
similarities with the oppressors for the othered groups, this cycle
can be broken. The autobiographical work is an attempt towards
recognition of the self by the oppressor and recognition requires
assimilation of difference into something familiar. Implying that
‘the subject recognizes the other only when he can see something
familiar in the other like when he can see the other is a person
too’ (9).
By un-layering the narratives, women come to terms with lived
and shared reality and seek a renewed image of self. This process of
unravelling the layers becomes the penultimate act of reconstruc
tion of individual identities. Enacting a process of remembering,
they gain an understanding of past and their own self through a
language best suited for the purpose. Gloria Anzaldua says ‘this is
the sacrifice that the act of recreation requires, a blood sacrifice.
For only through the body through the pulling of flesh, can the
human soul be transformed. And for images, words, stories to have
this transformative power they must arise from the human body-
flesh and bone’ (97). Thus, according to her, it is through this
metaphorical process of peeling/incisioning the body that an indi
vidual can identify authentic layers and flesh one is composed of
and thus, come to terms with suffering and be able to narrate one’s
life. Anais Nin maintains ‘. . . we are all engaged in the task of
peeling off false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created
by our families, our culture, our religions. It’s an enormous task
because history of women has been . . . incompletely told.’ This
duality of self, this dichotomous equation between the external
and internal reality is common in women writings.6
III. DALIT WOMEN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

WORLD AND FEMINIST STANDPOINT
Bhiku Parekh opines:

First as a story of a unique self, Autobiography presupposes a culture in
which individuality is valued and cultivated. Unless a culture encourages
men and women to make their choices, form their own views, take risks, look
upon life as a journey and, in general to fashion their lives as they please, one
man’s life is no different from another’s . . . the autobiography is only possible
in a society with well developed historical manner of thinking.7
But since caste system in India is a bitter truth, it can be clearly

conceded that the Indian society by and large has all the nurtur
ing ingredients to disallow an individual self from growing. While
Dalit men are the victims of both caste and class, the women are
victims of triple exploitation—casteism, classism, and sexism. They
are victims of oppression by upper caste men and women as well as
men from their own community. Indian women are considered as
‘other’ but in reality they never had to face the irrepressible caste
system, the neglect and ostracism faced by the Dalit women at
large. From an unprecedented period in Indian history till date,
the Dalits suffer from the stigma of untouchability though it has
been considered a legal offence since 1955. Yet as an institution it
has been kept alive by the use of brutal force by ways of imposing
social disability on the members by reason of birth, occupation
and descent, by institutionalizing biases and repeated denial of
access to higher educational resources, by cruel persecution of
members trying to improve their standards of living, by forcing on
the members—approximation of higher caste codes. Dalits till date
live in dire poverty as landless labourers with no education and
employment opportunities. With a handful having benefited from
government reservation in jobs, the majority is still left to do
menial and degrading tasks. Further, severe economic constraints,
living at the brink of destitution and subsistence, being powerless
and exploited, oppression has inflicted a deep scar on the Dalit psyche.
Drawing inspiration from the Black Panther movement of the
United States which attempted to overthrow the racist white hege
mony a parallel movement of activists/writers grew in Maharashtra
in the 1960s and 1970s. They called themselves the Dalit
Panthers. Though militant in its garb it contributed much to popu
larizing the word ‘Dalit’ that came to mean a newly-acquired self-
respect just like the word ‘Black’ that replaced labels like Negro,
‘nigger’, ‘bitch’, ‘savages’, ‘brutes’. The word Dalit replaced abhorrent
terms like ‘untouchables’, ‘pariahs’, ‘harijans’, etc., and referred to
the hopes, aspirations, endeavours, of a group of people, historically
subjected to socio-economic, political, cultural, religious, and psycho
logical marginalization. Marathi Dalit writing is not something
that simply grew on its own. It is associated with a movement to
bring about a change and therefore, marked by protest, revolt, and
negativism. It does not refer to a caste but stands as a symbol of
change and revolution aiming at creating a counter culture and an
independent identity for Dalits. The writers are not against any
individual caste or group but an unjust establishment that failed
to give them their dues. There are several schools of thought re
garding the origin of Dalit literature. History reveals it was Dr.
B.R. Ambedkar who pioneered Dalit literature. Therefore, it is not a
coincidence that Dalit literary movement began in Maharashtra,
the birthplace of Dr. Ambedkar and the place of his movement for
emancipation of the untouchables. His revolutionary ideas stirred
into action all the Dalits and gave a new meaning to their exist
ence and a new sense of self-respect. Dalit literature therefore is a
literary expression of this renewed consciousness of one’s being.
As for the issue of the Dalit woman, it can be stated plainly that
Dalit identity and politics defines caste identity clearly but resists
when it comes to defining the gender dimensions of caste. Dalit
men, still under the clutches of once oppressively patriarchal Hindu
structure, at times sideline their own women from forums, gather
ings and decision-making. Thus intersecting caste and gender would
mean that women are subjected to most extreme forms of dis
crimination, violence and exploitation. Surprisingly, when the
notion of Dalit identity is floated, it becomes a purely masculine
affair. It’s more of how he suffers/suffered rather than how she
suffers/suffered. Dalit women’s writing today has come of age. It is
tackling issues and problems not spoken of even by their own
fellow men. Their issue has been largely shielded by the feminist
schools too, who homogenize all women’s experience under patri
archy. This diminishes and dilutes the complex Dalit women’s
issue and problematizes the need for a distinction at least hypo
thetically to understand that Dalit women have been victims of
exploitation in several subtle forms. Second, the women’s move
ments and those clamouring for the rights of the marginalized
have been the prerogative of non-Dalit women and therefore Dalit
women writers have taken the lead in articulating their experi
ences first hand through their writings. Contemporary Dalit
women’s writing seems to be grappling with several problems. In
the last two decades there has been an amazing body of literature
as also renewed interest in Dalit women’s literature. The finer nu
ances of day-to-day living, the struggles to survive in a competitive
global market, the persistence of oppression, pain, endurance and
protest of marginalization, pathos and agony of masses divided
and manipulated by leaders and politics, diverse experiences of
individual and community, all find place here.
There has been considerable debate on Indian upper caste
women’s autobiographies and this has been marked by a corre
spondingly lack of critical apparatus or interest in Dalit women’s
writings. Though they have been writing substantially over more
than three decades now, they have been systematically marginalized
in academia. The major reason for this is that their voices chal
lenge the hegemonic superstructures and initiate a debate on
marginality like their male counterparts but a little further than
them. They problematize the very nature of writings of self and
life that the autobiographical genre entails, further posing ques
tions as to what the nature of this self-presented is. What factors
shape their life and living? What is considered worthy of narrati
vizing and what is not worthy of recording? Are these narratives
guided by or inspired by the existing literary paradigms, social
priorities and world-views? It would be interesting to see what the
dichotomy underscored in presenting the Dalit women’s relation
ship with the upper caste women is. What do the Brahminical domi
nated women’s movements sit to gain from assisting and endorsing
the Dalit women’s saga of suffering? These narratives give voice to
the gendered constraints, compulsions and limitations imposed
by both class and caste. Does Literacy set them apart from most of
their Dalit female counterparts? There are other interrelated ques
tions. How do these women writers define and contest the upper
caste definition of their status and that of their community? How
do they view the institutions prevalent in Indian society? Do they
see caste system as an irrevocable reality? What are the modalities
in which they register their resentment, protest against Brahminical
dominations? How do they view gender relations within and out
side the community? What are the ways in which gender is nego
tiated? How do Dalit men and women articulate gender concerns?
An overview of these narratives presents the Dalit women’s in
terpretation of society and implicitly endorses the idea of Dalit
aesthetics—pressing the idea that Dalit cultural production ought
to be collective and committed reflecting issues confronting the
Dalit community.
Baby Tai Kamble’s Jeena Amuche (trs., as The Prisons We Broke,
2009) functions on multiple levels as a personal narrative, caste
narrative and gender narrative. Referring to the leader Dr. Ambedkar,
it seamlessly articulates, ‘If one man could achieve so much with
illiterate people like us, why can’t a crore of us bring in change?’
This tangible consciousness moving from personal account to the
community is a true critique of caste Hinduism and its patronized
superstitions, of violence and brutality against the Dalit women
folk. There is no romanticization of life, no lament or nostalgia,
neither in documentation nor a seething overemphatic tonal note
of infringement. The subtle irony and humour become an em
powering need, an act of resistance to dominance.
Religious codifications that supported the horizontal and vertical
divisions of society, that advocated hierarchies in gender has come
under the feminist razor. Biased caste/religious ideologies have been
singled out to explain women’s subordination. Religious texts were
altered, distorted by interpretations that sought to preserve the
patriarchal traditions and status quo. The manipulation was a struc
tural characteristic of further subordination and assertion of power.
Mukta Sarvagod’s Mitleli Kawade (Closed Doors, 1983) best testi
fies this. As a social worker, she critiques the slavish mentality of
the people and the indifference shown to Dalit women’s education
and emancipation, by using an extremely lucid Mahar dialect.8
There is no sense of passivity and reductionism anywhere in the
narratives, which attempts to dispel hackneyed negative presenta
tions. There is an emphasis on autonomous individual selves as
opposed to stereotypical representation. Urmila Pawar’s Aaidan
(trs., as The Weave of My Life, 2015) takes us to the Konkan region
of Maharashtra where weaving bamboo baskets was a caste-based
occupation, Pawar finds a close connection—one of unspoken
pain—between the weave of the Aaidan her mother made and sold
for living and her writing. Besides memories of untouchability,
discrimination, caste and labour of the community, she presents
the male notion of virginity graphically and highlights sexism both
within and outside the Dalit community. She raises the quesiton
of the ‘visibility’ of Dalit women though women are everywhere.
How far her narrative can be juxtaposed with the narratives of
other Dalit women and how far her gender documentation is rep
resentational could be debatable.
However, caste Hinduism with all its manifestations has been
the central tenet within which debates on women and gender
focus. Dalit women’s narratives like the narratives by men, single
out the oppressive caste Hindu ideology for Dalit subordination.
They do not consider subordination of Dalit women separately
but hold it as an unpardonable dehumanizing force responsible
for Dalit patriarchy. Shantabai Kamble’s Majya Jalmachi Chitarkatha
(The Kaleidoscopic Story of My Life, 1986) recalls the life of a woman
activist endorsing Ambedkar’s vision ‘there is no progress without
education’. The narrative focuses on growing up poor, Dalit and
woman and gives the reader a historical ride to the events that
changed the course of Indian history like the mass conversion to
Buddhism, the active participation of Dalit women in the SCF
(Scheduled Caste Federation) the popular sentiments of the people,
the frustrations felt by the leaders themselves, the changes wrought
into Dalit peoples’ lives with the death of Ambedkar and the dis
mal present.
Shantabai Dani’s Ratradin Amha (For us—These Nights and Days,
1990) encapsulates her journey as a social and political activist
bringing to the forefront the hypocrisy of the right winged funda
mentalists, the deliberate attempts made by them to spark riots
during Namantar (changing the name of Marathwada University
and naming it after Dr. Ambedkar), participation of Dalit women
in the Dalit emancipatory movement despite constraints of caste
and gender and her own commitment to development of educa
tional institutions.
These narratives do not follow the mainstream Marathi male/
female autobiographical tradition or the defining characteristic of
the Dalit male narrative tradition. Some of them were not even
accepted by the male Brahminical critics and elites as part of an
authentic literary tradition when they were written. The rhetoric
used to resist, manipulate, negotiate and expose social, political,
caste and gender oppression, the writing style and the language of
resistance demonstrates a unique Dalit female voice. At times the
rebellious rhetoric accentuates and elevates a distinctive female char
acter thereby rendering a move from the margins. Post-colonial
critics like Gayatri Spivak might raise issues of the subaltern in her
post-colonial feminist discourse, still it must be mentioned that
Dalit literary discourse and study doesn’t wait for validation from
the centre. It has moved away from the margin not because the
centre wanted so but by dint of its own merits and strength.
Kumud Pawde’s Antaspot (Thoughtful Outburst, 1981) presents
the difficulty of choosing untrodden paths for a Dalit woman due
to the biases existing against them. Quite significantly she states,
‘What comes by birth but can’t be cast off by dying—that is caste’
(Pawde, 1992: 87).
The objective self analysis done through literature finds expres
sion in these autobiographies. It presents an honest attempt to
search the right and wrong, the suffocating and stifling aspects of
one’s living. A Dalit woman writer doesn’t just hold society or
patriarchy as primarily responsible, but reflects on how far and to
what extent she herself can also be responsible for her state. This is
explicitly explored by her in the autobiography. The quest for self
undertaken by a Dalit woman is never singular but has twin
dimensions. First, she had to suffer immensely due to social
disparities and second, in the name of society and culture, the
exploitation she faced or continues to face as a woman. And it is
precisely this perspective that her literary creation takes. It may be
close to feminist discourses and yet it is different. Their multiple
‘mother tongues’ or ‘dialecticals’ allowed Dalit women writers to
formulate a language catering to their literary voice which repre
sented the Dalit women’s ability to speak and write. This em
powered them in an oppressive system that forever wanted them
to remain voiceless and uneducated.
The Dalit feminist consciousness is no more nascent as it was
assumed and writings pouring out from different corners of the
country only proves its effervescence and vibrancy. Dalit women’s
writing challenges elitist writings in content, form, purpose, moti
vation, ideology, experiential reality and aesthetics. It is shaped by
powerlessness and it is through writing that it asserts and arrives at
articulating the self, this self which is dynamic. They are not just
caste centred discourses dealing with exclusionary politics but hold
a lot more, even if there is a predominant note of despair. Aestheti
cally, it achieves a lot because the narrator as a subject is decentral
ized and the personal narrative moves into the impending debate
on caste and then moves to that of the nation. Retrospectively,
what gets projected is the Dalit world’s outcry and the Dalits’
critique of the nationalist ideology as the margins begin to ques
tion the boundaries in their move towards the centre. Also, through
the graphic projections of the seamier side of the Dalit world, it
draws attention to the subhuman level of existence setting a tone for
reverse aesthetics that works through ugliness, repulsion and dis
tancing. It becomes a legitimate way of expression as the structural
components hold them together.
Literary criterion ought to be fluid to accommodate the chang
ing times, mores, patterns and literary values which are subject
to change. Dalit women writers are more concerned with new
formulations of aesthetics and myths especially in times when there
are internal dissensions within the movement and multiple biases.
The Malayalam poet and critic K. Satchidanandan says that these
writers challenge the norms of phallocentric discourses, interrogate
patriarchal canons and try to forge idioms adequate to express the
specifically feminine experiences. Women’s writing is no monolith,
it has enough space for regional variations, specific geniuses of
language, diverse traditions, a large variety of forms and different
approaches to experience.9
In their narratives there is no escapist tendency or feeling of
remorse about themselves but a full on approach of confronting
and addressing subtle issues plaguing the society and community
at large. There is also a conscious attempt to assimilate with feminist
movement at the same time also trying to form an independent
ideological construct that bears kinship to subjugated, suppressed,
marginal women’s groups across the globe.
There has been a hiatus as one observes a silent gap so to say and
then an effulgence of Dalit women’s narratives in the post-Panther
period. This historical distancing allows an objective retrospection
to individual life experiences, thereby offering a possibility of
negotiating with the earlier generations who have lived in the
turbulent phase of personal and political history. Their desire to
reposition their ‘otherness’ is born out of their desire for an eman
cipated life and in the process, they come to terms with reality.
They render subjective truth showcasing certain fidelity to both
memory and history. These writers relive their experiences as though
they are not finished with centuries of oppression and age-old
prejudices towards them. There is an immediacy in their writings
which has not been adequately addressed both within the feminist
and Dalit discourses. The stereotypes and ostracisms encountered,
greatly amplify their cause for reporting and reposting. Their mul
tiple marginalization gives rise to a culture of testimony offering
opportunity to showcase themselves as representative subjects who
have a targeted listener. In the entire process of remembering and
representing their lives, they forge a bond with the readers. In
bearing testimony, they commit themselves to the act of reconcili
ation with the incomprehensible past and the unintelligible present.
IV. BLACK WOMEN WRITING AUTOBIOGRAPHY
AND FEMINIST AESTHETICAL DISCOURSE
Autobiographies have been a commonly used genre by African

American women to tell stories about themselves in an attempt
initially towards acceptance within larger frame of humanity and
then as a means to share one’s history and culture. These narratives
helped the later generations to define their self, and place their
‘otherness’ more explicitly. The only way to shun negative images
and sexist stereotypes as ‘fat bimboes’, doting mammies, ‘seductive
temptresses’, ‘unattractive’ cooking, cleaning, ‘big breasted mammies’,
‘manipulative control freaks’, was to create positive self-images and
identities and rupture the prejudicial distorted representations.
This led to the necessity to challenge and reinvent themselves; and
with the establishment of the autobiographical genre it became a
therapeutic process. Essentially, criticized as self-indulgent, and
narcissistic genre, self-ethnographic writings were ignored as they
were considered too personal and subjective to be of any value.10
However, a renewed interest has made these writings a major site
for theoretical discourse. Nevertheless, there is an ontological and
epistemological link between all forms of life writings as stated
earlier, be it diaries, memoirs, letters, biographies, autobiographies,
essays, or personal notes. Early women’s narratives were more per
sonalized accounts but for the Black women dealing strictly from
the personal angle it is problematic as it is just as important to
write about political issues of their times. At times they fail to
unleash rage and anger at their experience of marginalization,
harassment, hostilities associated with racial bigotry and instead
focus more towards diplomacy, forgiveness, and humility. Audre
Lorde writes:
Women of color in America have grown up within a symphony of anger, at
being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive, it is in
spite of a world that takes for granted our lack of humanness, and which hates
our very existence outside of its service. And I say symphony rather than
cacophony because we have had to learn to orchestrate those furies so that they
do not tear us apart. We have had to learn to move through them and use them
for strength and force insight within our daily lives. Those of us who did not
learn this difficult lesson did not survive. And part of my anger is always libation
for my fallen sisters.11
Black women have been writing autobiographies since the eigh

teenth century onwards. The ultimate quest for freedom, digni
fied living and to acquire a meaningful ‘self ’ by overcoming racial
and gender oppression has had substantial repercussions in the
construction of identities. Autobiographies reflect an important
literary tradition that has extended to present times adding con
stantly to the grand African American literary canon as well as
making a significant inclusion in the Black aesthetical discourse.
Alfred Kazin says it uses fact as its strategy.12 It is a history of self
and exhibits concerns for the self as a character. William Howarth
has tried to isolate certain commonalities in all autobiographies,
namely the character that designates the narrator, she/he is the
one who tells the story and acts within the book as opposed to the
distanced author who remains outside it. Second, he talks of tech
niques that include stylistic concerns and third, his concern is the
thematic side which addresses personal issues and socio-cultural
political issues that tend to affect the personal.13
Black women’s autobiographies especially, are speaking the truth
about themselves, about the lives of the Black women and address
ing issues from a Black woman’s standpoint, celebrating both self
and womanhood even more vigorously than their literary godmoth
ers thus forming a chain to the literary tradition set by them. A
significant addition to variety in this genre is seen post-1960s. Women
writers have moved out of the collusive Black male presence to
forge an independent identity in life and letters and to explicitly
articulate who and what they were and presently are, in whichever
possible literary medium available. Their autobiographies have
cherished certain beliefs and have built certain images of self that
in clear terms spell out what it means to be a poor, Black and a
woman in America. The multiplicity in regard to self and identity
and demythysization of certain acceptable mores and social con
ventions of living that these autobiographies reflect, are not
mere documentations or toning down of history, neither are they
propagandist texts because to call them so would be oversimplifi
cation and reductionist politics undermining their complex web
of living.
Since a large part of narratorial discourse has been autobiogra
phies by white men and women, and Black men and their conflict
with hegemonic structures, the Black women’s autobiographies
not only challenge white feminist pedagogical formations but also
challenge the Black male assumptions of defining Black experience
only from the male point of view. One has to look beyond the
assumptions of narratives of pain and suffering as narratives of anger
and protest against inhumanities, injustices perpetrated on their
race or as aesthetically satisfying and sociologically illuminating
works that have acquired significant space in Black women’s studies.
Emerging from the dialectics of self and society and self and com
munity or as individual cases of oppression, they do forge the right
to stand up and speak for themselves as individuals, and also as
spokespersons for their race. Communicating group oppression
and the gender concerns, they challenge the singular communitarian
notion or Black male defined concept of humanity. Thus they re
define a sound aesthetics based on all-inclusiveness of Black expe
rience.
Do they contest and feel the need to redefine the ‘white’ defi
nitions of their social status and that of their community? Do they
perceive racism as an irrevocable reality? What are the strategies
and modes of survival adopted by them? What are the remedies
suggested by them for the breaking down of societal barriers
including that of race and gender? How do they view gender within
and without and how do they negotiate it for the greater good of
the community? What are their modes of registering resentment
and dissent against the dominating forces? Why do they feel the
complex urge to problamatize sexism and racism even in recent
times? From the point of view of narratology, do they further de
velop strategies of survival and preclude the dynamics of resistance
to oppressive structures still operational in the American society at
large? How do they reposition themselves and their otherness? The
answers to all these questions would be resolved by taking a stock
of selected Black women’s autobiographical writings.
Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Her
self (1861) deals with sexuality and slavery from a woman’s point
of view, rendering a harrowing account of her life and speaking in
a dialogic mode in what W.E.B. Dubois may call ‘double con
sciousness’. She question’s womanhood and its validity for either
slaves or white women especially southern white women who were
expected to be pure but they often married a man knowing that he
is the father of many little slaves. She subverts the notion of purity
and submissiveness, embodied within the cult of true woman
hood and stereotypes of the Black whore and white lady by dem
onstrating that it was a myth. Hazel Carby notes that Jacobs’s
narrative, problematizes assumptions that dominated abolitionist
literature in general and male slave narratives in particular, assump
tions that linked slave women to illicit sexuality and further
‘established that hers was a voice of representative Black female
slave but also made an appeal to the sisterhood of all women’.14
To quote Jacobs ‘It’s not to awaken sympathy for myself that I
am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do it to kindle
a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in
bondage, suffering as I once suffered’ (Incidents, 29). Sidonie Smith
in her book states that, ‘Self interpretation emerges rhetorically
from the autobiographies engagement with the fictive stories of
selfhood and inscribes a version of female subjectivity and differ
ence that challenges the “naive conflation of male subjectivity and
human identity” from the polyphonic voices of discourse. Writers
like Jacobs used a language that unravels the “literary prowess of
subversive tools of communication”.’15
Autobiography becomes a framework for cultural assessment and
intellectual history. They distill the story of the self being more
representational than individual, more a celebration of a community
where individual predicament of the writer as a subject dissolves
to become collective predicament of the race. Thus collective iden
tities gain prominence. The period following the Civil War saw
Anna Julia Cooper’s A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the
South employing ‘we’ and ‘us’ to create a kind of bonding, connot
ing a collectivity. Her use of rhetoric is a subtle resistance. Martha
Cutter says ‘Cooper employs a musical heterogeneous speech that
releases the plethora of repressed discourses’. . . .16 She celebrates
women’s role as moral stabilizers at home, and speaks in favour of
women’s entry into the public arena and confounds the myth of
the cult of true womanhood that disallows such entry. Her text is
a heteroglossic continuation of linguistic experimentation and
stands clearly in the tradition of Jacobs and others before her. It’s a
social discourse establishing Black women’s relevance in advance
ment of society and a manifestation of her belief that the touch
stone for a new society would be African American women. Ida
Wells Barnett’s Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida Wells
(1970) has a justification ‘it is for the young people who have so
little of our race’s history . . . that I am . . . writing about myself . . . I
am all the more constrained to do this because here is such a lack
of authentic race history . . . written by the negro himself . . . our
youth are entitled to facts of race history which only participants
can give. . . .’ (4-5) thus solidifying her stand that only those who
have experienced slavery are qualified chroniclers of its realities.
Many writers and scholars have focused on the hegemonic op
pressions being responsible for restricting voices of nineteenth-
century Black women writers. But none have fully investigated the
socio-political linguistic ways in which these silenced voices spoke
up and challenged the mainstream literary consensus that sought
to exclude them. These women created new forms. While their
male counterparts used conciliatory chastizing rhetoric, it was still
not a mother-tongue rhetoric as they were not subjected to gender-
based oppressions, especially sexual abuse. Therefore, there is a
special women’s way of approaching the language, of communi
cating. This does not suggest biological essentialism but that she is
a woman and a product of specific cultural socio-political environ
ment. Be it Jacobs, Keckley, Cooper or Wells, they use a dialectic
of empowerment while operating in the mainstream literary tradi
tion, embracing their act of writing as resistance.
Their study reveals how autobiographical traditions tended to
minimalize Black women’s lives and how oppressive structures
worked to keep these women’s voices at the fringe of both society
and literary traditions. There is a development of a paradigm ap
plicable to all Black women’s writings who self-consciously create
through their works a Black woman’s voice that offers a multi
layered critique of gendered roles. The autobiographies are repre
sentative of their engagement of socio-political issues. Bell Hooks
writes, ‘our words are not without meaning, they are acting, a
resistance. Language is also a place of struggle technique’ (Talking
Black 161). Zora Neale Hurston’s Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)
uses manipulative diversionary tactics to avoid self-disclosure and
challenges expected linguistic styles. She disrupts the Black male
dominated literary tradition that emerged during the new Negro
era. Rendering a strong sense of her importance as her mother
encouraged her to ‘jump at de sun’, she dismisses her grandmother’s
words ‘de nigger woman is de mule uh de world so far as ah can
see’. The women in her autobiography are not weak, submissive or
passive victims of masculine abuse unlike women created within
the cult of womanhood or African American counter myth. Humour
finds place as a masking technique.
Post-1960s America saw a great turmoil. There were protest
marches, riots, right from racial segregation, inequality, unemploy
ment, lack of educational opportunities, overcrowded neighbour
hoods with lack of sanitation, undernourishment. Based on Gandhian
principles of non-violence, non-cooperation, civil disobedience and
peaceful demonstrations’, Martin Luther King Jr. a Baptist minister
led the crusade. Integrationist stand was over and a new Black
nationalism emerged to challenge the assimilationist tendencies.
Leaders like Malcolm X called for Black separatism and self-
sufficiency. A new pride in Blackness arose. Black writers injected
political content into the new forms and adapted them to Black
talk. Thus a significantly identifiable Black language was popular
ized. While all this was going on, the African American women’s
presence was marginal, consistently ignored and their contribution
underrated. And therefore they searched for subtle ways and means
to define themselves and be visible.
Nikki Giovanni’s partial autobiography Gemini: An Extended
Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a
Black Poet (1971) chronicles the life passages of a young Black
woman imbued with sensibilities of the 1960s and at a time when
many believed that intellectualism eroded the spirit. Giovanni wrote
‘I couldn’t see anywhere to go intellectually and thought I’d take a
chance on feeling’. She continues to live by the philosophy that
one needs to learn from one’s mistakes and go on in life.
We don’t ask the sun to consider the pleasures of the moon; why should
female and Black humans be constantly asked how we feel about our essence?
Those who ask are in essence trying to reassure themselves that they are
inherently better off to have been born a male and preferably white. I wouldn’t
be other than what I am because for one I can’t; I can only fool myself into
thinking I can. And for two: I like myself. (Evans, 207)
Maya Angelou’s serial autobiography is intrinsically linked from

the slave history down to popular times. Dolly McPherson calls
Angelou’s double consciousness—a vision of self, containing both
African and American components. It is through her identifica
tion with Africa that she finds the context in which to explore her
selfhood and also reaffirm the meaning of motherhood.17 The Heart
of a Woman offers a point of view of one who has dedicated herself
to the service of humanity, who is in the forefront of political
storms, protest marches, in feminist movements and confidently
offers direction to the younger generation.
These narratives do not follow the white male autobiographical
tradition nor do they accept the differing and defining characteris
tics of Black male slave tradition. When written they weren’t ac
cepted as part of an authentic literary tradition by white men.
Their rebellious rhetoric and style accentuated and elevated a dis
tinctive Black female self, moving her from the margins towards a
central discourse on race and gender. From the literary standpoint
they constitute an extensive and influential literary tradition. Their
widespread consumption and continuing prominence and presence
only testifies the power of these powerful texts. There are gaps and
contradictions on key issues of women’s life as parenting, relation
with people who supported their fight against injustices and unjust
systems or the problems they encountered within Black militant
organization. However, they do set the record straight by writing
their lives from their own subjective point of view.
Western feminism paid scant attention to the question of race.
Racism was seen as secondary to patriarchy and the problem of the
non-white. Some preferred to be colour blind so as not to see the
difference and act upon it. Audre Lorde wrote, ‘By and large within
the women’s movement today, white women focus upon their
oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual prefer
ence, class and age. This is pretense to a homogeneity of experience
covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist’ (116).
Often white feminists want to minimize racial difference by tak
ing comfort in the fact that all women and/or lesbians suffer a
similar sexual-gender oppression. They are usually annoyed with
the actuality of ‘differences’, want to blur racial differences, want
to smooth things out. They seem to want a complete totalizing
identity. Yet in their eager attempt to highlight similarities, they
create or accentuate ‘other’ differences such as class. These unac
knowledged or unarticulated differences further widen the gap
between white and coloured (Christian, 295). This tendency to
appropriate third world voices is aptly summed by Ania Loomba
who argues ‘Literature written on both sides of the colonial divide
often absorbs, appropriates and inscribes aspects of the “other”
culture, creating new genres, ideas and identities in inverting
or challenging dominant means of representation and colonial
ideologies’ (70-1).
Chandra Talpade Mohanty uses the term ‘third world women’
interchangeably with women of colour and argues that what seems
to constitute women of colour or Third World women as a viable
oppositional alliance is a common context of struggle rather than
colour or racial identifications. It is the Third World women’s re
sistance to racist and imperialist structure that would constitute
their political commonality. She argues that Western feminisms
appropriate the literary productions of the Third World women
as singular monolithic subject (51). She describes the literary
productions of average Third World women as one who leads an
essentially truncated life based on her gender and being the Third
World. This is in contrast to the self-representation of Western
women as educated, modern, having control over their own bodies
and sexualities (65) when this statement is analysed in relation to
Black American women, we find that their voices are silenced, their
histories erased and modes of resistance ignored. They are moul
ded to fit into an essentialized model of the Western understand
ing of the silenced, oppressed and victimized. There is mutual
incompatibility between Western feminists and Black feminists
because of the way the former inform their group. While the former
are grounded in Western values, thought and ideology, these are
different from those of Blacks with African and African American
tradition. The problems surface because of their resistance to cul
tural conversions and preconceived notion of superiority.
Alice Walker’s In Search of our Mother’s Gardens (1967) is a blend
of personal statements, essays and lectures which are interdiscipli
nary and define a womanist as a Black feminist, an outrageous and
audacious woman interested in learning and questioning all things.
She is also responsible for loving other women sexually and non-
sexually; one who is able to appreciate and prefer women’s culture,
emotional strength and flexibility, a woman wanting to know more
and in greater depth than considered ‘good’ for one. This theory is
committed to the survival and wholeness of the entire race whether
man or woman.
Some critics like Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis state that the
women’s movement is not monolithic, homogeneous or central
ized on one set of struggles. It includes a wide range of groups
operating in different contexts.18 In other words women’s move
ments and liberation ideologies need to be dynamic and constantly
evolving. Houston Baker puts it in this way, ‘The convergence of
feminist and Afro American theoretical formulations offer the most
challenging nexus for scholarship in the coming years. One aspect
of that development will be the continued reshaping of the literary
canon, as forgotten, neglected, or suppressed texts are rediscovered.’19
Patricia Hill Collins and Hooks assert that the particular perspect
ives that Black women have, can contribute and expand the theo
retical and epistemological field of women’s studies in future.
Patricia Hill Collins introduced the sociological theory of ‘matrix
of domination’.20 The sisterhood within the women of colour
became larger to encompass community and larger humanity in
the later years. There was also a growing realization that without
the active cooperation of their men these battles for themselves
may still be far-fetched. Therefore, the Black man has not been the
only enemy for the Black women. The question is often asked about
the Black woman’s loyalty to the Black men from their peculiar
enclosures of sex and the question is not without merit says Gloria
Wades Gayles, ‘While it is necessary to struggle against sexism
of Black men it is extremely important not to perceive them as
primordial or major oppressors of the Black woman’.21
Black aesthetics too grew out of the Black Arts movement that
emphasized on the rejection of white aesthetical parameters and
restoring it with Black aesthetics that entailed creation of new forms,
new values, new myths, new symbols and legends and while creat
ing one’s own aesthetics, be accountable to the people. The social
and ethical values cannot be segregated from the conceptualization
of purported aesthetics. Thus Black aesthetics for Black women is
inherent in the human values, in humanism. It entails destruction
of the value system based on oppression and marginalization and
seeks freedom from the same, demanding a definite Black feminist
point of view.
Black feminist criticism does the work of theorizing Black
women’s social positioning and literary representations of Black
female experience. It prioritizes the intersectionality between race,
class and gender, addresses multiple oppressions experienced by
the women of colour and repudiates any feminist analysis that
does not take these factors into account. Post-colonial feminists
criticize Western feminists because they have a history of universal
izing women’s issues. Awareness of sexism is visible in the academia
but the popular culture continues to be extremely sexist. Also the
movement must branch and extend support to Third World women
and alternate feminisms like the Dalit feminism in India. They
should search for ways and means of encouraging a dialogue with
alternate feminisms and for development of ideas. The final goal
of Black feminism is to end sexism, to affirm their difference, to
celebrate Black women and women of colour by recognizing history
and validating it as being both valuable and complex at the same
time and aspire for greater liberation to develop theory and action
which strikes back at sexism.
V. COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES
A comparative analysis of disparate cultures can be more enterprising

and rewarding for it enhances mutual understanding of different
cultures, peoples, their experiences against injustice and at the
same time provides a forum for debate against ongoing perpetra
tion of injustices on humanity, endorsing the need for humanism
beyond boundaries. Thus a sound theoretical framework based on
strong intertextuality to inform our subjectivities can come into
existence.
The American Blacks and Indian Dalits are both members of a
closed group in their countries, both victims of peculiar institu
tions and the caste/class structures—the former of race and the
latter of untouchability. Race is biological and therefore natural
while caste is of man’s making. None could change what they were.
Literatures by women form a separate and significant category. It
is assumed that since the Black/Dalit man is free, the woman too
has to be free. Increasingly, the metaphor of Blackness/Dalitness
and freedom are always used in the context of the man. Therefore,
reading women’s narratives both with and without any political
ideology stands the chance of making just a mockery of their pain
and suffering. These writings bring new insights into male domi
nated institutions of academia assuming importance in the con
struction of a curriculum and pedagogy.
Both Dalit and African American women interrogate their si
lencing within the women’s movements and their representations
within Dalit/Black literary cultural productions, dismantling the
notion of being spoken for. But without subtle interventions from
subaltern historians, some of these narratives might be lost; at the
same time the essentializing tendencies adopted by intellectuals
may relegate some intrinsically valuable voices to total silencing.
Therefore, the act of representation has to be responsible. Audre
Lorde speaks of the responsibility every member of the oppressed
groups should entail in order to bring a cessation to the cycle of
repression and violence. It is not enough to resist the oppressor
but one should hear voices of the silenced among the oppressed.
The represented—both as a subaltern participant and intellectual
critic—becomes crucial in his role because being ignorant of the
silenced would only abet in perpetuation of further marginalization.
The two literatures encompass the foundational premise and
issues of human existence which is human life, dignity and identity.
Humanity and suppression, resistance, humiliation and protest, a
comparative close reading expostulates their inter-literariness and
worth as literary texts of paramount parallelism. This linguistic
discourse is an important aspect of ‘oppositional consciousness’
that Sandoval talks of in Methodology of the Oppressed.22
Dalit women are the ‘other’ of the other. Their writings, like
that of the Black women entails pain, suffering, oppression, pro
test, negation and uphold principles of humanism. At times, like
Black literature, Dalit literature too has not been spared of stric
tures. The reason is that Dalit writings have been successful in
making a positive impact on Indian literature and has enriched it
the way Black writing has enriched American literature. Clinging
to the revolutionary transformational ideology, like the Dalit male
writers, who wrote with a consciousness that ‘I have to say some
thing’, the Dalit women too wrote with a feeling that ‘I have a lot
to say’. Dalit women writers’ ‘Dalitism’ is the ‘double consciousness’
‘double-edged sword’ like the Black women writers’ ‘Blackness’.
They are doubly marginalized for being Dalit and a woman. For
years together oppressed, despised, accursed, and subjugated, her
pain and suffering is given panoramic representation in her short
stories, autobiographies and poetry.
The feminist critiques of both the movements demonstrate the
complexities of social movements. Slavery and racism in America
have their parallels in untouchability and casteism in India. Though
both the countries have independent trajectories of historical,
political, economic and cultural development, both the Dalit and
Black societies are marked by extreme inequalities to their men
and largely to their womenfolk. Both societies are exclusive sufferers
of slavery and untouchability though they may not be the only
marginal groups in their respective countries. Nevertheless, it’s
important to study them not because of the historical exchanges
between the two oppressed groups but they tend to inform the
received interpretations of the histories of these two countries. Com
parative perspectives enable a re-examination of our subjectivities
towards understanding of certain group histories.
It is interesting to see how the two groups that are the ‘othered’
in their respective countries, negotiate identities both within and
without groups in relation to sexism and exclusion within femi
nism. The issues pertaining to both these groups are no doubt
critical and certain differences are bound to be there but the same
ness lies in their acquisition of a Dalit and Black consciousness;
their invaluable role in the making of caste and racial conscious
ness and fomenting a national identity which cannot be under
mined. Race, class, caste and gender are crucial informants not
just for women of colour but the Dalit women of India and elite
white feminism or West inspired Indian feminism cannot address
the crisis specificity of these respective groups. As at times they are
carriers of the dominant ideological forces and therefore suppressive
and subversive and hence all women cannot be Dalit or Black and
put in a monolithic category.
Life-writing born within the private sphere can serve as a means
of resisting silence and speaking back to the oppressors to impact
change. Thus in giving access to the reader into the private realm
of dominance and marginal existence, they open up spaces where
readers can enter the realm of oppression, of ‘otherness’. However,
this space is a vulnerable zone for manipulation as the oppression
described in the narrative can be co-opted and used as a weapon
by the reader to battle against it. And the writers too run into the
danger of reiteration and reinstating the same stereotypes and power
structures they have been trying to dismantle.
Images of Dalit women silenced, oppressed and lashing out at
Dalit patriarchy and sexism, have garnered particular interest amidst
a group of upper caste feminists. These narratives that should dis
mantle stereotypes end up strengthening it against the Dalit male
in particular thereby mitigating the historical burden of the upper
caste man as the primary oppressor to some extent. Such accounts
also become soft weapons co-opted as propaganda against the Dalit
man. Whitlock categorically states that ‘histories and politics elicit
and shape the marketing of subaltern narratives and hence only
the “historically accurate” histories are available for consumption’.
‘Testimony is carefully managed, the soft agendas of the propa
ganda swerve towards hard line of censorship.’23 At times even those
feminists who romanticize, are part of the othering and homog
enizing process. Do they reach or achieve an effective iteration of
the marginal women’s resistance or reproduce stereotypes serving
certain interest of the upper caste men and women? Interestingly,
the women writers at both ends are caught in a tricky double
bound situation. If they write of resistance their writing is ren
dered non-existent within the male dominated sagas and if they
write of the Dalit/Black women’s oppression by their men, they
feed the mainstream image of the Dalit/Black man as rapist, the
primordial oppressor. The mainstream process privileges and sup
ports texts that outrightly document and denounce the villainy of
the men on either side and the victimization of Dalit women under
them. It is the same case with Black women, where editors will
publish books that project the Black man in the most ignoble
manner, authenticating mythification of the Black man over actu
alization and real history. These so-called ‘real’ stories are indeed
dangerously feeding the white imagination and furthering the dis
appearance of the authentic Black female. As a result, individual
histories of these women get erased and they remain immobile
existing only in their role as Black or Dalit women. In Mohanty’s
words ‘they exist as it were outside history’.24
These women are caught between two polarities where on one
hand they feel the need to lash out against sexism of their own
men but also, on other hand wish to stand by them in view of the
fact of their common history of marginalization. Therefore any
struggle for self-determination cannot be fought without the active
cooperation of male members of their community. There is no
uncertainty or confusion regarding these polarities. On one hand
they admonish token inclusions within feminist movements and
demand exclusivity and subjective redressal to issues rather than
dilutionary politics entailed in the word ‘sisterhood’ and on the
other, they stand in solidarity and support of women’s groups re
presenting humanitarian cause. The panoramic view of life offered
by women at both ends through their works, dismisses sweeping
generalizations of being one homogeneous oppressed category.
Post-1980s and 1990s saw a new wave of feminist writings where
the Dalit woman’s absence was interrogated by Dalit women both
in non-Dalit writings and Dalit male narratives although the latter
gave them some space albeit apologetically. And further universal
ization was rejected in favour of particularity of Dalit women’s
experience. This necessitated the perception of differentness felt
due to the homogenizing tendencies at work of women’s groups
and the dilutionary reductionist politics of Dalit patriarchy. These
writings by Dalit women voiced concerns shared by all women
across boundaries. Almost similar was the case of Black women.
The negative internalizations by their men made them oppressors
and their racial frustration in public domains made them target
their own women as the cause thus relegating them to a subservient
state. White women’s organizations didn’t feel the urge to priori
tize the marginalization of Black women as they were too busy
with generalizations. Violence was a major issue both sides which
was never addressed. These two groups have different world-views,
different experiences, different agendas, different strategies and
narratorial approaches. Their collective consciousness accommodates
several social concerns questioning not just their victimization alone
but of all women irrespective of caste, class, and race.
The suffragette and abolitionist cause in the West did give women
space while the reformatory movements in India allowed women
to come into public sphere. However, in the former case white
women and their rights gained ascendance and in the latter case
the Indian women social reformers turned out to be largely from
the upper caste/upper class social strata and their engagement was
mostly elitist and therefore such movements failed to take into
account contribution made by the marginal castes who felt that
the nationalistic movement for freedom from colonial domination
may later reciprocate and prove beneficial for their own emancipa
tion from caste domination and age-old oppression. However, she
was nowhere in the picture. The Black women too felt similarly
deceived by the feminist movements. Similarly, the Panther move
ments of both Dalits and Blacks had a pronounced gender. The
Black Panther movement and Dalit Panther movements never
acknowledged their women’s presence. They were so obsessed with
gaining radical change for their people that complex women’s
issues within the race and caste were ignored. And male counter
parts at both end became the patriarchal spokespersons against
racism and casteism.
The poetics of liberation is the unifying link between the two
literatures discussed. There is some similarity in content, purpose,
aesthetics, literary forms, themes and expression. Dalit women’s
poetics has been impacted by Black poetics and aesthetical develop
ment and also owes to a certain extent to feminism and feminist
politics within the country. For them Black was beautiful and ‘Dalit’
meant total revolution. Dalit Women’s literature revolutionizes
and liberates form, language, idiom, phrases, expressions and their
approaches are also bound to be revolutionized in the manner of
their male counterparts.
VI. CONCLUSION
Critical and theoretical interest in historically situating American

and Indian literature has not only opened up revisiting and re
reading canonical texts but has poured life into texts ignored,
marginalized and minimized. These narratives have a female pro
tagonist who enriches the given conceptualization of history and
literature and thus our notions of selfhood and ‘otherness’. Women’s
body has been a site for contestation for patriarchy. Being in a
vulnerable position where gender constructs deems man as the
standard or ideal for humanity. Reversely it renders a woman as
the defiant or the defective man. The prevalent gender conceptuali
zation positions women as the ‘other’ in relation to man. However,
Dalit women and Black women are in a state of triple jeopardy,
thrice othered as Blacks/Dalits, as women othered by women’s
groups and as Black/Dalit women-othered by their own men. The
autobiography has attracted a lot of attention as a genre and women’s
narratives particularly have been read, received, interpreted, and
debated upon. Narratives are rooted in the testimonial nature of
their subjugation and suppression as women and as Dalit and Black.
The narrativization of their ‘otherness’ beseeches representation of
an emancipated self and the misplaced ‘other’ in the reconciliatory
act of updating the past to make sense of their present.
Repressive and suppressive histories require oral or written testi
monies. It is the ability of the writer to transform events out of
the memory device into a chronological whole necessitating the
complex process of verbalization of experiences of marginality ex
perienced and observed in an attempt to recover and consolidate
one’s position as the significant ‘other’.
The very articulation of the experience of marginalization at times
makes it crucial to leave significant gaps and omissions which are
the unspoken gaps of pain, anguish about which can neither be
spoken, written or articulated. The psychological trauma of suffer
ing, then becomes the driving inertia of the narratorial discourses
of these women writers.
Despite constitutional provisions and laws, the ongoing and
impending debate facing the Black and the Dalit women have not
been adequately addressed thus triggering the need for narratives
to be written. Similarly, the reductionist stereotypes prevalent in
the West and East, the male dominated literary world both ends
make them rewrite about ‘otherization’ and the psychic interiori
zation of marginalization and suppression. This narrativization in
redefining self-(re)positions the ‘other’ and becomes a therapeutic
healing mechanism for old scars left by the inhuman perpetration
of race-caste-gender discriminations.
Contemporary feminists question the male privilege of articu
lating experience at the same time established religious texts are
interrogated for their authenticity vis-à-vis oppressed women and
stand to challenge the same. Emergences of feminisms within the
marginal groups challenge multiple levels of oppression and
reflects the decisiveness of women to carry their banner challenging
hegemonic conformism. The Black feminist and the Dalit feminist
standpoint provide an alternative to the notion of Black/ Dalit woman
hood, thus establishing a bridge that ensures the cessation of mono
lithic constructs (which are misleading) and exclusionary politics;
thereby giving women writers on both sides freedom to reflect and
articulate independently.
The change in organizational methods of women’s development
can be inextricably linked to the rise of the varied feminist con
sciousness and their struggle for equality marking change in attitude
towards them. The pluralistic context stands in stark contrast to
the monolithic context wherein the cultural productions lie in the
monopolizing tendencies of a single group, whereas in the former
different ideologically varied groups coexist to compete with each
other; the later construct is more tuned to a straight jacketed fashion
where social transformation becomes problematic. Thus absence
of a democratic and intellectually pluralistic environment makes
the oppressed a neglected group. Therefore, what it means to be
Dalit/Black women within the larger framework of nation becomes
the focal point of contestation. These women are relegated as other
and devalued because they are the ‘other’ in their own groups and
communities. A notion of a monolithic community disallows their
heterogeneity in pluralist societies.
Speaking of the national and cultural identity formulations of
the two peripheral groups, it can be stated that Indian literatures
and literatures in the US are heterogeneous, polyphonic and placing
them as monolithic units would be reductionist distortion as they
cannot be reduced to a single ideological concept as divergent cul
tural constructs are at play and contestation is the driving force.
Postmodernism attacks the essentializing tendencies of cultures sup
porting mono-culturation. Lyotard says it is incredulity towards
meta-narratives that displaces discourse of metanarratives or grand
narratives and argues for cultural space that is populated by little
narratives. These narratives are governed by their own constituting
rules and independent of extra narration rules for articulation. Such
discursive forms are not arranged in a hierarchical order but al
lowed to flourish alongside each other in cultural autonomy. The
point is can they be called ‘little narratives’ anymore. The rhizome
concept propounded by Gilles Deleuze and Guattari speaks of an
open, non hierarchical system, which clearly outlines multicultural
spaces that at once provide a site for contestation in which periphery
is engaged in contestation with the centre. While contestation on
one hand is the raison d’être there is historicity too that aims to recover
lost socio-cultural historical voices. The ongoing translations of
marginalized literatures in India will enhance polyphonicity and
resist structures of domination and marginalization, foreground all
narratives and retrieve lost voices.
Drawing on Bakhtin, an individual is governed by the matrix of
time and space since any movement in space is temporal, any tem
poral experience can be perceived in space. Bakhtin’s chronotopic
‘self ’ invokes a past that may not be eliminated or made redun
dant to mere memories. It continuously reproduces its effects on
the individual’s present and its future. Multicultural synthesis as a
monolithic unit fails as both countries offer space for innumerable
resistances accommodating castes, races, language, gender, regions,
and cultures.
The nationalistic discourse of the marginalized are bound to be
different so also the case with women writings both sides. Dalit
literary creation recreates the chronotopes of Indian literary his
tory when something radical and subversive like Dalit women’s
writing emerged to shape itself in what is understood as Dalit
aesthetics. The African American literary world too recreated the
chronotopes of US history. Autobiographies of the marginal
celebrate the ordinary commonplace and thus become uniquely
representational of community celebrating life in all its manifesta
tions without romanticizing. Therefore, in individual identity lies
group identity.
If respect for difference is one of the more positive aspirations of
postmodernity, the challenging of boundaries becomes integral to
this project. Lesbian Chicano writer Gloria Anzaldua in her bilin
gual text argues that theorists of colour draw on their experience of
the margins to develop theories that are both partially outside and
inside the Western frame of reference, and to articulate new posi
tions in these ‘in-between’. This involves bringing together issues
of race, class and sexual difference to bear on the narrative and
poetic elements of a text elements in which theory is embedded.
This work draws on marginal and excluded discourses such as non-
Western aesthetics and non-rational modes of interpretation. It
involves critiquing the language framing and assumptions of what
counts in hegemonic narrative and recovering indigenous languages
enabling the development of newly inclusive categories (xxvi). She
further explains the dangers of failing to acknowledge the differ
ence.
Race, caste and gender are integrated concerns awaiting social
transformation and therefore, intersectionality of all these would
synthesize multiple oppressions and experiences which on one hand
dismisses the monolithic construction or at best sweeping gener
alizations of being a homogenized category of women community
and at the same time challenging the privileged exclusivity of male
experiences. It is interesting to see these women’s groups challenge
the stereotypical perception of marginal and reinforce the proto
typical view of the male oppressor and explore the full range of
their voice, to redefine the margins, and reposition their ‘other
ness’. The culture of pain and oppression created by these women
is not restricted to any particular religion, caste, class and sect but
becomes universal. The purpose of this paper is not to chronicle
a particular homogeneous movement but a genuine attempt to
chronicle a collective project. The intention is to participate in
and further the ongoing debate in the Black and Dalit literary
world so that its importance is reverberated.
NOTES
1. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Litera

ture, Psychoanalysis and History, New York: Routledge, 1992, p. 5.
2. Susan Friedman, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of
Encounter, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2001.
3. Margo V. Perkins, Autobiography as Activism: Three Black Women of the Sixties,
Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2000, p. xviii.
4. Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, New York: Routledge, 2016.
5. Robert Sayre, American Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Writing,
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994, pp. 13-14.
6. Elizabeth R. Baer, ‘The Journey Inward: Women’s Autobiography’, ed. Bill
Ott. The National Endowment for the Humanities, 1987. IBSN 0-8389
7076-1. Web. 2013.
7. Bhiku Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi’s
Political Discourse, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989, p. 250.
8. Mahar is a prominent caste amongst the Dalits in Maharashtra and the
Marathi spoken language has its own characteristic linguistic features
identifiable as those spoken by them.
9. K. Satchidanandan, ‘Negotiating Heterogeneity: Indian Literature after
Independence’, South Asian Literature Criticism and Poetry, ed. Bhaskar
Burman Roy, New Delhi: Authors Press, 2011, p. 37.
10. L. Stanley, ‘On Auto/Biography in Sociology’, Sociology, 27 January 1993,
pp. 41-52.
11. Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. CA: Crossing Press, 1984,
p. 129.
12. Alfred Kazin, ‘Autobiography as Narrative’, Michigan Quarterly Review,
3 (Fall 1964), pp. 210-16.
13. William L. Howarth, Some Principles of Autobiography, ed. James Olney,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 84-114.
14. Hazel Carby, Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro American
Women Novelist, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 50.
15. Sidonie Smith, A Poetics of Women Autobiography: Marginality and the
Fiction of Self Representation. Bloomington: Indiana University press, 1987,
p. 17.
16. Martha J. Cutter, Unruly Tongues: Identity and Voice in American Women’s
Writing, 1850-1930, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999,
p. 77. Martha J. Cutter as quoted in Johnnie M. Stover, Rhetoric and
Resistance in Black Women’s Autobiography, Florida: University Press of
Florida, 2003, p. 174.
17. Dolly A. McPherson, Order out of Chaos: The Autobiographical Works of
Maya Angelou, New York: Peter Lang, 1990, p. 113.
18. Gloria Joseph and Jill Lewis. Common Differences: Conflicts in Black and
White Feminist Perspectives, Brooklyn: South End Press, 1981, p. 49.
19. Houston A. Baker, ‘Autobiographical Acts and the Voices of the Southern
Slave’, The Slave’s Narrative, ed. Charles T. Davis and Henry Louis Gates,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 245-61. Patricia Redmond,
ed., Afro American Literary Study in the 1990s, Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1989.
20. Matrix of domination or matrix of oppression is a sociological paradigm
that explains issues of oppression that deal with race class and gender, which,
though recognized as different social classifications, are all interconnected.
‘Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination’ from Patricia Hill
Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge Consciousness and the Politics
of Empowerment, Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990, pp. 221-38.
21. Gloria, Wade-Gayles, No Crystal Stair: Visions of Race and Gender in Black
Women’s Fiction. Ohio: Pilgrim Press, 1997, p. 12.
22. See Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed, Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2000.
23. Gillian Whitlock, Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit, Chicago:
University Press of Chicago, 2007, p. 17.
24. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship
and Colonial Discourses’, Feminist Review, 30(1988): 61-88.
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Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Pess, Doubleday, 1989.
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tion, 2008.
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New Delhi: Manohar, 1992.
CHAPTER 2
What the Text Does not Say:

Significant Absence and the Self
in Arathi Menon’s Leaving Home
with Half a Fridge
GOURI KAPOOR
The theoretical turn towards post-structuralism has made it im

possible for the reader of any text to ignore the polyphony inherent
in it by the virtue of it being a linguistic enterprise. It is no longer
promising for a discerning reader of a work with autobiographical
elements to simply accept the truths being enunciated by it at face
value. Probing deep to find what prompts certain truths claimed
to be present in the text has thus become a necessary task for a
critic. The ethical problem posed by this kind of an examination
is that it often discredits the narrative spun by the individual which
is at its centre. Despite that, it may yield significant insights into
how each period makes it possible for certain discourses to be
mainstreamed while others perish on the margins.
Women’s life writing is a recent emergence and therefore much
of the area covered by it remains uncharted on the literary map.
Most patriarchal societies like those in India are reluctant to accept
a woman’s voice narrativizing their experiences since they are looked
upon as the silent, nurturing presence in most regional cultures.
In addition to this, life writing also bears within it an expectation
that the person writing about her life should be of a strong social
standing in order to have an impact on the socio-historical develop
ments of her time. An ordinary Indian woman’s life writing is gener
ally not considered important enough to have any bearing on the
88 Gouri Kapoor
male-centric social milieu, and hence not accorded any literary
merit. However, it is these very ordinary voices that possess maximum
subversive potential and they need to be heard to bring a change
in the social norms that oppress women. Alternatively or addition
ally, they also point towards the deep cultural roots of these indi
viduals and can thus expose why social changes are hard to come
by.
This paper focuses on one such text and intends to investigate
how, by not stating the cause of her divorce directly, the writer of
the memoir under consideration is able to realize the agenda she
had set out for herself, i.e. turning her life story into a guide for
those going through the dissolution of their marriage or reeling
under its repercussion. The paper also offers reflections upon self,
the institution of marriage, family, relationships and life after di
vorce for a heterosexual woman in India.
In any autobiographical act, the ‘I’ mnemonically sees itself to
provide a semblance of an order to the chaos of everyday life. Not
all memories find their way into the account of the self that the
individual chooses to chronicle. A significant, visible absence may
thus mar the narrative as certain times, events and circumstances
are elided. The negative response that they are capable of arousing
in the author (or even the reader if that is the case) may be held
culpable for the non-inclusion. By choosing certain facts over others,
the author of an autobiographical text manages to exercise some
control over the text. However, the significant absence may turn
the semantic tide of the narrative in a direction that the reader
wishes to take.
To a very large extent, absences in autobiographical writing exist
because of the fear of revealing too much of one’s personal life to
public scrutiny. The self that many authors attempt to construct
through autobiographical works is generally expected to pass the
test of public opinion. This self-consciousness on the part of the
writer can cause many to hide the truth of certain events. Never
theless, not all authors resort to hiding their traumatic reality and
some choose to present it without any hesitations. Others may
resort to merely skirting around the sensitive issue. The truth is
sparsely hinted at instead of being spelt out wholesale.1 Arathi
What the Text Does not Say 89
Menon’s divorce memoir Leaving Home with Half a Fridge also
adopts the latter strategy when it comes to dealing with the cause
that led up to the event that forms the fulcrum of her narrative.
Withholding of facts in autobiographical works by women owes
itself their gender position. Discussions about one’s sexuality are
a taboo within Indian society, irrespective of the subject’s social
location. Nevertheless, this proscription is stronger for women in
India in comparison to the men. Marital sexuality is also expected
to be kept under wraps and therefore discussing it openly is dis
couraged. Menon, to a very large extent subscribes to this norm as
in her writing one does not find her discussing her sexual relation
ship with her ex-husband. Her descriptions of post-divorce attempts
at a relationship also focus more on her emotional involvement
with the men she meets rather than a physical one.
While writing about one’s life, an author constructs, not only
an image of the self but also of others, since an ‘Other’ is sine qua
non for the existence of a sense of self. Leaving Home with Half a
Fridge not only creates the image of the author-narrator, but also
that of the ex-husband, her parents and several others. In Lacanian
theory, the mother is the first ‘other’ the child encounters, and it
is in stepping out of the dyadic union with the mother that one
becomes an individual. The bodily wholeness that the child thinks
he or she has during the mirror stage is, according to Lacan, a false
consciousness, but it is needed for its individuation. In a way, the
experience of writing about one’s life is similar to the Lacanian
mirror stage. It also functions by putting together fragments of
one’s life together, knitting them into a narrative to create an im
pression of a self that is unified and stable. Menon’s text brings
together various facets of her life and packs them all together to
give a more holistic sense to its reader as to how each activity that
she participated in following her divorce helped her regain her
mental balance and arrive at a sense of self that is visible to the
reader in the text. Yet, in this endeavour, she seems to leave out
many of the negative aspects of what may have actually happened
during the period of divorce. The textual insistence on not pre
senting the ex-husband in a harsh light after the divorce appears to
be one such hard fact to swallow.
90 Gouri Kapoor
Arathi Menon’s Leaving Home with Half a Fridge is a memoir
written by an urban, educated, middle-class working woman who
wants to tell a story of ‘survival, not of destruction’ (Leaving 2). It
is due to this that she explicitly states her decision to not discuss
the main reason behind the divorce. Although she tries to stay as
true to her resolve as possible, there are several moments of narrative
slippage when she in fact does suggest that it was her husband’s
fault. Despite these, the decision ascribes her prose a certain dignity
as its primary focus is never lost, i.e. a higher amount of textual
energy is invested in her self-transformation rather than figuring
out who is to be blamed for the breakdown of the marriage.
In the very first chapter of her memoir, Menon declares that her
‘divorce, while tragic, was never melodramatic. . . . This is an ac
count, anchored in today’s reality and spoken in a language that is
ours’ (Leaving 9). The language that she claims to be ‘ours’ is a
reference to the social idiom at the disposal of the young, edu
cated, middle-class urban elite in India which is less fearful to
challenge traditions that encumber them from living a life they
may have envisioned for themselves as individuals. Women be
longing to this section of society that seek to free themselves from
the marital ties bogging them down usually possess or can avail
both the information and the financial wherewithal to empower
themselves. For these young women, the institution of marriage is
no longer a means to financial security, but rather to seek fulfilment
through a harmonious personal relationship. The development of
this new outlook towards marriage amongst the young in urban
India is largely due to the new set of ideas they are brought in
contact with through education and media exposure.
Nevertheless, the institution of marriage in India still functions
conservatively at large and social norms are usually adhered to.
Given the nature of matrimony in Indian society, the decision
regarding one’s life partner is not solely that of the individual.
However, changing patterns of social interaction in urban regions
is increasingly encouraging the young to break free from existing
socio-cultural practices and make matrimony a choice. For Menon
too, marriage was an institution she chose to commit to out of her
own volition and not simply due to parental and societal pressure
as is often the case in India. Despite that, her choices do seem
guided by the social norms that are internalized by most Indian
women. The subversive potential of the choices she makes in re
gard to her life is often undercut because of her cultural entrench
ment. Not only does it dilute the force with which the enquiry
into the institution of marriage is made, it also becomes the source
of her depression during and after divorce.
The economic prosperity experienced by young, upwardly mobile
Indians is proving to be a handy tool through which they are able
to subvert traditional norms relating to intimate relationships. The
trend has ushered in a new way of life especially for the women in
this social group. Their economic independence makes it some
what easier for them to follow up with the financial setback that a
divorce often entails, something that Menon also reflects upon in
her memoir. She is able to live independent of constant support of
her parents because of the fact that she had a job. It kept her
sailing through the emotional storm the divorce brought to her
life. Since the last two chapters of the book are styled as self-help,
Menon suggests that getting a job is one of the crucial steps a
woman must take to survive the post-divorce emotional trauma.
The suggestion comes not only from the need to be financially
secure but also to keep their mind engaged in an activity that will
keep them in a routine to prevent a pattern of habit that might
make the situation further distressful. Distress, nevertheless, is pro
jected as an inevitable part of the process of getting divorce in
sections of the text where Menon writes about her battle with
depression.
In the first chapter of the book itself, there is a suggestion that
Menon considers love an essential component of a successful mar
riage and that loss of it results in its breakdown. This idea has
received considerable attention in the world of fiction and non
fiction writing, but most philosophical writings have stayed clear
of any discussions on love in a sexual relationship. Schopenhauer is
one of the earliest thinkers to attempt an explanation for love through
his philosophical conceptions. According to him, it is the ‘will to
life’, a force beyond one’s conscious control, that prompts people
to fall in love. The main goal of all sexual activity among men and
92 Gouri Kapoor
women in the philosophical system he creates is reproduction.
Additionally, it suggests that because the end goal of sexual mating
is not pleasure but reproduction, individuals may end up choosing
partners not suited to their personalities. This scheme influenced
Freudian thought and can be seen as a plausible explanation for
maternal desire in women, although Schopenhauer’s philosophy,
much like others, was not much invested in understanding female
subjectivity. Modern-day feminism has a fraught relationship with
maternity and motherhood, and Menon does claim to be a femi
nist, yet she acknowledges that post her divorce the yearning to
have a child increased in her, thereby giving merit to Schopenhauer’s
scheme:
I wonder whether this sudden need for children was because I wanted a love
that would never leave me, a permanent love that wouldn’t walk out on me
one day. Kids are hostage to your love till they turn twenty-one and after that
you can hold them through guilt. My parents had me still. I knew that no
matter how indifferent a caregiver I would be, I’d at least, for tiny bit of time,
be the most important thing in their universe. (Leaving 182)
The sentiments that Menon expresses in these lines indicate the

premium the Indian middle-class associates with the institution of
family, and the importance of progeny in giving meaning to a life.
Menon here seems to have thoroughly internalized the norm and
also universalizes it. This universalization of the norm is a prob
lematic one since it may ring true only for the behaviour of certain
social groups. The text has many such instances where it is as
sumed by its author that its readership constitutes only of people
of a specific class. Larger class differences and realities that exist in
the constitution of families in India are therefore not addressed by
the text. As Menon points out, divorce in India is increasingly
becoming a socially visible phenomenon; but so far it is largely so
among the upper classes. To an extent, it is possible to justify the
absence of an acknowledgement of this fact citing the focus on the
self in memoir writing. There are, however, several autobiographi
cal works where the story of the self is used as a medium to address
communitarian issues and create a dialogue around them. The
text, in that sense, falls short of being a socially engaged one in a
direct manner. Nevertheless, it does throw light on certain aspects
of women’s life. One such instance is the change of surname many
women in contemporary Indian society go through after their
marriage.
The act of naming is an important one as it reveals plenty about
one’s social identity. Women in patrilineal societies are made to
take on the husband’s surname to indicate a transfer of control
over their bodies from the father to the husband.2 In her book
Seeing Like a Feminist, Nivedita Menon says that the change of
surname for a woman was naturalized in south India only under
British colonialism. She also points out that some women may
choose to retain their married surname for the sake of convenience
even after a divorce. One of Menon’s friends in Leaving Home with
Half a Fridge does so to avoid the difficulty and the paperwork
involved in the process of changing back to her maiden name.
Menon brings her the necessary papers to relieve her of her anguish
of living with a name she no longer wants to keep but continues to
do so because of the additional burden it would bring. Her friend’s
plight explicates that divorce does not dissolve all ties with the
past. In Menon’s case, it was not her name that creates the problem
since she never took her husband’s surname. It is rather her friend
ship with the ex-husband that strikes the reader unusual. One
feels that she didn’t know how to tie the loose ends properly even
when she starts to seek out a new relationship.
The question of readership that would lead the author to as
sume that the work is accessible only to people of a specific social
standing is a pertinent one for Leaving Home with Half a Fridge
since it is written in English. English education in India has so far
been a domain dominated by the well-to-do, and books written in
the language takes that section of the society as its target reader
ship. Every time an Indian author chooses to write in English, he
or she is necessarily delimiting the readership of the work. This
choice makes it possible for a certain kind of cultural expression to
exist in the text which would have come across as jarring in a work
written in a regional language, since each language carries with it
the values of the culture it was produced in. The candid manner in
which Menon discusses internet dating in her memoir is one such
94 Gouri Kapoor
instance of a cultural reality that would be hard to discuss in any
other Indian language other than English.
The practice of internet dating is a recent phenomenon in
India. As Menon writes her experience of meeting a man through
it following her divorce, she attests the general belief that online
dating can be dangerous and it is hard to trust a complete stranger.3
She finally states after experiencing it that she is ‘an “arranged
marriage” type. The difference is that my friends arranged it for
me and not my parents or extended family’ (Leaving 231). Menon
shows herself to be conservatively cautious, but at the same time
her divorce turned her liberal enough to welcome new experiences.
This shift in her attitude is indicative of how the self is a dynamic
process, one of constantly becoming and not just being.
Menon paints a picture of her younger self as not concerned
with societal norms, someone who did not fear letting a man know
how she felt about him before he did, thereby behaving in a man
ner not expected of women. In choosing to do so, she violates an
important norm of compulsory heterosexuality that entitles men
alone to initiate a relationship. Yet, when it came to her wedding,
she could not bring herself to go against the social norms and
settle for a traditional wedding for which she was required to buy
a festive saree and a mangalsutra, although she had a non-tradi
tional taste in both. Both these objects taken together were to turn
her into a ‘feminine’ woman on her wedding day, irrespective of
how much she may have played around with their forms. Both the
saree and the mangalsutra have deep feminine resonance in the
manner these things are culturally coded for the Indian psyche.
The mangalsutra serves the function of not only rendering the in
dividual wearing it feminine, but also turns her into an owned
object, a private property of a man. The amount of thought Menon
states to have invested in finding the perfect wedding saree and
the mangalsutra at one level indicates how committed she was to
the idea of coming across as feminine on her wedding day. Yet, by
choosing a saree that had a resale value (the threads used to make
it were of real gold) and one that could ‘meet its maker’ (Leaving
124), Menon tries to be different. She ensures that the two most
important objects she spends money on for her wedding would
not become useless.4 The mangalsutra, in fact, often comes handy
while dealing with her post-divorce financial woes and she decides
to sell it off.
From a narrative point of view too, the reminiscing over the
purchase of these two objects is an important one since it makes
her question her choices, thus providing the reader with an insight
about her regret about not being more cautious while choosing a
partner, although her lack of caution might only be an imagined
one. The regret may have developed as a hindsight only when she
was confronted by the thought of a divorce, thus revealing how
events of the present influence the manner in which the past is read.
A tragic life event has the power to evoke a pain that can narrow
down the focus of the individual to the self so much so that even if
they are capable of looking beyond their own problems to empathize
with others under normal circumstances, they may no longer be
able to do so. How depression and emotional hurt can desensitize
one towards others does find a mention in Menon’s memoir. How
ever, she also struggles against this tendency to emerge triumphant
from the experience of her divorce. Her decision to pen it down
and help others through it, is sufficient proof of her desire for
overcoming her grief. The explicit tone of her memoir is that of
forgiveness and not that of anger. However, the anger she may have
felt can be read sub-textually though the text does not state it
overtly. The reader knows that it was the ex-husband who was to
be blamed for the divorce even though Menon does not clearly
state the reason behind the divorce.
The ‘self ’ Menon was prior to her divorce and the one she be
comes after it could only be possible in the space of big Indian
cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai. As the city that she resides in
during and after her marriage was not her hometown, she had a
greater freedom to mould and remould her identity. City spaces
like Mumbai allow for a certain kind of anonymity, a fact not lost
on Menon when she writes the following:
I was in another city, a city which gave me anonymity as I healed. If I so
chose, the only judgements I had to face in this uncaring mass of humanity
96 Gouri Kapoor
were my own. . . . This city was also extremely conducive for single living.
Women were safe. I could walk out at any time without a male escort. Go for
movies, plays and to restaurants alone. Rent a house, get a job, live a life
without an eyebrow being lifted at my lifestyle. The city didn’t put a single
stumbling block to me being single. . . . (Leaving 208-9)
Each city has a unique experience to offer to an individual, which
then produces a specific embodied self. The independence that an
Indian woman can develop in a city would not be possible in any
other space. A single woman living in rural India would not be
able to have the kind of life Menon has briefly described in the
extract quoted above. Also, the city experience that Menon is de
scribing here is largely confined to women of her own class. The
recreational activities listed here are the indulgences of the upper
classes, and therefore spaces where they are held are open to her.
These spaces may or may not be as accommodating towards a
person of a less priviledged class. Menon often comes across as not
being able to look critically at her own class privileges to come up
with an account of a life after separation for a woman who does not
have them. As a result, the reach of the ‘help’ she intends to pro
vide through writing of this book remains limited to women of
priviledged classes.
Life writing can be employed in the service of the construction
of a self that is aspired for. A piece of life writing may be used to
bridge the gap that lies between the self that appears to others and
the self as experienced through embodiment. Menon’s Leaving Home
with Half a Fridge appears to be doing so for its author. It opens up
the possibility of delving into the issue of multiplicity of selves
and how one may attempt to valorize one over the other. Although
the primary theme that she is addressing in her memoir is one that
may arouse pain in the reader, Menon tries her level best to con
tain that, and rather aspires to create a community of feeling by
presenting it in as light a tone as possible. She uses humour and
irony as a shield to guard herself from falling into the pitfalls of
emotional excess that often accompany tragic events. This is clearly
indicated in the manner she has titled the chapters of her memoir
such as ‘Divorce isn’t Contagious’ and ‘Breaking the Habits of Love’.
The characteristic wit of Menon’s memoir exists not only as a
counter to the weight of the emotional burden she carried around
after her divorce but also because she may have been in a better
mental state by the time she wrote the book. In an interview, Menon
has stated that the book was written for the person she was five
years prior to its writing.5 The emotional distancing that comes
with time allows her to look at the reality of her divorce in a more
objective manner. The lapse in time, however, can alter under
standing of emotions as felt in the heat of the moment, thereby
giving a fresher perspective. Recollections are tainted by the knowl
edge of the present, and hence often put the truth of the event
being recollected under question. The human need to forget pain
as a means to escape it also has its bearing on the act of recollec
tion. Hence, a memoir necessarily carries with it the affective stance
of the subject writing it. This positioning can nonetheless be chal
lenging for a reader’s interpretation of the work. Unsure of how
authentic the feeling being expressed through the written word is,
the reading between the lines, and thereby reading against the
grain, acquires ample ground. However, as Linda Anderson points
out while quoting Regenia Gagnier, the importance of the func
tion fulfilled by the autobiographical act surpasses that of what it
construes as truth. For Menon, the explicit purpose behind writ
ing Leaving Home with Half a Fridge was to enable other divorcees
survive the trauma of the break-up of marriage. The text does
create a successful roadmap for the same, and thereby serves its
purpose.
NOTES
1. Sally Morgan’s My Place can be a good example to illustrate this point.

2. That a woman’s body is often an object of exchange within male economy,
especially through marriage, is a point made by Luce Irigaray in This Sex
Which Is Not One.
3. Online dating is the latest entrant in the search for love even in the West, and
similar reservations exist around it there as they do in India. Despite that, the
trend is now gaining increasing amount of cultural acceptance, as a thesis on
the topic by Corey Thomas Miller indicates.
4. Heidegger draws a distinction between objects and things based on whether
98 Gouri Kapoor
they continue to serve their usual function or not. This distinction is of
foundational importance within Thing theory. The idea came to me through
a reading of Bill Brown’s essay with the same title.
5. This interview was conducted by Nikhil Narkhede.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Linda, Autobiography, London: Routledge, 2001.

——, ‘Autobiography and the Feminist Subject’, in The Cambridge Companion
to Feminist Literary Theory, ed. Ellen Rooney, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006, pp. 119-35.
Brown, Bill, ‘Thing Theory’, Critical Inquiry, 28.1 (2001): 1-22. JSTOR.
Web. 25 September 2017, <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00931896%
28200123%2928%3A1%3C1%3ATT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4>
DeMan, Paul, ‘Autobiography as De-facement’, MLN, 94. 5, Comparative
Literature (1979): 919-30. JSTOR, Web. 21 March 2007. <http://links.
jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-7910%28197912%2994% 3A5%3C919%3
AAAD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K>
Irigaray, Luce, ‘When the Goods Get Together’, in This Sex Which Is Not One,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Janaway, Christopher, Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction, New York:
Kumar, Shiela, ‘Life After Divorce’, The Hindu, 26 September 2017, Web,
12 June 2016, <http://www.thehindu.com/books/literary-review/sheila
kumar-reviews-leaving-home-with-half-a-fridge/article7540621.ece>
Lacan, Jacques, ‘The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as
Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience’, in Ecrits: A Selection, London/NY:
Routledge, 1977, pp. 1-197.
Menon, Arathi, Leaving Home with Half a Fridge, New Delhi: Pan Macmillan,
2015.
Menon, Nivedita, ‘Family’, in Seeing Like a Feminist, New Delhi: Zubaan &
Penguin Books, 2012.
Miller, Corey T., ‘The Cultural Adaptation of Internet Dating: Attitudes
Towards Online Relationship Formation’ (2011), University of New
Orleans Theses and Dissertations, 1332. Web. 25 September 2017,
<http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1332>
Morgan, Sally, My Place, New York : Seaver Books, 1987.
Narkhede, Nikhil, ‘Arathi Menon Interview: Leaving Home with Half a Fridge
Book’, Writer Story, 26 September 2017, Web. 6 May 2017, < http://
www. writerstory.com/arathi-menon-interview-leaving-home-with-half-a
fridge-book/>
Parker, Simon, ‘Sex in the City: Gender and Sexuality in the Urban Experience’,
in Urban Theory and the Urban Experience: Encountering the City, London:
Routledge, 2004, pp. 143-6.
CHAPTER 3
Retracing the Discourse of Referential

Truth in Claude Cahun and Alison
Bechdel’s Visual Narratives
N I L A K S H I G O S WA M I
Artists, whatever their chosen medium, delight in drawing them

selves. . . . Many a drawing of self may have behind it also the desire to
become better acquainted with the physical characteristics that bottle
up so many human contradictions.
DOROTHY GRAFLY
The statement by Grafly (167) illustrates the significance of self-

portraits as one of the most complex and convoluted genres of self-
representation. ‘Because self-portraits merge the artist and the sitter
into one, they have the allure of a private diary, in that they seem
to give us an artist’s insight into his or her personality’ (West 163).
This paper examines portraitures, both photographic and cartoons,
as a means of self-analysis that enables an intense engagement of
these artists in a dialogue with the paradigm of their respective
visual art forms. The argument would be elucidated through the
self-portraitures of Claude Cahun (1894-1954), a French artist
and photographer and Alison Bechdel, an American cartoonist and
her graphic-autobiography Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006),
whereby the artists delve into the appropriation of their respective
mediums while embracing the artistic freedom in its entirety.
While Cahun’s series of self-portraits are compelling self-studies
of her queer sexuality where she portrays herself in varied masquer
ades donning different disguises, Alison Bechdel’s ‘autography’, a
102 Nilakshi Goswami
term she uses for her graphic-autobiography, mostly centres on her
psychological complexity concerning her closeted gay father and
her gradual realization of her own lesbian identity. Emblemati
cally elusive, both Cahun and Bechdel’s works are reflective of the
challenges they pose to the traditional gender roles and sexuality
while echoing the notions of ‘self’ through the prism of their artistic
endeavours. Self-portraiture, in the process, becomes one of the most
efficient modes of self-expression for these artists seeking liberation
through their respective operational devices—frames, image censors,
colours, facial expressions and brush storkes, among others. Often
assumed to be a low browed medium of artistic expression as com
pared to literary works such as autobiographies, art or films, Cahun
and Bechdel challenge the assumption that photography and comics
(respectively) are an inept medium to convey the discourse of truth
in the domains of representation of both subjective reality and
objective historical accounts. The artistic expressions of Cahun and
Bechdel champion the understanding of a fully fleshed out life
narrative—considering they deal with issues as grave as portrayal
of queer identity and homosexuality. Instead of detracting itself
from the reflections of their biographical or autobiographical
stories, the idiosyncrasies of their respective visual idioms serve as
a vehicle for a better communication of their stories in terms of
conceptual narratives in comparison to other forms of traditional
life-narratives.
A piece of non-fictional work is contingent upon the degree to
which its readers/spectators assume and accept its contents to be
true. However, the notion of definite truth in the works of repre
sentation is a complex and complicated issue. Thus, non-fictional
work, in turn, is conceived of having a relative subjective truth on
one side of the sliding scale and its correspondence to the objective
reality on the other. Any deviation from representation of a corre
spondent mimesis of the particular event of the objective reality—
established through accuracy of historical documentation or by other
means of verifiable records—might result in the non-fictional work
losing its authenticity and credibility. Although both Cahun and
Bechdel’s self-portraitures defy the traditional genre of autobio
graphy, it could be observed that their works demonstrate a high
Retracing the Discourse of Referential Truth 103
intensity of corresponding truth while re-defining the very nature
of representation itself. Thus, the research delves into the genre of
photographic self-portraitures and autography as a potent medium
of artistic expression—a genre that, however, began as a means of
entertainment perceived to be destroying the sensibilities of art.
While photography was considered a baseless alternative to paint
ing, graphic novels and caricaturing was allotted a marginalized
position in the mainstream literature. Perhaps, until recently, the
biggest challenge that both photography and graphic novel, as a
representational medium, have faced historically is to be accepted
as serious art forms.
Fiction and memoirs relate to each other in quite a diverse way.
While fiction is not circumscribed by the truth quotient of facts
and details, the genre of memoirs and autobiographies rests on
depiction of real lives, and not an imagined reality and hence, is
constrained by an obligation to truth and veracity in a way that
fiction is not. Self-portraitures takes a step further since the object
of depiction here is not just the artist him/herself, but as West
notes, the artist has to create a double of his/her own ‘self ’ by
objectifying one’s own body in order to process the work of self-
portrayal (163). Also, the viewers occupy a significant position,
since what they are viewing is a ‘metaphorical mirror’ reflecting
not their own selves but that of the artist behind the portraits.
Thus, . . . ‘viewing a self-portrait can therefore involve the sense of
stepping into the artist’s shoes. These make self portrait both com
pelling and illusive’ (West 165). While identity for Bechdel is
framed alongside the memories of her childhood and her relation
ship with her late father in the process of discovering her own
sexuality, for Cahun, it is always a disguise and a mask effecting
her individuality as a curious mixture of the extraordinary and the
ambivalent. Through the engagement with their respective modes
of expression, these artists challenge the way identity is constructed,
emphasizing Butler’s notion of gender as a performance (25).
Addressing Bechdel’s graphic memoirs Fun Home and Cahun’s
photographic self-portraits, the article illustrates the performative
functions of these self-reflections in dialogue with the paradigm of
visual arts and examines the diverse modalities of agency facilitated
by this ocular-centric narrative. Scarcely discernible in her self-
portraits, Cahun’s oeuvre could be defined by a certain kind of
strangeness in her constructs rendered by her protean identity.
Her monochromatic photographs trigger an image which is dis
tinct, yet quite paradoxically, susceptible to alterations and adapt
ations. While one of the photographs portray her is as a young
man with a silk scarf, another depicts her as a woman in aviator
sunglasses. However, these guises of the artist are not to be under
stood as a mode of escapism, but rather, an emphatic way of por
traying one’s identity in a way that defies the socially constructed
perception of gender. It is also very crucial to note that that she
neither appears ‘masculine’ when dressed as a man, nor does ap
pear feminine in her attire as a woman.
While Figure 3.1 portrays Cahun dressed like a teenage boy
with short hair and a mirror reflecting a Lacanian sort of an iden
tity, Figure 3.2 illustrates the artist inside a cupboard.
Source: Lens Blog, The New York Times, 21 July 2014.

Coutesy : Claude Cahun courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.
Figure 3.1: Self-portrait, 1928

Source: Lens Blog, The New York Times, 21 July 2014.

Coutesy: Claude Cahun courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.
The self-portrait of the artist un/easily poised in the cupboard

(Figure 3.2) reflects a kind of tension inherent in it. One could
observe that it demonstrates both, a psychoanalytic as well as a
metaphoric signification. While the photograph could be aptly
connected to psychoanalysis in terms of her dream and age regres
sion, it is metaphoric of her ambiguous sexuality—a reflection in
duced by the calm appeal of the subject’s expression where we
notice one of her hands resting her head facing the viewers, while
the other one lazily hangs down. Cahun’s photomontage, almost a
century ahead of her time, is representative of the continual ques
tions she posed to the constricted perceptions of gender norms in
society through the means of appropriation of her androgynous
appearance. One of her self-portraits (Figure 3.3) illustrates her
face in oblivion in the process of keeping her facial markers con
cealed, along with the cemetery at the background that lends an
aura of eeriness to it.
Source : Lens Blog, The New York Times, 21 July 2014.

Coutesy: Claude Cahun courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.
‘The Burden of Representation’, an article by Sadanand Menon

that appeared in The Hindu, questions the aspect of a photo that
is assumed to represent one’s self truly, and in extension, chal
lenges ‘mug shots’ as a means of authenticating of one’s identity in
official documents. Menon denounces ‘the cult of frontal facial
identity’, with particular reference to print media that confers a
distinguished privilege to one’s ‘face’ in a society consisting of ‘largely
faceless people’. When Cahun’s photo (Figure 3.3) is examined in
the light of Menon’s aforementioned statement, it could be as
serted that Cahun is resisting the idea of one’s face governing one’s
identity as inhibiting to one’s self. Seldom capturing her photos
without any guises or masquerades, her self-portrayals are, indeed,
narratives of her fierce contestation of representation of ‘identity’
as propounded by the excessive preference for unambiguous frontal
shots of face, when real life is full of doubts and uncertainties.
Another crucial photograph of the artist is her self-portrayal
behind the crisscross lead-strips of the window, while turning her
gaze away from the camera, and instead, looking away, defying the
frontal capture of her face. In the process, she resists the idea of,
what is more commonly conceived and accepted as, the authentic
validation of photography as an identity marker. The title of Menon’s
article ‘The Burden of Representation’, as the writer himself notes,
has been borrowed from a significant 1988 book by John Tagg
that delves into the notion of representation and its validity in
photos with specific reference to the necessity of mug shot photos
in driving licence, passport and other legal documents. Menon
talks about how this kind of ‘brute photo[s]’, clear and frontal in
its portrayal, is considered an authentic kind of ‘portraiture’ that
has emerged as an identikit and part and parcel of the social and
institutional surveillance. This has, in turn, become a ‘universal
code’ of identification. Menon describes this ‘omniscient mug shot’
as ‘a seamless ideological structure, which not justifies, but also
reassures. . . . In the process, homogenizing and reducing the idea
of the self, and thus, rendering it banal’ (4). Thus, Menon ques
tions, ‘Why would I want to identify myself only through frontality?
Is my face my only ‘pehchaan’ [identity]? . . . Why not the lateral
side-view or the back of the head?’ Menon, referring to one of the
images of the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson where the artist
is ‘fiercely guarding’ his identity by disallowing a frontal-face shot,
Menon states:
The choice of the image here is, thus, conscious and oppositional. It is an
attempt to point out that the photographic image, at every instance, is a
significant distortion, which renders its relation to any prior reality deeply
problematic, particularly with respect to the human visage. It is an attempt to
lighten the burden of representation. . . . (4)
Whether concealed or flagrant, Cahun’s photography defies

fixity of gender identity, and her narrating subject ascribes an
individual agency to the multiple selves of the artist in the acts of
exposure. While Cahun appropriates the form of masquerades,
Bechdel’s cartoon self-representations uses the guise of ‘tragicom
edy’—as implied by the very subtitle of the graphic memoir—in
unveiling her identity. Cahun’s intention in employing photo
graphic self-portraiture, by blatantly appropriating different garb
and guises, is to foreground her hidden self, while Bechdel in the
course of her autography uncovers her complex self-identity through
the garb of light-hearted humour. In the process, it becomes quite
evident how both the artists, through their respective aesthetic dis
cipline, harness their art’s power in challenging social conventions.
The graphic memoir challenges and pushes the limits of the
traditional genre of scripto-centric autobiography. Fun Home ex
emplifies its subtitle ‘tragicomic’ as a pun through a medium
humourous in its intent. ‘Autography’, a term suggested by the
author herself, rests at the interstices of the slippery multiplicities
of the genre—between the visual and the textual illustrations of
the graphic memoir. In a manner similar to narratologists where
they describe a narrative construction in terms of fabula and sjuzet
or story and discourse, the genre of comics could also be defined as
a dual form composed of both the verbal as well as the visual. In
this vein, Hillary Chute claims that ‘Comics might be defined as a
hybrid word-and-image form in which two narrative tracks, one
verbal and one visual, register temporality spatially’ (452). Since
the verbal illustrations in Fun Home is supported by the visual, the
definition of being ‘autographic’ is befitting to Bechdel’s narrative
considering how the visual images sequenced in the narrative are a
part of the conscious technique deliberated by the artist to trigger
an aesthetic response in its readers/viewers. In discussing her auto
graphy, the author further claims words and images to be distinct
and separate, yet complementary entities in her graphic novel.
She states, ‘What I loved about cartooning was . . . that the space
between image and words was a powerful thing if you could figure
out how to work with it’ (Warhol). Thus, the author, not only
stresses the importance of the visual and the textual, but also
emphasizes the overlapping narration between both the discourses
as the crucial point of signification.
Thus, the genre of comics and graphic novel could be stated as
a composite form of art, combining not merely the visual but also
the verbal elements to narrate stories. Moreover, it could be observed
that comic artists have been increasingly incorporating charts,
sketches, paintings, maps and photographs in their story worlds of
cartoons. Bechdel’s graphic memoir also appropriates a surge of
photographs cartooned by the artist—a creative and innovative
experimentation that marks the coming together of two distinctive
visual art forms: comics and photography. Bechdel has adopted
varied methods to incorporate, and faithfully reproduce photo
graphs in her comic universe, prompting their usage in comics
more than a mere stylistic trend. While considering the broad range
of visual techniques used by Bechdel to portray her life-narrative,
her usage of photography in cartoon as self-portraiture is quite
significant, owing to its potential fulfilment of a documentary
function. Her representation, in this regard, could be stated as
photographic hybridity, since it merges verbal media along with
the visual. Figure 3.4 illustrates Roy, the nanny, on a motel bed
during their family vacation—a photograph Bechdel comes across
after her father’s death. The visual evidence of her father’s sexual
escapade, later she realizes, was captured in the room next to the
one occupied by Bechdel and her brother. This is a startling dis
covery of her father’s past that re-situates her knowledge about her
own experience as well as her family history. Reminiscent of
Menon’s article in The Hindu, where he challenges the idea of face
as one’s identity marker, we see how in this figure, it is the artist’s
fingers that marks her presence and in turn, makes her narrative an
immediate narration of her life experience.
The artist, in the due course of her narrative, could also be ob
served to be toying with the idea of a mug shot in authenticating
her visual self-representation. The mentioned photographic image
(Figure 3.5) depicts a clear and a frontal view of the artist along
with her brother—evoking a kind of a photographic portraiture to
facilitate identification by the readers.
The visuals in Bechdel’s narratives are more at the level of diegetic,
and put forth the caricatures of the artist herself—drawings that
she creates in an effort to represent her past, as evident in the
childhood self-portrayal in Figure 3.5. The caricatured image of
a wide-eyed girl and the later images illustrating her state of de
pression during the college years, the mournful daughter whose
father committed suicide and how his death was covered under
the garb of an accident, among other distressing incidents, is what
Figure 3.4: Fun Home (101-2), 2006
Figure 3.5: Fun Home (18), 2006

seem to constitute the graphic characterization of Alison, the pro
tagonist of the narrative. The self-portrayal of youthful Alison’s
attitudes, emotions, values and vicissitudes results in enhancing the
characterization of the author/character, since the subject of rep
resentation and the artist are one and the same. Drawings, or images,
are not inessential to characterization and not a traditional feature
of autobiography either. However, Fun Home duly describes how
the incorporation of visual images into the verbal narrative prose
can produce an effect that goes beyond what the traditional genre
of self-referential writings can typically achieve.
Theorists analysing the medium of comics have been delving
into the examination of binary lines that have been assumed to
separate the genre of comic into a dual and opposing element of
word and image. Hatfield, in illuminating this distinction between
graphic memoirs and autobiographies, has typified the dominant
manner of this binary opposition in which the comic form has
been perceived. He states,
The cartoonist projects and objectifies his or her inward sense of self,
achieving at once a sense of intimacy and a critical distance. It is the graphic
exploitation of this duality that distinguishes autobiography in comics from
most autobiography in prose. Unlike first-person narration, which works from
the inside out, describing events as experienced by the teller, cartooning
ostensibly works from the outside in, presenting events from an (imagined)
position of objectivity, or at least distance. (2005: 115)
Hatfield, in the mentioned excerpt, claims how visual narratives

attempt to disrupt the first-person point of view while separating
the person seeing from the one that is seen (115). Thus, one could
significantly locate Fun Home as not resting entirely on either of
the mediums: of words or images, but discreetly engaging itself in
the space between the two. In the process, the signified and the
signifier in her narrative come together to form a coherent sign that
rests simultaneously on the layers of pictures and words in the
process of representing a unified subjectivity of the author. As
Bechdel herself states, ‘Cartoons are like maps to me, in the way
they distill the chaotic three-dimensional world into a layer of
pictures and a layer of word’ (Warhol 10). It is also crucial to note
how the text in the panels accompanying the artist’s self-portraitures
contains minimal description: whether it is reflecting the interiors
of the family home or the landscape of the author’s body, where
the major task of representation is particularly carried out by the
visuals in the panels. Although Bechdel’s autography is often wit
nessed to be accompanied by an over-box text or speech bubbles
and speech tags, yet what remains significant is the manner in
which the narrative structure of Bechdel’s graphic memoir offers
its readers/spectators a wide range of perspective along the visual
axis. This results in enhancing characterization of the protagonist,
specifically when the author is looking at herself from the third-
person perspective illustrating her cartoon self-portraitures more
as visual metaphors. Fun Home, thus, represents Bechdel’s self-
portrayal in a manner that stretches the limits of the narratological
understanding of story-telling and exemplifies itself as one of the
efficient and authentic modes of self-portraiture.
Grafly observes another significant function played by self-
portraits in un/consciously representing two very important aspects
of one’s self: mental and technical. In this vein, she states, ‘Many a
drawing of self may have behind it also the desire to become better
acquainted with the physical characteristics that bottle up so many
contradictions’ (167). In the process of showing ‘. . . whether to
himself he is semi-comic or an ultra-serious personality’ (167) and
perhaps, how her technical approach to the art work is more of
herself than what her physical impression might say. Thus, self-
portraits, according to Grafly, ‘. . . reveal more of the nature of the
individual than the individual himself may be aware’ (167).
This paper, as an extension of Grafly’s analysis, not merely delves
into psychoanalysis of the artists but also examines the psychological
motivation that underscores the perception and creation of an
oeuvre of self-portraits that primarily alternate in combining or
opting between the personae of a male or a female. In contrast to
text-oriented autobiographical narrations, Cahun’s self-portraits are
conceptual representations that appropriate the concepts of mirrors,
masks, masquerades, costumes and performativity, while creating
an aural effect of the uncanny—an attempt to reflect on her queer
identity. Similarly, Bechdel’s graphic memoirs could be located at
the intersection of narrative and image, and autobiography and
history. One of the aspects of this paper is to examine the re
presentation of gender ambiguity as portrayed by both the artists
in their respective visual works illustrating how their physical
appearance defies socially accepted physical appearance of the
‘feminine’ self.
Cahun states, ‘Masculine? Feminine? But it depends on the
situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me. If it existed
in our language, my thought would be nebulous’ (qtd. in Bunyan).
Cahun’s art therefore triggers a series of questions and doubts in
the viewer’s minds regarding the identity of the artist in focus.
Why does Cahun engage herself in multiple roles in her photo
graphic self-portraits? Is it a sense of oblivion regarding her identity,
or a process of discovery of her true self through this enactment of
varied disguises? Is the connection between traditionally perceived
notion of feminine self-image and an artifice of exaggerated sartorial
mere exaggeration? Does her hyperbolic self-portraiture stand as
an exemplification of the post-modern claim in having no such
thing as a cohesive self and that, one’s self as well as one’s identity
is a matter of construction, and thus, constantly changing? Could
her artistic intentions be explored as masquerades or a game of
charade, or is her act of defying the traditional notions of identity,
sexuality and gender, politically charged? Cahun’s photography,
indeed, is representative of the artist’s immense psychological com
plexity that seems to answer these rhetorical abstractions. Her
compelling series of photography delves into the artist’s self-study,
wherein she is shown donning varied costumes and disguises and
engaging in multiple masquerades in the process of challenging
the accepted norms of gender. While one could observe how her
artwork exemplifies Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, it is
important to note that her theatricality—the exaggerated costumes
and make-up and the postures and expressions she assumes—has
autobiographical significance, and derives from different theatre
production where she was an actor. Cahun once explained, ‘The
happiest moment of my life?—The dream. Imagine that I am
someone else. Acting my favorite role’ (qtd. in Knafo 31). Cahun’s
photographs, intimate in their demeanour, portray her engagement
in the games of masks and masquerades. Yet they are always imbued
with her true inner-self and her identity more often with the hues
of black and white even amidst her ever changing roles, gender
and otherwise. ‘Put on some makeup, apply a false nose—scrape
away, the grimace reappears, the woman is always underneath’.
Wrote Cahun quite early in her life (77)—indicating how most of
the transformations she undergoes emerge from both her theatrical
sources as well as her unconscious fantasies.
Parallel to Cahun’s conceptual narratives, the ‘body’ in Bechdel
remains significant wherein her physical appearance underlies sexual
identity. The graphic memoir illustrates Alison’s insistence on
dressing like a boy ever since her childhood: keeping her hair short
and playing with her brothers and male cousins most of the time
(96), aptly fitting into what could be stated as a ‘tomboy’. Judith
Halberstam stresses the different manners in which a woman can
create different models of ‘masculinity’ wherein the writer explains
‘tomboyism’ as ‘. . . an extended period of female masculinity’
(5) In one of the instances we can see that Alison insists on how
her brother should call her ‘Albert’ instead of ‘Alison’ (113).
Halberstam suggests how tomboyismness ‘. . . is punished, how
ever, when it appears to be the sign of extreme male identification
and when it threatens to extend beyond childhood into adolescence’
(6). Figure 3.6 portrays Alison’s father forcibly putting a barrette on
her hair instead of allowing her to get a crew cut. On another occasion,
the narrative also shows her father insisting that she should wear
pearls to make her look more feminine. This strong assertion of
feminine accessories by her father who himself was a closeted gay is
a symbolic imposition of heteronormativity on to his daughter trying
to get away with what could be stated as ‘masculine’ sensibilities.
Bechdel’s graphic narrative portrays her father, Bruce, as an author
itarian parent obsessively preoccupied with aesthetic beauty and
restoration of their Gothic revival home. But underneath this attempt
at portraying a perfect home and an ideal family (Figure 3.7), one
reads his efforts at concealing his closeted sexual orientation in the
public.
Figure 3.6: Fun Home 96-7, 2006
Figure 3.7: Fun Home 17, 2006

Bechdel states in the panel following Figure 3.6 how their house
was ‘. . . not a real home’ (17) but a ‘. . . simulacrum of one’ (17).
Parallel to this, she cannot consider her father as a conventional
father but a simulacrum of what an ideal father or a heterosexual
husband ought to be. Furthermore, Bruce’s continual attempts at
restoring their house or presenting the picture of an ideal family,
seems parallel to her own attempt at recreating her memories and
manipulating the reality and in turn, architect Fun Home in order
to restore her own sense of identity in the process of becoming the
artist her father always aspired to be when he was younger. Given
that, it could be evidently entailed how, while considering the
construction and re-construction of artifice, one cannot find many
dissimilitudes between Bechdel and her father. Figure 3.8 here
portrays the photographic image of Bechdel’s reluctance to hold
on to the last bit of the ‘tenuous bond’ between them (86).
Similar to Bechdel, Cahun’s father too played a significant role
in her life and the artist has always been influenced by, and quite
strongly identifies with him. Even though, very little is known
Figure 3.8: Fun Home (86), 2006

about Cahun’s life, it has been found out that apart from her
father, Maurice Schwob, owner of a successful newspaper Le Phare
et la Loire, she was particularly influenced by her uncle Marcel
Schwol, a renowned Symbolist writer (Knafo 32). It is significant
to note that both the series of images (Figures 3.8 and 3.9) from
Bechdel’s memoir as well as Cahun’s photography are in conjunction
to one another. The photos by Cahun, shot in 1928—the year
when the artist’s father died, illustrates the artist in a close replication
of her father’s portrait wherein she is shown posing in a profile
with cropped hair donning a dark corduroy jacket, in the process
of uncovering how the artist is playing with identifications.
The paper, thus, delves into the visual studies concerning both
photography and cartoon, with an eye towards illustrating the
politics behind photographic self-portraits of Cahun as well as the
commingling of the same in Bechdel’s autography Fun Home.
Drawing on how these artists in their endeavours of the visual
culture—Cahun through her photographic self-portraits and Bechdel
through her cartoon self-portraitures, have tried to capture their
life and identity. Along with the emphasis on how Claude uses
Source : ‘Equivocally Jewish: Claude Cahun and the Narratives of Modern Art’, Gewurtz, 2012.
Figure 3.9: Self Portrait, Claude Cahun

photography as a conceptual representation, the article also empha
sizes the flexibility of the graphic medium, especially in terms of a
visual narrative practice, and the impact of photography incorpo
rated in it by Bechdel. Both photography as well as photography
in autography and cartoon self-portraits extend their role in fulfill
ing a social documentation.
Traditionally photography was considered a murderer of the
aesthetic sensibilities afforded by paintings and graphic novels were
considered a bastard child of both literature and painting. By
engaging in photography as well as graphic novel, both being a
part of popular culture and new media, the article delves into how
the artists in focus, through their engagement with the respective
mediums, are pushing limits of the genres in representing their
distraught gender identity. This research paper has, thus, analysed
the discourse of referential truth in Cahun’s photographic self-
portraitures as well as cartoon self-portraitures in Bechdel’s auto
graphy Fun Home. Addressing how referential truth could be
obtained by both correlative truth as well as metaphysical self-
reflection within the paradigm of a non-fictional, self-referential
work, the article has thereby traced how both Cahun as well as
Bechdel, enhance referential truth, instead of detracting from it.
Thus, this study therefore examines the visual symbolism exercised
by both photography and graphic-memoir, in the process of in
creasing the correlative truth along with the discursive elements
which results in facilitation of a far more increased degree of the
artists’ self-awareness, in their respective work.
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Modern Art’, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Working Papers: The Donna
Sudarsky Memorial Series, 2012.
Grafly, Dorothy, ‘Self-Portraits in Prints’, The American Magazine of Art 25.3
September 1932, pp. 165-72.
Halberstam, Judith, Female Masculinity, Durham and London: Duke Univer
sity Press, 1998.
Hatfield, Charles, Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, United States of
America: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
Knafo, Danielle, ‘Claude Cahun: The Third Sex’, Studies in Gender and
Sexuality 2.1, 2001, pp. 29-61.
Menon, Sadanand, ‘The Burden of Representation’, The Hindu: Magazine,
Hyderabad, 5 March 2017, p. 4.
Tagg, John, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories,
London: Macmillan Education, 1988.
Warhol Robyn, ‘The Space Between: A Narrative Approach to Alison Bechdel’s
Fun Home’, College Literature, The John Hopkins University Press,
26 June 2011, Web, 2 April 2017. <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/442369>
West, Shearer, Portraiture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Wilson, Dawn M., ‘Facing the Camera: Self-Portraits of Photographers as
Artists’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 70 (1), pp. 55-6.
CHAPTER 4
Humorous Women’s Memoirs in the

Entertainment Industry
DEEPSHIKHA A. MINZ
It’s the arch of my back, The sun of my smile, The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style. I’m a woman. Phenomenally. Phenomenal
woman, That’s me.
MAYA ANGELOU, PHENOMENAL WOMAN
Over the years women have stormed male bastions reaching the
pinnacle of success in different spheres of life. They have contri
buted to and achieved a lot of success in the fields of academics,
politics, entertainment, business and others. They have become
more vocal than they had been. Feminist theory and popular
culture are often juxtaposed as they have a huge impact on its
recipient audience and the consumer culture. Popular culture has
the power to mirror our lives and show connections between the
media, society and identity. Popular culture is contemporary cul
ture which is reflected in the form of art, images, narratives and
ideas. The masses or the audience have a huge influence in produc
ing culture and controlling the media. According to Theodor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer popular culture is in favour of those
who are in power. As women have risen to the ranks of men issues
favoured by them have gained credibility. Lately the topics of in
terest in contemporary culture and scholarship are feminism and
humour, which combine to form feminist humour.
Feminist humour, according to Kaufman and Blakley, is the
humour of the oppressed.
122 Deepshikha A. Minz
Feminist humour is based on the perception that societies have generally been
organized as systems of oppression and exploitation, and that the largest
(but not the only) oppressed group has been the female. It is also based on
conviction that such oppression is undesirable and unnecessary. It is a humour
based on visions of change. (13)
Women have been objectified and fetishized for ages. Feminist

humour empowers women, helps them to express themselves and
relate their experiences in a comical way, initiating a connection
between women who have experienced the same across the globe.
Lisa Merrill defines it as ‘rebellious and self-affirming’ (279).
Two women who have caught the attention of the audience with
their sense of humour, acting skills and power of writing are Tina
Fey, the author of Bossypants (2011) and Mindy Kaling, the author
of two memoirs Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (2011) and
Why Not Me (2015), respectively. Both these women have struggled
and worked hard to get into the entertainment industry which is
male dominated. In spite of the women being criticized for their
appearances and demeanour, they still managed to make it to the
top as female comedians in a male dominated world.
Bossypants by Tina Fey is a memoir where the author, an actress,
writer, comedian and producer, takes the reader on a journey
through her life as a young girl up to the present day. It is note
worthy that Tina Fey has received multiple awards including the
Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The style of writing is
simple for readers to relate and understand wherein initially she
welcomes the readers to take a trip down memory lane with her
and correlate it with their own lives. For her, this book is about the
child who wants to remain one, growing into an adult. She had a
beautiful childhood. In her teenage years she started to act and
that’s where her creativity blossomed. She talks about her relation
ship with her family and friends, how she met her husband and
the birth and bringing up of their daughter. She recounts various
incidents related to her life as a writer and comedian for popular
shows like Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock on NBC Network. She
mirrors her real life and situation in these shows as well. She also
talks about the superficiality of people and how shallow they can
be. She also finds out that bigotry in her workplace was just a false
Humorous Women’s Memoirs in the Entertainment Industry 123
façade; she discovers that men are ignorant about women’s biol
ogy. Throughout the book she uses humour to explicate her views
and situations. With her humorous and direct style of writing she
brings her past back to present in her life which is hilarious.
Mindy Kaling’s memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? is
a humorous collection of stories and incidents in her life. She too
is an American actress, writer, producer and comedian. Her par
ents were Indian immigrants and she had to struggle to become a
celebrity in Hollywood. She takes us on a tour of her life, highlighting
friendship, romance and Hollywood. She talks about various is
sues like being overweight and bullied, fighting her way to fame
and people judging her for her appearance. She also writes about
her experiences as a writer and actor in ‘The Office (US)’ on NBC
Network, a mockumentary sitcom. In her second memoir Why Not
Me? she writes about her experience in her own show The Mindy
Project on Hulu Network and her life as a coloured woman in
Hollywood. The wit and humour in her writing is entertaining
and hilarious.
One of the theories of the foundation of feminism asserts that
media and popular culture generally objectify women and degrade
them. They create a mirage for the audience, contriving social ex
pectations which makes life complicated between men and women,
and distorts the way they look at themselves. The media sets a
certain standard of beauty, pit women against women for enter
tainment, women being half clad along with male artists on music
videos or television shows are used as props. Tina Fey and Mindy
Kaling are epitomes of feminists who take down the common
notion and misconceptions of an ideal woman. Both come across
sexism, superficiality, body shaming, bullying and teasing in their
lives and do not hesitate to speak about it, giving valuable sug
gestions. They have plunged into reality making every woman
feels connected to them. In her memoir Tina Fey writes about
sexism:
So, my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced
with sexism, or ageism, or lookism, or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask
yourself the following question: ‘Is this person in between me and what I
want to do?’ If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better
used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you’re in
charge, don’t hire the people who were jerky to you. (75)
These suggestions often have a huge impact on people’s lives,
establshing a relation between the reader and the author which is
complacent in nature. The reader immerses and merges into the
life of Tina Fey and relates to her circumstances linking them to
their own lives, bringing the audience and the author close and on
an equal level of understanding. Tina Fey in her straightforward
and simplistic writing imparts her understanding of the society
around her.
In order to explicate more of her comic truth she uses political
analogies in her sketch on SNL (Saturday Night Live), a late night
live comedy sketch show aired by NBC Network in America, about
Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin where they are speaking against
sexism in a campaign, but she brings to light the reality by saying,
‘In real life these women experienced different sides of the same
sexism coin. People who didn’t like Hillary called her a ballbuster.
People who didn’t like Sarah called her Caribou Barbie. People
attempted to marginalize these women based on their gender’
(116). This shows that whatever position women are in they are
always laughed at. Women have been a joke and always mocked at
by men. No matter how powerful women become they will always
be criticized for being themselves.
Most of the people tend to be superficial and have the audacity
to body shame others, be it for being underweight or overweight,
short or tall, fair or dark skinned. People are often conscious of
how they look and how others see them. The image of a perfect
body is something that everyone wants to attain. Tina Fey humours
women’s new body image they think is perfect by saying, ‘But I
think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo
(Jennifer Lopez) turned it butt-style. . . . The person closest to actu
ally achieving this look is Kim Kardashian who, as we know, was
made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes’ (19-20). Here
Tina Fey indicates the expectations of the audience in response to
the women portrayed in the media. Celebrities like JLo, Kim
Kardashian have made a tremendous impact on the audience by ex
posing their bodies and raising physical expectations for men as
well as women. Instead of giving a positive impact there seems
to be a negative one especially when it comes to the physical
appearance of women on the screen. The psychological impact on
the audience leads to various eating disorders like bulimia, anor
exia and binge eating disorders. It not only affects the individual
but everyone else around them. In recent times this is a serious
problem amongst the youth as well as adults, as it is life threaten
ing. Celebrities contour their bodies for popularity and fashion,
not aware of the impact it would make on their audience. She goes
on to say, ‘Now if you’re not “hot”, you are expected to work on it
until you are. It’s like when you renovate a house and you’re le
gally required to leave just one of the original walls standing. . . .
We have to lead by example’ (20). Unrealistic factors appeal to the
audience these days, making them crave for more. A person who
does not have a good body shape needs to work out in order to
look good, irrespective of one’s income, in order to replicate to
their idols on screen. A person who is already in shape goes for
plastic surgeries, implants, skin dye, botox and transplants. She
says this is the case with the present generation, they need to be
told that they do not need all and should accept the way they are,
but how? How can one convince an unsatisfied person who is crav
ing to stand out? To this she responds by saying that we as indi
viduals need to set an example for others and show that simple is
normal and appealing too.
Mindy Kaling in her memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without
Me? tells us about her being overweight while growing up.
My mom’s a doctor, but because she came from India and then Africa, where
childhood obesity was not a problem, she put no premium on having skinny
kids. In fact, she and my dad didn’t mind having a chubby daughter. Part of
me wonders if it even made them feel a little prosperous, like Have you seen
our overweight Indian child? Do you know how statistically rare this is? (15)
Our society has set certain expectations, be it physical or men

tal. These have to be broken down in order for people to accept
themselves the way they are. Mindy Kaling talks about her struggles
of being overweight. She accepted her body type as she embraced
the way she is, no matter how much the media criticized her for
being overweight, something different from what they see on
screen. Even in India we come across so many female celebrities
who have physically transformed themselves in order to enchant
their audience.
She shows her indifference by saying, ‘If someone called me
chubby, it would no longer be something that kept me up late at
night. . . . Being called fat is not like being called stupid or un
funny, which is the worst thing you could ever say to me. . . .’
(22). She is clearly not affected by the illusions of the media. For
her being funny and smart is a priority rather than her physical
appearance. The combination of smart and funny is rare, espe
cially on television. Women everywhere need to understand one
thing that beauty is within oneself and not perpetually from the
exterior. Women need to accept their body the way it is. They
need to create their own beauty standards rather than imitating
the media. Mindy Kaling accepts the way she is, in spite of harsh
criticism by asserting, ‘Ultimately, the main reasons why I will be
chubby for life are (1) I have virtually no hobbies except dieting . . .
and (4) I’m pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t
break a beach chair’ (21). She has no problems being an over
weight celebrity. The men she was in a relationship with as well as
her family accepted her the way she is. They like her for her humour
and intelligence, not for the colour of her skin or her physical
appearance.
In Why Not Me, Mindy Kaling talks about being comfortable
being herself. Women should simply not beat themselves up about
not having the perfect body. The third wave of feminism enlightens
us about the body image women have been struggling for years.
The media has inflated it and has had a huge impact on the audience
turning them bulimic or overweight. Through her book she tries
to reach out to the audience to accept the way one is by saying,
I want to say one last thing, and it’s important. Though I am a generally
happy person who feels comfortable in my skin, I do beat myself up because
I am influenced by a societal pressure to be thin. All the time. I feel it the
same way anybody who picks up a magazine and sees Keira Knightley’s
elegantly bony shoulder blades poking out of a backless dress does. I don’t
know if I’ve ever seen my shoulder blades once. Honestly, I’m dubious that
any part of my body could be so sharp and firm as to be described as a
‘blade’. I feel it when I wake up in the morning and try on every single pair
of my jeans and everything looks bad and I just want to go back to sleep. But
my secret is: even though I wish I could be thin, and that I could have the
ease of lifestyle that I associate with being thin, I don’t wish for it with all of
my heart. Because my heart is reserved for way more important things. (192)
Ultimately hard work and confidence is the key to success in

every field. Superficiality, body shaming or body image will not
get one success. Late capitalism is completely dependent on the
media. Jameson illuminates us by saying:
The media constitutes one of the more influential new products of late
capitalism (print, internet, television, film) and a new means for the capitalist
take-over of our lives. Through the mediatization of culture, we become
increasingly reliant on the media’s version of our reality, a version of reality
that is filled predominantly with capitalist values. (xix)
This thereby justifies the action of the audience.

The memoirs break all the misconception the audience has on
these writers. The third wave of feminism is the impact of popular
culture. Tina Fey in the first episode of 30 Rock declares that she is
a third wave feminist. Third wave feminism is a combination of
feminism and popular culture; a new generation of feminists who
are politically conscious too has evolved. These feminist writers
reach out to the audience by using humour and tell the reality of
life. They are known to be direct and not ashamed to talk about
their body or a woman’s biology or sex. Tina Fey narrates her
experience of her first period,
I was ten. I had noticed something was weird earlier in the day, but I knew from
commercials that one’s menstrual period was a blue liquid that you poured like
laundry detergent onto maxi pads to test their absorbency. This wasn’t blue,
so . . . I ignored it for a few hours.
When we got home I pulled my mom aside to ask if it was weird I was
bleeding in my underpants. She was very sympathetic but also a little baffled.
Her eyes said ‘Dummy didn’t you read ‘How Shall I Tell My Daughter’. I HAD
read it but nowhere in the pamphlet did anyone say that your period was NOT
a blue liquid. At that moment two things became clear to me I was now techni
cally a woman and I would never be a doctor. (15)
Such an experience of her transformation from a child to an
adult was a taboo. Parents hesitate to have a discourse with their
children on menstruation and coitus. Hence children have to read
on it and educate themselves. Previously it was very uncomfort
able for people to speak about it, but as times have changed society
is becoming more broad minded and accepting of the changes, as
media has openly started speaking about it through various medi
ums.
While growing up Tina Fey faced being eve teased and takes it
in a positive way, she writes, ‘Almost everyone first realized they
were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something
nasty to them. . . . It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are
they a patrol sent out to let girls know they’ve crossed into
puberty? If so, it’s working’ (16). There seem to be certain issues
that need to be dealt with. Men need to be taught to respect
women, and mothers need to educate their sons and daughters
about the human biology and function rather than finding it of
fensive. Teasing can also have a negative impact on an individual
leading to stress, depression, drugs or even suicide. Teasing and
bullying in schools are common situations which lead students to
develop psychological problems.
Mindy Kaling relates the way she was raised and taught by her
parents to be good and obedient, not teaching her how to con
front certain people who did not deserve her kindness. She puts it
in a simple way by saying,
When I was a kid, my parents smartly raised us to keep quiet, be respectful to
older people, and generally not question adults all that much. I think that’s
because they were assuming that 99 per cent of the time, we’d be interacting
with worthy, smart adults. . . . They didn’t ever tell me ‘Sometimes you will
meet idiots who are technically adults and authority figures. You don’t have to
do what they say. (Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me and Other Concerns,
32-3)
Parents often keep their children protected, especially when it

comes to females of the family. They are not taught how to defend
themselves against smart people, which eventually they learn with
growing experience. Media draws people and creates awareness of
things that are not imparted by the family but portrayed by the
media. This helps people to analyse and assess their situations and
tackle it smartly.
When it comes to career and advice for the audience Tina Fey
reveals the reality by saying,
This is what I tell young women who ask me for career advice. People are
going to try to trick you. To make you feel that you are in competition with
one another. ‘You’re up for a promotion. If they go for a woman, it’ll be
between you and Barbara’. Don’t be fooled. You’re not in competition with
other women. You’re in competition with everyone’. (50)
With this statement one understands that in a work environ

ment it is the survival of the fittest. So, one must never take things
for granted, especially when it comes to same sex individuals or
the opposite sex. People are waiting for the other person’s inability
and downfall. So one must be careful and attentive when it comes
to competing at the work place especially in recent times when
there are so many fake relationships. In the introduction to her
memoir she advises her readers, ‘If you are a woman and you bought
this book for practical tips on how to make it in a male-dominated
workplace, here they are. No pigtails, no tube tops. Cry sparingly.
(Some people say “Never let them see you cry”. I say, if you’re so
mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.)’ (9). She
encourages the female readers to be strong independent women,
so as to support women and guide them how to deal with people
and survive in a male dominated work environment. These few
persons advise people to cultivate their thoughts, ideas and person
alities in order to deal with the world at large.
Ruth Coser in her psychiatric study discovered that one uses
humour to challenge the existing power structures. She explains,
‘Hence, release of aggression in a witty manner may do much to
prevent the undisguised outbreak of hostility or the bottling up of
frustrations. Humour helps to convert hostility and to control it,
while at the same time permitting it expression’ (95). Women
have contained themselves for too long. Women were derided and
are still being derided by the opposite sex. Such forms of expres
sion are a release for them.
These writers come across all sorts of people who underestimate
their work which makes them work harder as writers in Holly
wood to put on a good show with their humour to prove people
wrong. Tina Fey teaches one a valuable lesson when it comes to
dealing with male chauvinists. In spite of being the boss herself,
she advises, ‘Don’t waste your energy trying to educate or change
opinions. Go “Over! Under! Through!” and opinions will change
organically when you’re the boss. Or they won’t. Who cares? Do
your thing and don’t care if they like it’ (75). Rising to the top has
a lot of perks as one can bring changes and make a difference for
the people. Women in the present generation have been empow
ered and are flourishing in all walks of life and equal to men in
competitions.
Mindy Kaling in Why Not Me? writes about people hating her
for her confidence in spite of being a woman, coloured and
humorous. She writes, ‘People’s reaction to me is sometimes “Uch,
I just don’t like her. I hate how she thinks she is so great.”. . . So
that’s why you need to be a little bit brave’ (209). People, especially
the audience and the media are very judgemental when it comes
to women of colour, that too having a sense of humour. Though
she does not think herself to be superior to others, the audience
watching her, judge her without knowing her. Strong headed women
are often surrounded by insecure men who find women threaten
ing and competitive. Celebrities like Mindy Kaling and Tina Fey
send out strong feminist vibes that people, especially men feel
intimidated by their very presence. No matter whoever body shames
them or mocks at them, they are resistant to the negativity spewed
on them, and move ahead in life with their heads held high.
Telling truth through the medium of comedy has become an
eminent part of these women writers. They use humorous experi
ences from their lives and put it on their own television shows
using it as a satire. Once such incident Tina Fey writes about is,
Here’s the truth. There is an actual difference between male and female
comedy writers, and I’m going to reveal it now. The men urinate in cups. . . I
had definitely never heard of anyone peeing in a cup and leaving it in their
own office on a bookshelf to evaporate and be absorbed back into their body
through the pores on their face. (71-2)
This very act implies that men can do whatever they want irre
spective of the place. While women do not have such freedom as it
would be an indecent act, as they are supposed to be timid and
cultured. This shows the inequality women have to go through.
Men in comedy shows evade rules while women are supposed to
be good and mild mannered with etiquette. Therefore, women
incline towards comedy as it is socially acceptable to evade the
rules instituted by men.
These memoirs bring out the truth in the simplest, most casual
and humorous way possible. This twenty-first century work of
popular literature is an easy read. The target audience for these
books are mostly twenty first century youth and adults, fans of
comedy, fans of the writers, women and critics. The audience con
nect to Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling through various media, be it
their memoirs or their television sitcoms. Most of them have expe
rienced the same in their lifetime and hence enjoy reading their
memoirs. They exemplify strong women who are direct, fight for
what is right, support and advise other women and guide the au
dience to be strong, independent, brave, confident and outspoken
like them. Humour is the best means to relate to the audience.
The audience acknowledges their power and confidence, therefore
empowering themselves and emulating it when it comes to their
own lives.
Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling open a new array for women writing
comedy. Their lucid way of expressing themselves and enlighten
ing us about what it feels to be a woman in a male dominated
society and how to analyse and understand various issues faced by
millions of women all across the globe in the twenty-first century.
When we look at them individually, their memoirs have taken
feminist comedy into a new direction. Susan Carlson writes, ‘It
is such positive vision that distinguishes the women’s work
(from contemporary male comedies rooted in despair), even more
basically than the formal innovations or the novel subject matter.
In other words, the difference in women’s comedy depends on
optimism’ (307). Stepping into the limelight without thinking
about being judged, exhibit their confidence and dignity in the
twenty-first century, materialistic and superficial world. It gives
the audience the confidence to accept themselves, as well as
others, irrespective of what others think while paving the way to
success in all fields in life.
REFERENCES
Barreca, Regina, New Perspectives on Women and Comedy, Philadelphia: Gordon

and Breach, 1992.
Bieniek, Adrienne Trier, ed., Feminist Theory and Pop Culture, vol. 5, Rotterdam:
Sense, 2015.
Bing, Janet, ‘Is Feminist Humor an Oxymoron?’, Women and Language 27.1,
pp. 22-33, 2004.
Blount, Roy (Jr.), What Men Don’t Tell Women, New York: Penguin, 1984.
Bromley, V., Feminisms Matters: Debates, Theories, Activism, Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2012.
Carlson, Susan, Women and Comedy: Rewriting the British Theatrical Tradition,
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991.
Coser, Ruth Laub, ‘Laughter Among Colleagues’, Psychiatry 23, pp. 81-95,
1960.
Fey, Tina, Bossypants, New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2011.
Hooks, B., Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, London: Pluto Press,
2002.
Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham:
Duke University Press, 1991.
Kaling, Mindy, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and Other Concerns).
New York, Crown Archetype: Random House, 2011.
——, Why Not Me? , New York, Crown Archetype: Random House, 2015.
Kaufiman, Gloria and Mary Kay Blakely, eds., Pulling Our Own Strings: Femi
nist Humor & Satire, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
Merrill, Lisa, ‘Feminist Humor, Rebellious and Self-Affirming’, Women’s Studies.
15, pp. 271-80, 1988.
Smolak, Linda, and Sarah K. Murnen, ‘Feminism and Body Image’, The Body
Beautiful, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Walker, Nancy, A Very Serious Thing: Women’s Humor and American Culture,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1990.
CHAPTER 5
A Case for Homosexuality: Reading

Anchee Min’s Red Azalea as a
Political Autobiography
NANDINI PRADEEP J.
In the 1960s, when the slogan ‘personal is political’1 was gaining

popularity in the West amongst feminist activists, the East, namely
China, was burning with the vigour of Mao Zedong’s Great Prole
tarian Cultural Revolution.2 A call for the reassertion of the revolu
tionary spirit, it culminated in the strict adherence to Chairman
Mao’s thoughts, especially those published in the Little Red Book.
Behind the fortresses of the Great Wall, history was simmering as
millions died and several others were pushed into living a life of
utter humiliation and pain, all under the canopy of revolution which
was marked by frugal living as it is considered anti-bourgeoisie in a
revolutionary set up. It is during this era of the Chinese history
that Anchee Min takes us to in her memoir Red Azalea—a narra
tive of pain, trauma, desire and politics that foregrounds the lived
experience of common masses in the last days of the Mao regime.
This is to be viewed in contrast to the painting of a greater good
that Mao and his cabinet had given to the general public. Keeping
this portrait of political upheaval in mind, this article attempts to
study the memoir of an ordinary citizen as an instance of political
autobiography as it grapples with the essentials of identity forma
tion—personal/political, sexual/spiritual.
An author of repute now, Anchee Min was born in a well-to-do
household in the heart of Shanghai in 1957. Her childhood saw
the worst of political decisions made by Mao and his followers,
134 Nandini Pradeep J.
starting with the onslaught of the Cultural Revolution which be
gan the year she turned nine. Having to fend for herself and her
three younger siblings, she had grown up bearing the weight of
responsibility of a mother and father, both. The revolution desta
bilized the otherwise comfortable family settings with its claim of
destroying the bourgeois hierarchies established by the capitalist
forces. Material wealth became a prized possession; normalcy in
itself became a rare luxury. It is in this state of organized anarchy
that Min slowly progressed from being a leader of the Little Red
Guards at elementary school level to being a worker at the Red
Fire Farm.
In the 1965 Foreword to his epochal book Escape from Freedom,
Erich Fromm suggests that modern man, irrespective of all his
claims of a rebellious nature, is essentially a being who fears his
ability to be an individual capable of making decisions, which
subsequently forces him to fear the concept of freedom itself and is
‘. . . tempted to surrender his freedom to dictators of all kinds, or
to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine,
well fed, and well clothed, yet not a free man but an automaton’
(xii). The Cultural Revolution was an apparatus to install within
the system of democracy a similar state of fear and absolute surrender.
Elsewhere in the book, Fromm says in the context of Nazism:
We have been compelled to recognize that millions in Germany were as eager
to surrender their freedom as their fathers were to fight for it; that instead of
wanting freedom, they sought for ways of escape from it; that other millions
were indifferent and did not believe the defense of freedom to be worth
fighting and dying for. We also recognize that the crisis of democracy is not a
peculiarly Italian or German problem, but one confronting every modern
state. Nor does it matter which symbols the enemies of human freedom
choose: freedom is not less endangered if attacked in the name of anti-Fascism
than in that of outright Fascism. (19)
This sense of freedom which has been sold to the government in
the name of democracy is the central theme and a recurrent stand
point in Min’s narrative. Her life is a testimony to the atrocities of
Zedong’s autocratic regime. Her father, for instance, throughout
the narrative is seen to have been ridiculed and made to lead a life
of a recluse. Both her parents, who were better educated than a
A Case for Homosexuality 135
good number of people, were asked to step down from jobs that
they deserved and work as daily wage labourers, in the name of
equality. Min herself was sent to a collective farming site even after
the exceptional behaviour and capabilities displayed in her school
years. Min and her parents come off as closet rebels as they defy
the forcefully implicated rules, even though not openly, but at
least at an ideational level. Looking at the way in which their psyche
works, one is able to decipher the reign of terror Mao’s followers had
propagated on the masses. Reminiscent of Franck Pavloff ’s alle
gorical fable Brown Morning 3 named Min’s hen Big Beard was
ordered to be killed as it was against Mao’s rules to raise pets. This
indicates the totalitarianism prevalent during those times (Red
Azalea 24). Another incident is when Min is manipulated to testify
against her favourite teacher because she was well-versed in English
literature and would always use literary examples to explain life to
her students, to the point of suggesting good books to read (32).
Because of this very reason, she was publicly shamed as a traitor
who insulted Mao and his thoughts. When Min confessed this to
her parents, they reproached her angrily for playing into the hands
of the propagandists (38).
At the age of seventeen, Min was sent away to the Red Fire Farm,
a shore area of the East China Sea, and this marked the first major
shift in her life—to be sent away to the farms meant that she was
securing the lives of her family members. Her siblings would not
have to join a farm and do hard labour as somebody from the
family has already fulfilled that criterion. It was an opportunity to
sacrifice herself for the betterment of her family, to be precise. It
was during this period that Min came face-to-face with love, lust,
and desire in the form of two women—her colleague Little Green
and her commander Yan Sheng. Little Green’s love affair with a
man she met in the market, his subsequent trial and death, as well
as her bouts of insanity and death made Min realize what it was to
love in the China of those days (Red Azalea 61). Her mind consci
entiously closed all possible distractions in a masculine form, which
made her accept her temptations and constant attraction towards
Yan. ‘I developed a desire to conquer Yan . . . I wanted her to sur
render. I was obsessed’ (70), she wrote as she fell deeper into the
abyss of passion. Soon, she gained Yan’s favour, which led to their
intimate encounters, and frequent sexual contact. ‘I was awakened
by her’ (87), she wrote at one point, and at yet another, she pos
sessively claims that her intimacy belonged to no one but herself
(107). This awakening is not just of a desire, but of a dormant
sexuality which she would not have otherwise addressed in her
life, if not for this particular person, or situation. Min, in a later
interview claimed that the desire was purely heterosexual—not
homosexual—and ‘the relationship only came about because she
was starved of human contact’,4 but the text and its narrative proves
otherwise.
‘The heroines in the revolutionary operas had neither husbands
nor lovers. The heroine in my life, Yan, did not seem to have any
thing to do with men either’ (60), quips a young Min. The absence
of a male lover never disturbed Min ever since she embraced her
sexuality by accepting her love. While reading the text carefully,
one finds that even before coming into contact with Yan, Min had
developed a strong infatuation for Little Green. It is evident in the
way she described Green’s body, her behaviour, the way she flaunted
her full breasts and the meticulousness with which she washed
her opulent undergarments. She justified this admiration as mere
adoration, when she said she worshipped Yan. Min’s jealousy to
wards Leopard Lee as he penetrated Yan in Min’s parents’ place
resounded the intense romantic passion wrought into her heart;
not merely a desperate call for an erotic, human touch.
Min’s tryst with the supervisor is another instance of depicting
the undeniable homosexuality quotient; the attraction for his mas
culine side is solely her yearning for power, but the aspect of him
which pulled her closer was his androgynous, highly feminine side.
After getting scouted as one of the contenders for the role of the
protagonist of the movie Red Azalea based on Jiang Ching’s revo
lutionary opera of the same name, Min confronted her own sense
of competitiveness as she understood that only the fittest would
survive. By leaving the Farm, she had ruined her sibling Coral’s
chances of being sent to a factory indirectly, she was sent instead
to Red Fire Farm as a substitute—with this, she had fallen out of
favour with her family. So, in a way, one may say that her intimacy
with the supervisor was a frantic attempt to regain herself. After
losing Yan to Leopard Lee and the role to Cheering Spear, she
could no longer rekindle the desire in herself to live; the supervisor
was in every which way her last hope of survival. Min saw him
more as an enigma than a man; the supervisor himself spoke of his
masculinity as a function and not as an identification—in fact, he
was seen to identify with Jiang Ching and her life before and after
becoming Madam Mao. As Min’s romance with the supervisor
came to an end with the expulsion of the Gang of Four and his
disappearance, she also learnt to ‘overcome’ her homosexual identity,
only to conform to the heteronormativity extant in the society; the
supervisor transformed into a metaphor of finding a midway
between her self and the world outside.
Politics, according to Robert Dahl, is ‘. . . any persistent pat
tern of human relationships that involves, to a significant extent,
control, influence, power or authority’ (Dahl 9-10). The word
‘politics’ comes from the Greek word polis which refers to the city
state. The English word, thus, denotes a segregation between the
rural and the urban, and by association, the private and the public.
The genre of political autobiography merges these distinct catego
ries together, to form an intersectional whole, representing the
inside and the outside of the humans in/and their surroundings.
What a woman’s autobiography, then, does within this particular
genre of political writing, is to give a human angle to the otherwise
disembodied and objective literary style developed over the course of
history. By naming Red Azalea a political autobiography, one neces
sarily involves with the employment of a feminist methodology,
of rationalizing, of empiricizing and of mapping its hermeneutic
territory to gauge what is significant to human history.
Min’s memoir, pregnant with dissidence as far as Mao’s Com
munist ethos and the Chinese Cultural Revolution are concerned,
was received with great acrimony in her homeland. The alienation
came not just from amongst the anonymity of the masses, but
from within her family as well. An interview5 cites a lady in the
Chinese media to have written that ‘Min took off her pants to let
the Westerners screw her’. The Chinese community saw Min’s act
of writing about her self as an act of betrayal. Her family accused
her of the same, shaming her and ironically enough, also criticizing
her for not providing help to her siblings as well to escape the
cruel times which haunted them even after Mao’s death. In the
same interview, Min says, ‘I love China with all my heart and
soul, although I feel fortunate to have escaped it’.6 The years which
followed the revolution saw its aftermath; it took almost half a
century to recover from it. Min, however, did not share the brunt
of this fate as she took refuge in the United States of America.
Red Azalea is an attempt to address a mass psychosis that was
inherent to Mao’s China. More than just a memoir about the poli
tics of the Chinese state, it also portrays the politics of the gendered
self as well as its many discourses. An undercurrent of a sexual
politics unique to China’s cultural and literary history is seen to
run all through this narrative as Min struggles to come to terms
with a sexuality that she had once accepted, twice denounced. It is
one of the first Chinese autobiographies of that era to dwell upon
sensitive issues such as rape, lesbianism, falsification of law, and
so on.
A narrative which began with the beginning of the Cultural
Revolution, Red Azalea ends with Mao’s death, and the association
of all those who worked in relation to Madam Mao as ‘bourgeois
individuals’ (anti-national, in another sense). Many including Min
came under this category and were forced to either leave the country
or die. This book, thus, captures one of the most crucial and con
sequential phases of Chinese history, drawing references from
China’s culture and language. It depicts in an unrefined English,
dipped in the eloquence of Chinese, a history of womanhood,
women’s sexuality, and their desires blooming in the midst of a
revolution. It marks the beginning of an end as well as a wake up
call for a generation of Chinese citizens to speak, to write and to
argue about a history which was built on their blood and ashes.
NOTES
1. Of an uncertain origin, the phrase was popularized by Carol Hanisch’s essay

of the same name.
2. It was a revolutionary socio-political movement from 1966-76 which aimed
at cleansing the nation of capitalism as well as traditionalism.
3. In this novella, the author narrates the terror state where the government has
decreed to annihilate all dogs and cats, which are not brown. But soon, the
situation escalates to a fascist extremist state where they decide to arrest
families or individuals who have not owned a brown pet before.
4. She claims this in an interview with Helena de Bertadano for The Telegraph
‘Anchee Min: “If I had stayed in China, I would be dead”’. See: https://
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10116718/Anchee-Min-If-I-had-stayed-in
China-I-would-be-dead.html.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
REFERENCES
Dahl, Robert, Modern Political Analysis, New Jersey: Upper Saddle River, 1984.
Fromm, Erich, Escape from Freedom, New York : Avon Books, 1969.
Min, Anchee, Red Azalea, London: Bloomsbury, 2006.
CHAPTER 6
Self, Time and Death as

Autobiographical Elements
in Performance Art
SANDHYA DEEPTHI
From the first moments when human beings began to think about
representing the world around them, the human form became
something of interest. It is extended in relation to identity, self,
sexuality, gender, etc., which are associated with the idea of body.
The definition of body per se is no more a constant entity; and
understanding it varies in varied contexts. Michel Foucault in his
Discipline and Punish (1975) talks about docile bodies in the sense
that our bodies are subjected to control and discipline in order
to regulate and control our actions. Seventeenth-century French
philosopher, Rene Descartes’s theory of ‘Dualism’, which is other
wise known as Cartesian dualism, distinguishes mind from body.1
For Roland Barthes, body is both social and linguistic construct;
the physical body is pre-cultural, pre-linguistic and pre-symbolic.
Sigmund Freud defines body through sexuality, i.e. self is considered
as a sexual being/identity. Bodies are the objects of primary narcis
sism according to psychoanalysis. A descriptive representation of
body is found more in realist literature.
In Greek tragedies like the Odyssey and the Iliad, body is essential
and ever present in scenes of slaughter and combat. In most of the
Shakespearean plays, bodies act both as metaphor and in the physical
context. In early modern literature bodies become problematic
and hidden. The centrality of body is underscored in Rabelais
(1986) by Mikhail Bakhtin. Feminists like Melaine Klein and Sandor
142 Sandhya Deepthi
Ferenzi have theorized extensively on the mothers’ body. According
to them, discursive systems derive from bodily sensations. One of
the earliest narratives that cater to the act of imaging or imagining
the image of self is the legendary myth of Narcissus. The continual
yearning to discover what constitutes the ‘I’, the knowledge and
composition of it confined to individual experience is the foremost
motif in the current discourse.
Adding to the above postulates, it is crucial to observe that the
representation of the female body has been steered by certain
underlying hegemonic and patriarchal ideologies, i.e. stereotypes
representing women as weak/vulnerable, seductress, obstacle, sexual
object or a procreating device (Nayar, 2010).
John Berger in his seminal work Ways of Seeing (1972) confides
that:
One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at
women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only
most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to
themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female.
Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of
vision: a sight. (47)
As Berger exemplifies in his book, most of the renaissance paint

ings portray women’s body as the site of visual pleasure with erotic
intent. This approach to women’s body is nothing but objectifying
them; never to locate oneself (women) within a subject position.
Against this background, the reading of female representations in
art becomes an ineluctable subject of enquiry.
IMAGE AND SELF IN ART
The ‘image’ in art is a process of self-construction and self

fashioning.2 According to the modern theories of sociology and
psychology,3 the self is made or fashioned in the light of social
expectations and norms and is performed before an audience, that
is, in the social world. However, in modern times, art shapes itself
as an insurgent weapon for poets and artists to fight back the
constructs of society; addressing a wide range of issues4 across
Self, Time and Death as Autobiographical Elements 143
literature and art. It is important to observe that there have also
been many deviations or changes in the subject matter and subject
position5 of art. This immediately brings us to women artists as
they are very often voiced from marginalized situations.
In the above context, the idea of image lies within the prospects
of understanding the individual self. The initial encounter of self
that is primarily regarded visual such as in the myth of Narcissus,
calls into enquiry the necessary relationship between one’s own body
image and the idea of self. Subjects in images have transformed from
outside to inside, exterior to interior, divine to human, objective to
subjective. Image is knowledge of the self and ‘self ’ is the immediate
subject available to us. The space between the self and the other has
been widely studied by contemporary theorists like Julia Kristeva.
Julia Kristeva in her book Powers of Horror (1980) says that the
body is a speaking body and further compares the biological
abjection with the cultural. According to her, the biological ab/
objects include:
by-products and excesses of the body: excrement, blood, mucus, menses,
vomit, pus, sometimes semen, and ultimately the corpse. Cultural abjections
include sexual taboos, prisons, disease wards, freak shows, anything that
threatens to confront the leakiness of order and other, the liminal, the border
line that defines what is fully human from what is not. Vagrant viscera. . . .
(Kristeva 3)
The artists of the 1960s and 1970s explored the site of abjection
as the one where binaries collide and collapse into each other. The
body in the performance art is an extended and continuous image
of the structured body.
The limits of this body are pushed to explore because the bound
aries (or the marginalized) are always vulnerable than the centre.
The abject body is a site where boundaries overlap and switch.
The external becomes the internal and vice versa. The idea of the
abject has strong feminist connotations. During the 1980s and
1990s, many artists employed the idea of abject in their work. Cindy
Sherman’s work reflects the images of female bodily functions as
they are ostracized by the general social or public view. The themes
of abject, disgust, uncanny and the surreal become the themes of
144 Sandhya Deepthi
modern-day feminist art where the boundaries of the ‘Body’ are
disturbed.
Kristeva introduces the concept of ‘Abject’ in her essay ‘Powers
of Horror: An Essay on Abjection’ (1980). The ‘Abject’ refers por
trays to us the imagery of disgust and repulsion which operates
between the binaries of life and death, self and other, reality
and illusion, etc. The grotesque images of bodily fluids are very
discomforting, yet powerful in subverting the mainstream ideas
of beauty and the feminine. The Abject is nothing but a sense
or state of repugnance and exclusion which she relates to the
marginalization of women for a long time. The nausea caused by
experiencing the Abject (milk for instance) separates her from the
imagery of the mother and the father by association. She desires it
and at the same time, she doesn’t want it. It’s a contradictory space
where she wants to assimilate it but at the same time expels it. She
abjects herself while claiming to establish herself in the process.
(Kristeva, 1982). We see differing ideas co-existing at a point; the
want and hate, the self and other begin to co-exist or unite. The
boundaries of the human body are destroyed where there is a fusion
of exterior and interior and such a point is vulnerable where the
meaning and structure collapse.
In the book, Recognition beyond Narcissism: Imaging the Body’s
Ownness and Strangeness, Jenny Slatman notes that
The philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, who has undergone a heart transplant,
argues that the fact of receiving an organ from someone else makes visible that
welcoming an ‘intruder’ (intrus) is essential to the experience of one’s own
body. At the heart of oneself, one finds this menacing but also beneficent
stranger. According to him, this intrus—for which the heart transplant is an
exemplary case—always remains a radical alterity, yet at the same time, it
forms the condition of oneself. Organ transplantation thus blurs the contours
of one’s own body, and therefore calls for a reconceptualization of the border
between ownness and strangeness.6
The body of one’s own self is no more a single exclusive entity of

its own but possesses the element of the other. The boundaries of
the body are not fixed and artists have tried to push these bound
aries through their art pieces.
The Japanese-American cultural artist, Yoko Ono’s pioneering
work Cut Piece (1964) explores the ideas of body and violence.
During the performance, she wears one of her favourite dresses and
presents herself before the audience by kneeling down on the floor
remaining completely calm and still. The audience was allowed to
cut pieces of her clothes using scissors. She was divested of her
clothing by the audience to the point where she was left with only
an undergarment. The idea was of a body reduced to a mere object
addressing the vulnerability of female body and the extreme possi
bilities of sexual violence in a public space. According to Yoko
Ono, it is always artists who give what they want but she wanted
people to take whatever they wanted and so it was important to
cut whatever they wanted.7 The performance experiments with
the fusion of the artist and the audience addressing the question of
what constitutes the self. The inclusion of participatory audience
during the performance pushes the boundaries of an artistic self.
The artwork now is an inclusion and merger of both the self and
the other.
Source : http://www.artversed.com Web 11 August 2017.

Figure 6.1: Cut piece, 1965, Yoko Ono.
146 Sandhya Deepthi
Marina Abramovic, a Yugoslavian performance artist has become
increasingly popular during the recent times and is considered the
godmother of performance art.8 The intensity of subjects/themes
in her artworks often stood out as controversial. Rhythm 0 which
was performed in 1974 was the most influential works in which
she placed 72 objects on a table and asked the audience to do
whatever they wanted with those objects as she remained passive
throughout the performance for six hours. Many from the audience
tried to physically abuse and assault her body with the objects
available, while a few embraced her. In her book Walking Through
Walls, she states ‘I read a statement of Bruce Nauman’s: “Art is a
matter of life and death.” It sounds melodramatic, but it’s so true.
This was exactly how it was for me, even at the beginning. Art was
life and death. There was nothing else. It was so serious and so
necessary’ (Abramovic, 2016).
A written notice that’s positioned on the table read like this:
Rhythm 0
INSTRUCTIONS
There are 72 objects on the table that can be used on me as
desired.
PERFORMANCE
I am the object. During this time I take full responsibility.
The line on the placard ‘I am the Object’ (italics own) raises a

significant debate about the subject and object division in art.
One of the foremost approaches of modern-day art is to disturb
the boundaries of any structure or subvert the established ways of
expression. The body is being reduced to a mere object in perfor
mance arts such as these; pushing the limits of corporeality. By
offering her body in a space with no constraints, Marina creates a
true artistic space for her and for the audience to operate. The
space between subject and object is destroyed and they become
one. In other words, the artist is both the subject and the object
and similar is the case with the audience. They become the par
ticipating subjects (part of the artwork) and without them there
is no art. Therefore, the line between the artist and the audience is
also demolished. In a written autobiography, an author would re
veal her/his personal/private details, recounting their life events or
memories, making them public. Therefore, an autobiography shatters
the wall between public and the private. In case of Marina’s Rhythm
0, a few people from the audience strip off her clothes, making her
available to the public gaze; distorting the line between public/
private and self/other. The performance is an extended version of
the autobiography, questioning the boundaries of the body. In their
article, Bluck and Liao argue that the retrospective self-continuity9
is a conscious effort of an individual to create a story or history
through the recollection of particular events that have a lot of signi
ficance in the process of constructing an autobiographical self. The
state of being conscious of our memory or life events play a major
part in constructing the continuity of a self through memory which
would enable an individual to gain a sense of authorship over his
life (McAdams, 2013).10 A sense of belongingness and identity is
fabricated at a conscious level while constructing the self through
a conscious memory of the past.
Remembering the personal past is a unique human phenomenon. Given that
we have both a sense of self and are aware of the passage of chronological
time, humans are faced with the issue of maintaining self-continuity. Such
continuity is established, at least in part, through autobiographical memory
and reminiscence processes. Maintaining self-continuity may be the primary
function of remembering our personal past. (Bluck and Liao, 2013)
TIME AND DEATH IN ART
Freud in his essay ‘On Transience’ also notes that we all have an
inherent desire to feel continuous. He reflects upon the ideas of
transience and eternity. According to him, everyone of us has an
internal or subconscious demand for immortality. Because all that
we see and experience at the ‘present’ moment fades into nothing
as illusion.11 According to him, we all possess an inherent demand
for continuity to connect ourselves with the conscious and real
world. As Freud puts it, ‘But this demand for immortality is a
148 Sandhya Deepthi
product of our wishes too unmistakable to lay claim to reality’.12
From the two above propositions, we notice that the self is a non
continuous entity, catering to the postmodern idea of fragmentary
self. On a parallel note, according to Freud, time is also a transient
or a fragmentary idea which always demands a continuity. The
necessary connection between the self and the time is crucial to be
understood in the context of defining an autobiographical self and
autobiographical time since they are interwoven with the ideas
of memory, death and time. John Oulton Wisdom in his book,
The Metamorphosis of Philosophy states that the philosopher do not
express facts about the universe directly but express facts about
himself symptomatically from his unconscious autobiography. 13
The unconscious is the site where the self exists in its pure form.
Portraying pain, abject, death and time in art is nothing but
an attempt to access the unconscious of the artist as well as the
audience.
Marina Abramovic’s performance art includes long durations of
pain and suffering, returning to the primal metaphysical ques
tions about existence, time and death. The idea of pain in Marina’s
performance art can be considered synonymous to death. Accord-
Figure 6.2: Rhythm 0, 1974, Marina Abramovic. Tate.Org,

March 2010. Web 11 July 2017
ing to Martin Heidegger, death is a very immediate and accessible
idea which is embedded in existence itself.
Existence seems to genuinely believe that death is not an event that may
occur in the future but rather is the fundamental structure of the universe.
From this perspective, death is not the end of our existence or an event that
we prepare for but rather the internal structure and consistency of our
existence.14 (Shariatina Z., 2016)
Another performance by Marina called Rhythm 10 is a drinking
game, usually played by Russian and Yugoslav peasants.
You spread your fingers out on a wooden bar or table and stab down a sharp
knife, fast, in the spaces between your fingers. Every time you miss and cut
yourself, you have to take another drink. The drunker you get, the more
likely you are to stab yourself. Like Russian roulette, it is a game of bravery
and foolishness and despair and darkness—the perfect Slavic game. (Abramovic,
2016)
Kathy O’Dell in her book Contract with the Skin: Masochism,
Performance Art, and the 1970s explores performance arts as these
form a psychoanalytic viewpoint. The masochist nature of these
performances reveals how the body is a site and subject for vio
lence. She says that ‘All modern art entails some innately violent
psychological functions—artistic mastery and visual domination,
to name just two. But it is often difficult to draw attention to
these functions, because their terms belong to the discourse of
masochism’ (Kathy O’Dell, 1998).
Her performances are experimental in nature, re-defining what
it means to be an artist and also an audience. Such an art blurs, the
boundaries between the subject/object, inside/outside, and self/
other. The image of one’s own self (The artist’s self ) is realized
through the living body of the artist in performance art therefore
making it a visual narrative, autobiographical in nature. The per
formance in itself is a process of recording or composing the work
of an autobiographical self of the artist. The creativity that is in
volved in the practice of such an art is associated with masochism
and pain as the body becomes a vulnerable site in performance art.
The body is subject to pain and abuse; questioning and subverting
the physicality, materiality and mortality of the body. One can
look at it as a way of emancipation from the reality through art.
150 Sandhya Deepthi
‘Artist is Present’ is yet another contemplative performance works
of Marina Abramovic performed at The Museum of Modern Art
from 14 March to 31 May 2010, in which she sits immobile for
700 hours in a wooden chair staring at the person who sits in
front of her from the audience. The prolonged duration of the
performance tests the limits of endurance and physical presence.
She uses time as a tool to have an effect on the subjects. During the
performance, she draws herself and the audience into a contem
plative mode as they stare into each other’s eyes. This act provides
an artistic space to recall the past and the memory associated with
it. The artist here works as an agency through which the subjects
involved can access the autobiographical aspect of the self and the
other. Time is completely suspended in this act as they are travelling
through a series of recollections of an existential self.Time is another
site of abject where its limits are pushed and tested through the
prolonged performance time. Eternity operates in a space where
there is no time, i.e. there is no beginning or end, but just a
continuous stretch of time. The ‘timelessness’ is a bondage as there
is no escape from the moment or death of the moment because
there is no structure of time as such in the idea of eternity. Transi
ence is freedom where there is an escape from the present and the
constant cyclical processes of death and life keeps us in a state of
‘change’ or ‘movement’. This movement should not be mistaken
for continuity in time. As Freud puts it ‘the only constant reality is
change’. In his essay, Freud says that what spoils the enjoyment
of beauty is a revolt in our minds against mourning/death, i.e.
mourning over its decease. An artist is the one who knows to die
over and over again. Many modern writers have talked about
creativity and its relation to loss including Freud. The artist develops
an urge to feel continuous and eternal through creating art at the
cost of or with the help of the transience of the present moment.
Impermanence (death) is a master to which we are all slaves and an
artist is the one who always attempts to create permanence through
artwork, in a constant attempt to conquer death by dying. The
margin between permanence and impermanence is being quest
ioned through art; the boundaries of self, time and death also are
tested and pushed through the performance arts of women artists
of the contemporary times.
NOTES
1. According to Descartes, the mind is a conscious collection of thoughts and
feelings and is a non-physical thinking being as opposed to the body which
is a physical and non-thinking being, thus doubting the body in accessing
the truth through bodily senses.
2. Stephen Greenblatt introduced the concept of ‘self-fashioning’ in his book
Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 1980.
3. Charles Cooley’s Looking Glass Theory and Goffman’s Darmaturgy Theory.
4. The concerns related to identity, sexuality, gender, etc.
5. The artist becomes the subject in case of women paintings/writings.
6. J. Slatman, ‘Recognition Beyond Narcissism: Imaging the Body’s Ownness
and Strangeness’, in H. Fielding, G. Hiltmann, D. Olkowski and A. Reichold
(eds), The Other, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
7. Yoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece: From Text to Performance and Back Again’, Imag
ine Peace. See: http://imaginepeace.com/archives/2680.
8. Dwight Garner, ‘Review: Marina Abramovic’s Walk Through Walls, a
Memoir of Masochism and Pretension’, The New York Times, 1 November
2016.
9. According to Bluck and Liao, self-continuity operates at two levels, i.e.
the chronological self-continuity and the retrospective self-continuity.
The former deals with identifying one’s own self over the period of a
chronological events or time whereas the latter is about identifying the self
with a conscious recollection of series of detailed events that shape the
autobiographical history/memory.
10. D.P. McAdams, ‘The Psychological Self as Actor, Agent, and Author’,
Perspectives on Psychological Science (2013), vol. 8, pp. 272-95.
11. Freud, 1916, p. 305.
12. Sigmund Freud, ‘On Transience’, The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 15, 1916, pp. 303-7.
13. John Oulton Wisdom, The Metamorphosis of Philosophy, Basil Blackwell,
1947.
14. Z. Shariatinia, ‘Heidegger’s Ideas about Death’, Pacific Science Review,
Humanities and Social Sciences, 2016.
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Abramovic, Marina, Walk Through Walls: A Memoir, New York: Three Rivers
Press, 2016.
152 Sandhya Deepthi
Bamford, Kiff, Lyotard and the ‘Figural’ in Performance, Art and Writing, New
York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2012.
Battista, Kathy, Renegotiating the Body: Feminist Art in 1970s London, New
York: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2013.
Berger, John, Ways of Seeing. London: BBC and Penguin Books Ltd., 1972.
Bluck, Liao, The International Journal of Reminiscence and Life Review, vol. 1,
Issue 1, 2013, pp. 7-12. .
Covino, Deborah Caslav. Amending the Abject Body, Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2004.
Freud, Sigmund, On Transience: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psycho
logical Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 15, 1916, pp. 303-7.
Jones, Amelia, Body Art/Performing the Subject, Minnesota: University of
Minnesota Press, 1998.
Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror, New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
O’Dell, Kathy, Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the
1970s, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.
Rigg, Peter J., ‘Chapter 3: Contemporary Concepts of Time in Western Science
and Philosophy’, in Ann McGrath, Mary Anne Jebb, Long History, Deep
Time Book: Deepening Histories of Place, Australian National University
Press, 2015, pp. 47-60.
Shariatinia, Z., ‘Heidegger’s Ideas about Death’, Pacific Science Review, Humani
ties and Social Sciences, 2016. Web 16 March 2016. <http://dx.doi. org/
10.1016/j.psrb.2016.06.001\>
CHAPTER 7
Intersecting Terrains of Personal and

Politics: A Feminist Reading of Fadwa
Tuqan’s A Mountainous Journey
B O O PAT H I P.
Arab women, as opposed to their counterparts, are destined to

suffer both in private and public spheres owing to the gender role
assigned to them in the social and cultural paradigms. While their
social participation is largely constrained by the patriarchal familial
setup, their private lives are also impeded by the gender bias con
spicuous in the life narratives of Arab women. Though women’s
rights movements are said to have begun towards the end of the
nineteenth century in the Arab countries, the voices of women
remained largely muffled until the second half of twentieth century.
Further, the national liberation movements which emerged in the
first half of the last century also silenced the women voices and
made women’s movement dormant by prioritizing national inde
pendence and retrieval of the lost homeland. As a healthy develop
ment though, those movements witnessed the participation of many
women along with their male counterparts, who ventured breaking
out from the familial restrictions to voice their resentment against
the colonial government. However, in the second half of the last
century, Arab women who had till then been involved in the
national movements, began to articulate their oppression more
resoundingly in the public forums through their writings. The
genre of autobiography proved to be a viable medium to docu
ment their stifling narratives, for it engendered a space for the
collective voices and memory of the particular community of women
154 Boopathi P.
in general. This article attempts to analyse personal as well as
political predicament of Palestinian women in particular and Arab
women in general by foregrounding how they had to negotiate
between private and public spheres due to their familial and social
constraints. To substantiate this argument, the aticle takes up Fadwa
Tuqan’s autobiography A Mountainous Journey (1990) against the
backdrop of Arab Feminist theory.
The plight of Arab women caught in the religious and patriar
chal shackles always remained the same until the end of the last
century. The emergence of feminist discourse in West Asia in the
second half of the twentieth century countered the religious pre
cepts and the condescending attitude of men towards women down
the ages. Suppression of women in the name of religion was called
into question and heavily critiqued by Arab women, thereby
foregrounding their right to freedom and social participation. Sur
prisingly, this academic enterprise first began in Egypt, the coun
try which spearheaded the Pan-Arabist movement in the 1960s
and 1970s under the leadership of Abdul Nasser (then Egyptian
President). Starting as the separate feminist movement for addressing
Arab women’s issues, the movement engaged with two different
issues that demanded an entirely new inquiry: (I) to counter the
Western orientalist approach towards Arab women and its preju
diced strands in articulating their subordinations; (II) to challenge
the religious precepts that oppress the women and promote patri
archal domination among Arab men. Besides these obvious posi
tions, the Arab feminist movement also attempted to negotiate
the religious normative practices such as veiling and harem and
tried to locate them in the evolution of Islam; thereby vindicating
such practices as religious creed.
Founded as a response to Western liberal feminism, the Arab
feminism counterchallenged the cultural imperialism of the West
by critiquing its position in dealing with the issues of Arab women.
The movement also foregrounded the futility of Western feminist
methods to comprehend the subordination and suppression of Arab
women, for the socio-cultural and economic lives of the latter are
distinct from the monolithic cultural and religious lives of Western
women. The failure of common theoretical framework adopted by
Intersecting Terrains of Personal and Politics 155
Western feminism to understand and address the problems of Third
World women supposedly resulted in engendering a separate femi
nist movement in West Asia to articulate the concerns and subju
gation of Arab women. Having emerged in the beginning of the
1990s, Arab feminism challenged the patriarchal domination and
religious prescription prevailing in the private and public spectrums,
besides responding to the shared experience of Western feminism.
As Nawar Al-Hassan Golley says in her monograph, ‘I would also
argue that the women are writing back in a double way: they are
writing back to the West and probably more importantly, are writ
ing back to Arab “patriarchy”. They are fighting the image through
which both the West and Arab male chauvinists have depicted them’
(14). Thus, counteracting to Western prejudice and Arab patriarchal
oppressions were integral to the incipient feminist movement in
West Asia at the turn of the present century.
Arab women, caught in the rigid familial system, are in the
dilemma between private and public spheres due to their precarious
positions in society. While they have to struggle harder to get rid
of the patriarchal restrictions fostered by self-promoted religious
practices in the domestic setup, they have to negotiate the public
terrain through a range of continuous dialogue with the discourses
surrounding social ostracizing of women. In this vein, they priori
tized gender equality in order to dispel patriarchy and religious
constraint; thereby ensuring their social participation. Thus, their
access to public spaces was contingent upon how they were able to
come out of predicaments of confining themselves to the house
hold. It was possible only through the nationalist movements which
emerged during the nineteenth century that saw the participation
of many women, for a separate nation was felt to be the need of the
hour to accommodate the native people. Evidently, as Nawar Al-
Hassan argues, the consciousness of nationalism and feminism
emerged simultaneously in the Arab countries, ‘In the Arab world,
feminist consciousness has developed hand in hand with national
consciousness since the early nineteenth century’ (16).
The coexistence of nationalist and feminist consciousness got
fortified in the latter half of twentieth century when the political
movements in various Arab countries became stronger and women
156 Boopathi P.
became more assertive. Intriguingly, in countries like Palestine
where the conflict occupied the centre stage, women successfully
emerged as political leaders, spearheading the national movements
for independence. For instance, the Palestinian woman leader
Raymonda Tawil led many resistance movements against Israeli
occupation of Palestinian places and got incarcerated in the Israeli
prison. Besides getting themselves involved in the political move
ments, the Arab women also contributed to the resistance move
ments by writing poems and trying their hands at other literary
genres as well. While getting education itself was a stupendous
struggle for these women in the first half of twentieth century,
writing poetry moved them one step ahead of the patriarchal and
social oppression towards articulating their struggles and suffer
ings brazenly. Arab women writers like Fadwa Tuqan, Navel
el-Sadawi, Raymonda Tawil and Asma Barlas wrote openly about
patriarchy, gender bias, social restriction on women and so on which
prevailed in the twentieth century, in books, collections of poetry
and autobiographies. This in fact led to the earnest engagement of
Arab feminism in the beginning of the present century with the
issues including gender oppression, social restriction, cultural im
perialism of the West, etc.
Palestinian woman poet Fadwa Tuqan, born in an aristocratic
family in Nablus, Paletine during the first half of twentieth cen
tury, faced numerous problems owing to gender oppression and
patriarchy which prevailed in the Arab families. Having been
stopped from attending school for getting a letter from a boy on
her way, Tuqan was not allowed to continue her school education.
It was only later when she came out of the familial restrictions that
Tuqan could go to Oxford for her university education and emerge
as a prominent figure in modern Arabic literature. She acknowl
edges to have acquired the primary education and the art of writ
ing poetry from her brother Ibrahim Tuqan, for the patriarchal
restrictions imposed on her did not let her go out and socialize
with people around her house. Having learned the art of writing
poetry, Tuqan began writing personal poems infused with the theme
of love, nature and so on. These subjects remained the major themes
of her poetry till the breakout of 1967 Palestinian War. The catas
trophe of 1948 and her father’s timely advice are found to have
made Tuqan oscillate between the private and public subjects for
her poetry. Her autobiography brings in her dilemma of not being
able to decide in which sphere she would want to locate her
poems. While she was comfortable with writing poems about do
mestic and personal life, she, did not want to keep herself away
from the plight of thousands of homeless Palestinians which was
intricately interconnected with the political climate of her time.
To write political poems, she needed to come out of domestic setup
and involve herself in the resistance movements organized by the
Palestinians. It was this engagement and her political responsibil
ity that later provoked her to come out with resistance poems,
joining hands with Mahmoud Darwish, Tawfiq Zayyad, and
Sameeh Al Qassem, who pioneered the resistance literary move
ment in Palestine (Poetry 1).
The public private dichotomy that was felt extensively by the
Arab women in the twentieth century was also experienced by
Tuqan in the middle of the century, for her entry into political
writings demanded profound insight into Israel-Palestinian con
flict, the history of Palestine, resistance movements against Israel
and so on. As it is evident in her autobiography, she could not
immediately switch over to resistance writings as demanded by
her father, as she was not exposed to the world outside. Her auto
biography is a documentation of her sufferings and travails from
childhood to the conflict of 1967, when she began writing politi
cal poems. Though it is the narration of Tuqan’s life, the text delin
eates the plight of Palestinian women in the twentieth century. It
is often acknowledged that Tuqan’s autobiography gained more
fame than her political poems, for it recounts her personal life
story fraught with anguish and humiliation profoundly. Further,
as Al-Hassan rightly points out, Samih Al-Qasim’s Foreword to
the book offered a considerable publicity and it was read widely
in the Arab world (115). The English translation of the book earned
much acclaim for Tuqan, as it got a huge readership throughout
the world and generated a lot of discussions in the feminist forums.
While the genre of autobiography is said to be evoking the self
through the narration of an individual’s life history, the autobiog
158 Boopathi P.
raphy of Tuqan differs from the traditional mode of narration by
depicting collective experiences of Palestinian women in general.
Caught in the ambivalent state of individual and collective selves,
private and public spheres, Tuqan’s life narrative vividly elucidates
how she constructs her selfhood imbued with such seeming di
chotomies. Commenting on the duel nature of Tuqan’s texts in
constructing herself, Al Hassan says, ‘It can be read as a quest to
find the self between asserting her egoistic self, on the one hand,
and desiring to be part of a more collective entity, on the other’
(119). While the former talks about her struggle to reach such a
revered position in the Arabic literature, the latter voices the col
lective consciences that Tuqan tries to build through her text by
citing her experience as a specimen for the countless life stories of
Palestinian women. The emergence of Tuqan as a renowned poet
and key figure in Arab feminism is vividly explained in the begin
ning of her text itself. Her mother attempted to abort Tuqan in the
foetus as she did not want a female child to be born. Tuqan puts it
this way, ‘I emerged from the darkness of the womb into a world
unprepared to accept me. My mother had tried to get rid of me
during the first months of her pregnancy. Despite repeated at
tempts, she failed’ (22).
Unlike her male counterparts, Tuqan had to endure the pre
ordained loneliness and self-deprecation for a long time until she
came out of her confinement to participate in the Arab women’s
struggle and national movements. In fact, her autobiography is an
apology for her reclusiveness and inability to participate in the
social activities in her early years. Having stayed at home for con
siderable time, she could not associate herself with Palestinian
society, for she was not aware of the Palestinian issue in its entirety.
Her self-constructed sympathy did not enable her to comprehend
the cause for the protracted conflict between Jews and Arabs in the
twentieth century. Thus, she was continuously oscillating between
her much confined personal life and disgruntled social life as de
scribed by Al-Hassan (119). It was her persistent struggle and
perseverance which made her defeat her familial oppression and
social restrictions as she recalls with great pain, ‘How I could within
my capabilities surmount what was impossible to overcome had it
not been for the strong will and genuine desire to go on striving
for the best, and had it not been for my insistence to give meaning
and better value to my life than that already planned for it’ (17).
Tuqan lived at a time when the conflict between Jews and Arabs
reached its peak and the exodus of Palestinians took place on un
precedented scale. Being a conscientious person, she felt bereft of
her poetic ability, as she was not able to engage herself with the
sufferings and problems of others. It is conspicuous in her early
poetry, ‘My poetic attempts were always circling round my emo
tion and my private pains’ (19). Her poetry and autobiography
evokes of pain and self-pity and arouses confidence and resistance
to counterchallenge the occupiers. Tuqan’s writings also raised
women’s issues in Palestine especially after the fall of Palestine. Her
autobiography, particularly, talks about how women were con
fined to their homes and denied education. She wrote that her life
journey was a difficult one fraught with countless struggles to get
education and access the public places. This was not an easy task
for there was a long history of confining women in harems. Thus,
private and public conflicts occupied the central role in Tuqan’s
text.
Israeli occupation of Nablus in 1967, the birthplace of Tuqan,
totally altered her poetry writing and added vigour and vitality to
her intensely personal love poems. That unprecedented incident
made her realize that she was part of the Palestinian community
which was deprived of homeland and its ancestral roots. Since then,
she has always openly said that her writings should reflect the
collective experiences and anguish of Palestinians scattered in the
nearby Arab countries as homeless refugees. Her poems also talk
about the women’s issue more explicitly, critiquing the roles that
were offered to women by men in the household. As Al-Hassan
rightly argues, the issues with which Tuqan fought throughout
her life, such as confining her to the home by her own family
members and having been denied of attending school in the pre
text of receiving a letter from a boy, indeed, provoked her to leave
her family. Thus, in order to liberate herself from the patriarchal
and social suppressions, she realized that she should start from her
family itself, for family remains the key player in women’s repres
160 Boopathi P.
sion (Al-Hassan 121). Her text, in fact, problematizes the con
struction of her female identity in a tradition that suppresses women
and relegates them to the margin.
While it was considerably easier for Arab women to break the
domestic boundaries and reach out to the public places, it was
increasingly difficult for them to weed out the prevailing social
discriminations and imposed restriction in these spheres. Tuqan
encountered the same problems when she managed to come out of
her familial oppressions and began participating in social activities.
Comparing herself with the working-class women of Palestine and
their freedom to move freely, she said that bourgeoisie households
did not provide any space to their women, rather they were very
hypocritical in asserting their liberal strands (36). By saying so,
she slamed the men in her own bourgeois family and their restriction
on her in accessing public places and learning foreign languages
like English, ‘They wore European clothes, and spoke Turkish,
French, and English. They ate with forks and knives. They also fell
in love, but ambushed us whenever any of us tried fulfil our hu
manity in the most natural ways of development or was ambitious
for something better’ (38). This led her to think that she was
suppressed to the extent that even the walls of her ancient house
intimidated her whenever she thought of freedom (38).
Caught in the dichotomy between the individual and collective
freedom, Tuqan contemplated that renouncing family members
and relatives would be the first step to liberate herself from the
perpetual patriarchal oppression. She also felt that freeing oneself
from the domestic violence and restriction would, indeed, eman
cipate the community, for the family continues to be a significant
institution in suppressing women’s rights and their mobility. Her
text exposes the hypocrisy of Palestinian men who supported
women’s liberation and rights in the public spaces but unleashed
violence on them within their homes. The reason why Tuqan did
not marry can be inferred from her unwillingness to be associated
with the institution of family. As she faced a number of problems
as a daughter in her household, she did not want to be dominated
by another man who would be her husband. The kind of freedom
and liberty which working-class women in Palestine enjoyed,
attracted the interest of Tuqan, and earned her high regards for
them. It led her to criticize the bourgeois feminist movement in
Arab countries, which were successful only in sending letters and
organizing some meetings.
As mentioned earlier, Tuqan began her text by depicting her
mother as matriarchal and an evil figure who tried to abort her in
the foetus itself. The opening pages of her book show how she was
harassed and tormented by her mother. However, in the latter part,
she, portrays her mother as a revolutionary woman who openly
resisted veiling and other practices that suppressed women. Her
mother was the first woman in Nablus to take off the veil openly as
resistance against the patriarchal practices. By staging such resis
tance in the public, she (Tuqan’s mother) and a group of women
from Nablus expressed solidarity to Huda Shaarawi’s‘General Union
of Arab Women’ in 1929 to carry out a larger protest against the
suppression of women’s voices and rights (Al-Hassan 126). Thus
feminist and nationalist movements played a crucial role in the
first half of the last century in addressing both women’s and na
tional questions. As the need for national movements to assert one’s
identity and allegiance emerged in the second half of the century
in response to the Jewish occupation and civil wars which broke
out in various Arab countries, the feminist movement joined hands
with national movements to express the voice of women against
the occupation in a distinct manner. Tuqan’s participation in the
Palestinian Resistance Movement should be read against this back
drop so as to comprehend her poems written after the Palestinian
War of 1967.
Tuqan said how she felt uncomfortable talking about her bodily
growth, as about sexuality and sex as these are considered to be
taboo in the Arab countries, ‘I noticed the florescence of my
body . . . I was scared and ashamed. The growth of my breasts . . .
embarrassed me, so I tried to hide them. I went on observing this
matter with great shyness as if it were a shameful sin I deserved to
be punished’ (44). This shows Tuqan’s resentment against the
deprival of a proper or at least a minimum sex education at the
school level. She was critical of her society which considers talking
of sex as taboo. It is against such socially constructed taboos that
162 Boopathi P.
she fought all through her life. Her autobiography, by recounting
such struggles as a woman, poet and a participant in the liberation
movements of Palestine, tries to construct her selfhood through
vivid description of various interesting instances. Her use of lan
guage to self-formulate herself is considered to be a feminist act of
liberation, for she was always unable to defend herself against in
justice and a kind of suppression that she was forced to undergo in
the domestic environment. Through writing, Tuqan has been able
to break the silence and liberate herself from the grip of patriarchy.
Unlike her contemporaries who relied solely on action, Tuqan used
her writings to emancipate herself.
Tuqan’s poetry is always revered as a sonorous protest against
traditional and conventional practices, which subjugated women
throughout history. Through her literary writings, she called into
question such unjust practices meant only to suppress women.
When Arab feminists like Margot Badran, Souad Eddouada, Fatima
Mernissi and Nawal El Saadawi resorted to political writings, Tuqan
used her literary writings to expose the subjugation of women,
and to retaliate against the male-centric practices prevailing in the
Arab countries. Thus, her political as well as personal poems written
in the second half of the twentieth century blurred the chasm
between her private and public worlds when she started fusing
personal and political into resistance. The Palestinian War of 1967
played a crucial role in shaping Tuqan’s literary writings, for she
could translate her emotional poems into more politically reflexive
ones by depicting the plight of grieving Palestinians. Such poems
showed Tuqan’s deep commitment to the Palestinian cause and
provoked many Palestinians to get into the struggle for retrieving
the lost homeland. Some popular collections of Tuqan’s poetry
that bear a testimony to this claim are Alone With the Days, I Found
It, In Front of the Locked Door, Give Us Love, and The Freedom
Fighter.
As Arab feminism emerged to give space to Arab and Islamic
women to voice their grievances and respond to Western Euro
centric feminist allegation of Islamic practices like veiling and harem,
it also supported nationalism and developed political consciousness.
In this regard, Tuqan’s poems that come later, deserve greater
consideration, for their intricate interconnectedness between femi
nism and nationalism, attributes a distinct quality to Arab feminism
in particular and Third World feminism in general. Tuqan emerged
as a unique writer who amalgamated the national and the personal
in her writings, thereby attaining a central position among Arab
women writers. Towards the end, her autobiography, expounds how
she began writing political poems as a response to Israeli occupation
of Palestinian lands and the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from
their homeland. In addition, her text also portrays the untold world
of Arab women as faceless victims who are imprisoned at home
without any outward movement:
Women are ‘faceless victims with no independent life’. They are old at the age
of twenty-five, they have no friends, and so on. Rather than a place in which
one could find social or political consciousness, the house becomes ‘a large
coop filled with domesticated birds’ to whom feed was thrown, which they
would swallow without question. (110)
The movement ‘Arab feminism’ spearheads Arab women’s re

sistance against patriarchal religious practices like veiling and harem.
It also counterchallenges the Western imperialist allegations to
wards Arab women by juxtaposing them with the precepts of
Islam. While women scholars wrote political articles and books to
critique such male-centric practices and Euro-centric prejudice of
Western feminists, a few women took recourse to literary writings
as a space for venting their emotions. Tuqan’s exuberant and
powerful poems and her illustrative autobiography belong to this
category employing symbols and metaphors to depict women’s
sufferings and subjugation. Thus, through her poetry, she has made
remarkable contribution to the fledgling feminist movement in
the Arab world. The text in question in particular, A Mountainous
Journey, an autobiography, offers a vivid picture of her psychologi
cal indecisiveness towards her poetic themes. She was caught in
the dilemma between the dichotomy of personal (private) and
political (public) spheres, often asking herself as to which one to
choose for her poetry. In order to reach the stage of compatibility
in writing resistance poetry, Tuqan underwent a psychological
trauma in opting for themes for her future poetry. The latter part
of her poetry, in fact, is replete with resistance against Israeli occu
pation, patriarchal oppression, women’s sufferings and so on.
164 Boopathi P.
REFERENCES
Golley, Nawar Al-Hassan, Reading Arab Women’s Autobiographies: Shahrarazad

Tells Her Story, Austin Texas: University of Texas Press, 2003.
Kynsilehto, Anitta, Islamic Feminism: Current Perspectives. Tampere Peace
Research Institute, 2008.
Hijjawi, Sulafa, tr., Poetry of Resistance in Occupied Palestine, Baghdad:
Directorate General of Culture, 2009.
Saliba, Therese, ‘Arab Feminism at the Millennium’, Signs, vol. 25, no. 4, 2000,
pp. 1087-93. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3175492
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 25.4 (2000): 1087-92. JSTOR.
Web. 16 June 2017.
Tuqan, Fadwa, A Mountainous Journey: A Poet’s Autobiography, ed. Salma Khadra
Jayyusi, tr. Olive E. Kenny and Naomi Shihab Nye, St. Paul: Graywolf
Press, 1990.
CHAPTER 8
Subverting Literary Space: From

[His]stories to [Her]story in
Writings of Kamala Das, Sally
Morgan and Melba Pattillo Beals
SHYAMA SAJEEV
The autobiography has been treated synonymously with ‘life

writing’, encompassing within itself all modes and genres of telling
one’s own life. The genre of autobiography dates back to 1834
when the first autobiography was published and was called The
Autobiography of a Dissenting Minister by W.P. Scargill. Self-narratives
like memoirs, diaries and letters and so on are documents which give
an insight into a person’s social, historical political and psychological
development. Life narratives not only serve the purpose of revealing
the ultimate self but also the psyche of a person and are hence
inextricably linked to the history of subjectivity. Autobiography is
basically a story of evolution, metamorphosis of self, the progressing
and overcoming of various hardships in life. Life narrative is thus a
reflection of subjective consciousness.
The distinct female voice in an autobiography is multi-dimens
ional and fragmented. The absence of women’s autobiography for
such a long time could be traced to their marginality in a male-
dominated canon. Elaine Showalter in her book A Literature of
Their Own:British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (1977)
defines three major phases for any women writer—first phase of
imitation, second of protest and third of self-discovery. The unique
ness, the very subtle and elusive nature of women’s writings might
166 Shyama Sajeev
be due to the four aspects of difference—biological, linguistic,
psychological and cultural, as propounded by Elaine Showalter in
theories of women’s writing. The life narrative of a woman brings
forth not only her suppressed self but also the multifarious forces—
social, historical and cultural—which go into the making of the
self. The private self thus becomes public, enlightening and inspir
ing millions of readers at the same time.
This paper attempts to analyse three such narratives written by
women from diverse socio-cultural, political and religious back-
ground—Kamala Das’ My Story (1988), Sally Morgan’s My Place
(1987) and Melba Pattillo Beals’ Warriors Don’t Cry (1994). Women
writers had to face strong critical resistance from men for long, but
they were bold enough to narrate the story of their lives. As women’s
life stories have been lost, fragmented and disconnected, these
women writers take a journey inwards to discover, recover and under
stand these lost lives and write about the sense of self. Although
they come from different socio-economic, cultural backgrounds,
their ultimate aim remains the same, i.e. self-exploration. Women
writers find narrative devices like autobiography, diary entries,
memories, etc., appealing as it allows them to play with notions of
self and authenticity. There is also an interplay of the narrated ‘I’
and the narrating ‘I’ in these narratives. The former encompasses all
those whose histories were in the margins for long. The latter ‘I’
takes the responsibility to bring forth these altered histories. Women
from diverse backgrounds have spoken out, breaking the silence
and displaying enormous courage in doing so. In the words of
Spivak, the subaltern as female always existed as the unrepresent
able in discourse, a shadowy figure on its margins. Writing became
a vital necessity for these women. According to Audre Lorde ‘What
is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared,
even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. What I
most regretted were my silences . . . my silences had not protected
me. Your silence will not protect you’ (Lorde, Feminist Literary
Theory and Criticism 225).
Writing autobiographies for women is conflictual as autobio
graphies are self-revealing and self-assertive. Women writers often
have to choose between the need to go against or succumb to the
Subverting Literary Space 167
pressure of holding on to traditional norms. Kamala Das’ My Story
is one of the most popular and controversial autobiographies which
covers the span of her childhood, marked by discrimination in
convent schools, followed by her youth and middle age. Initially,
My Story was serialized in a literary magazine which created a
sensation and even invited the wrath of her relatives. In the words
of K. Satchidanandan, it is an Indian autobiography that honestly
captures a woman’s inner life in all its solitude. It is a book where
she talks openly about her innermost thoughts regarding woman
hood, love and sexual desires, themes that were thought of as taboos
in the conservative, traditional society she belonged to.
No wonder the woman of the best Nair families never mentioned sex. It was
their principal phobia. They associated it with violence and bloodshed. They
have been fed on the stories of Ravana who perished due to his desire for Sita
and of Kichaka who was torn to death by Draupadi’s legal husband Bhima
only because he coveted her. (My Story 23)
In fact, she herself talks of the cathartic effect of writing auto

biography which went on to relieve her from grief, discontent and
ailments of her life. ‘I have written several books in my lifetime
but none of them provided the pleasure the writing of my story
has given me’ (Preface, My Story).
The emotional deprivation and detachment, the indifferent
attitude of her parents and later by her insensitive husband found
an outlet in various creative forms. In the chapter ‘Wedding Night’,
she portrays her husband as a person who was interested only in
her body and used it for the gratification of his desires. Kamala
Das writes, ‘The rape was not successful but he confronted me when
I expressed my fear that I was perhaps not equipped for sexual
congress. Repeatedly throughout that unhappy night, he hurt me
and all the while Kathakali drums throbbed duly against our
window and the singer’s song of Diamante’s plight in the jungle’
(My Story 35). Women are thus always treated as sexual objects
and an embodiment of destruction. However, Kamala Das gives
expression to her hidden emotions and tries to create a space in
order to assert her dreams and frustrations. By subverting patriarchal
stereotypes, she honestly portrayed her life in all its sad solitude.
168 Shyama Sajeev
‘I wanted conversation, companionship and warmth. Sex was far
from my thoughts. I had hoped that he would remove with one
sweep of his benign arms the loneliness of my life’ (My Story 84).
Her bravery at this attempt must be lauded since she knew that
she would have to face severe criticism for letting the truth out.
Her autobiography also openly discusses her failure to find an
emotional communion with her husband and trying to compensate
for it outside marriage. In one instance, she falls in love with an
extremely handsome man at a place where she went to play tennis.
She describes him thus, ‘The evening sun lit up his grey eyes, the
gloss of his skin and the beauty of his smile made me feel all of a
sudden so awestruck and humble’ (My Story 79). Her autobiography
revolutionized the concept and role of women and challenged their
treatment as sexual objects. Her autobiography is a critique on the
victimization of women in a patriarchal society.
Kamala Das wants to highlight the fact that it is actually the
underestimating of the female body that makes one weak physically,
emotionally and spiritually. She overcomes this by giving free vent
to emotions which were hitherto hidden. She advocates equal
responsibilities for man and woman. Her frank and rebellious nature
is unleashed without any inhibition.
Kamala Das’ My Story became a breakthrough as far as women
were concerned because it advocated equal status with men. While
doing so, she went on to deconstruct all the traditionally accepted
norms which were supposed to be imprinted on the minds of women.
Her autobiography is a reminder to those with a patriarchal mindset
that women do have feelings of their own, on par with Virginia
Woolf ’s stand of promoting ‘a room of one’s own’. Kamala Das
became a rebel in her own terms by not allowing herself to be tied
up to the norms of pativrata nari. She involved herself in long- and
short-term relationships, thereby reflecting a spirit of boldness
and complete disrespect for societal norms. The mainstream society
was in fact shocked by the outspoken woman who could talk freely
about extra marital affairs and teenage lesbian crushes.
Kamala Das was accused of being lustful, but she clarified that
she craved for emotional satisfaction rather than mere physical union.
The flaring loneliness and unconsummated love often provoked
creative writing in her. She boldly questioned the institution of
marriage which is built on artificiality and where love and intimacy
are forced. ‘I felt revulsion for my womanliness. The weight of my
breasts seemed to be crushing me. My private part was only a wound,
the soul’s wound showing through’ (My Story 104). She equated
her love and her own plight to ‘. . . alms looking for a begging
bowl . . . which only sought for its receptacle’ (ibid., 79) when
ever she felt disappointed, lonely and betrayed. She asserted in her
autobiography that a writer’s raw material was not clay or stone but
her own personality, thereby paving the way for experimentation
and freedom for a new generation of writers.
Kamala Das’ portrayal of intimate female experience is in accord
ance with the words of Elaine Showalter that new models for the
study of female experience are to be developed rather than adopting
male models and stories. In order to liberate women from the state
of passivity and helplessness, she created a space from where she
could talk freely while discarding traditional canons. Women writers
till then were trying to recreate and enhance the protagonist rather
than focusing on themselves. Kamala Das deconstructed this
patriarchal, hierarchical notion by bringing women and their issues
to the centre. Although My Story was condemned, criticized and
banned for sometime, it is now being re-read, widely accepted and
appreciated. Her call for solace, justice and sense of equality have
at last brought about considerable change for the oppressed and
the marginalized.
Melba Pattillo Beals is a writer, journalist and civil rights activist
who talks of the plight of Afro-Americans facing the double
consciousness of being black and female in her memoir Warriors
Don’t Cry (2007). Melba Pattillo Beals’ searing memoir begins
in 1987 when she and eight other African-Americans set out to
meet the then governor Bill Clinton. Melba and others who had
attempted to integrate with the all-white population of Little
Rock’s Central High School in 1957 are now known as Little Rock
Nine for their brave endeavour. Melba’s act of challenging the power
dynamics was significant as it threatened the white’s act of segrega
tion. Central High School becomes a barrier put up by society
against blacks. Dismantling this barrier meant ensuring equal
170 Shyama Sajeev
opportunities for blacks and whites. It was after the order from the
supreme court of United States of not allowing segregated schools
that Melba and others signed up to attend Central High School.
Melba played a key role in the integration of Central High School
in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957. She was one of the nine students
who got admitted to Central High School.
Melba’s source of inspiration was her grandmother who insisted
that she attend white school in spite of all the difficulties. 23 Sept
ember 1957 was a day of remembrance for Melba, as it was on this
day that she and eight other Afro-American students started
attending Central High School. Melba and others had to face a lot
of protests and mob attack. She literally became a warrior defending
herself from the mob at school. The then president Eisenhower
however made a proclamation of allotting one security for each
black student. Danny was Melba’s soldier and he protected her
from acid attack. Danny taught her how to defend herself and
emphasized that it took a warrior to fight a battle and survive.
These words, along with grandmother India’s sentiments, carried
her forth in presenting herself as a warrior. Melba and others had
to undergo a series of threats and tortures both at the hands of
students and teachers. The question of integration was always at
stake and it was in September 1960 that Central High School
accepted it. In spite of all torments, Melba continued her education
in San Francisco University where she met her future husband.
Her bitter experiences at Central High School never broke her
spirit. It was the incredible courage that she and others showed,
despite many setbacks, which turned them into a messenger of
hope and resilience for others.
Her memoir is a testimony to the sacrifice that she and others
had to undergo for an ‘equal’ education; they fought for their right
to learn. Through her memoir, she opened up the window into a
portion of her experience which enabled her to express her deepest
feelings—disclosing racial hatred and discrimination she had to
face at the hands of white students despite the protection from
soldiers provided by president Eisenhower. In her own words, ‘After
three full days inside Central High, I know that integration is a
much bigger word than I thought’ (Warriors Don’t Cry 68). Although
only three of them graduated from Central High School, the attempt
for integration remains a spiritual battle that the Little Rock Nine
had led to secure access to education. It was after having realized
the power of media over the minds of people that she turned to
journalism. She also resorted to writing to voice her anger, hopes
and fear. Her memoir became a roadmap to women of her own
kind so that they could move on from the state of passivity to self-
assertiveness.
Warriors Don’t Cry thus became a vehicle of self-delineation,
instilling confidence into many who have been verbally and/or
physically abused. The harrowing ordeal that Melba had to undergo
and the attempts to erase the emotional scars that were imprinted
upon her forever are portrayed with sincerity in the book. In 1999
the members of the Little Rock Nine were awarded the nation’s
highest civilian honour the Congressional Gold Medal. In 2005, as
an act of dedication to their struggle, their statues were unveiled
in Arkansas State Capitol. The memoir revolves around the advice
given to her by grandmother India which Melba wanted to highlight
and convey to others. The piece of wisdom that she receives from
her grandmother is as follows, ‘You’re a warrior on the battlefield
for your Lord. God’s warriors don’t cry because they trust he is
always by their side’ (Warriors Don’t Cry 110). Grandmother India
made her realize that she was fighting a war for the Lord, for all of
His children to be treated with respect, and she must always be
brave in this enterprise. She attributed her hard-earned self-worth
to her, and thus used her advice as the title of her memoir.
Lessons, like power, lies not in display of physical strength but
in inner strength and faith. ‘One becomes a victim if one lets oneself
be’ and ‘Nobody has any power to hurt unless one gives it to
them’ are other lessons which Melba passed on to coming generation
through her memoir.
Sally Morgan’s My Place (1987) marked a new era in Australian
indigenous women’s writing which not only unearths Sally’s
aboriginal identity but also the political and societal issues within
Australia’s indigenous culture. The text has a prominent role in
acquainting non-aboriginal readers with indigenous history which
was hitherto hidden. Sally Morgan’s My Place, set in Australia,
172 Shyama Sajeev
explores not only the history of Sally’s family but also the history
of Australia as a nation. Living with her mother Gladys and her
grandmother Daisy, she often realizes that she is not treated the
same way as white children at school. When she inquires about
her family background, Sally is told that she is an Indian. It is only
later on in her life that she learns for sure that she is descended
from Australia’s aborigines. This revelation sends Sally on a quest
to trace her family tree. After many trials and tribulations, she gains
access to the story of her aboriginal inheritance from the stories of
other members of the community.
Sally Morgan—by universalizing her personal, family story—
opens up a window into a hidden Australian history, making it a
strongly political narrative. My Place interweaves autobiographical
writing with oral narratives of her mother Gladys, her grandmother
Daisy and her great uncle Arthur in her quest to find her own
place—culturally, spiritually and historically. The book is an auto
biographical journey into her identity which was till then a secret
because of social stigma. Sally’s intention is to rediscover Australia’s
past through her life narrative, and for this she makes her family
tell the story of Australia which is shadowed by ignorance of
aboriginal culture. This retelling of history is to reinstate their self
and identity. ‘You’ve got your place now. We have worked it out’
(My Place 86). Her autobiographical narrative is not restricted to
one person but a collective of four people. Thus, Sally’s inner journey
is her awareness and love for her family and aboriginal identity
and the recognition of her place. ‘To nearly think I missed all this.
All my life I have only been half a person’ (ibid., 223). Sally persuaded
her mother Gladys, her grandmother Daisy and great uncle Arthur
to reveal their life stories.
Aboriginal people were always subjected to injustice and considered
inferior by the white settlers. Aboriginal workers were treated like
slaves. The women workers were seduced and the white settlers
committed incest with their own offsprings. Sally’s narrative exposes
the double oppression of women—exploitation by white settlers
on one hand and patriarchal values on the other. Gladys remembered
one incident as a child while staying with Daisy in a white family.
Alice, the mother in the white family, handed over a black doll
dressed like a servant to Gladys:
That’s me, I thought, I want to be a princess, not a servant.I was so upset that
when Alice placed the black doll in my arms, I couldn’t help flinging it into
the floor and screaming ‘I don’t want a black doll,I don’t want a black doll.’
Alice just laughed and said to my mother, ‘Fancy, her not wanting a black
doll’. (My Place 262)
The incident reveals how the white woman internalized the

socially-constructed hierarchy between the white and the aboriginal
woman. It also shows how white women were constructing
subservient roles and racialized identities for aboriginal women.
Patriarchy reigned supreme which devastated many women’s lives.
Sally Morgan did not restrict herself to the predicament of ab
original women. She also talked of white women who were subjected
to patriarchal authority and had to endure their male counterparts’
sexual encounters with aboriginal women.
After reaching Corunna Downs, the birthplace of her grand
mother and the emotional meetings with her aboriginal relatives,
Sally talked of an aboriginal consciousness. ‘We had gone into a
spiritual and emotional pilgrimage. We had an Aboriginal con
sciousness now and were proud of it’ (My Place 223). Sally’s
quest for ancestry and discovering the real ‘place’ was the out
come of the awareness that arose out of this consciousness. Her
personal life story is intertwined with Australia’s aboriginal his
tory. My Place is concerned with the process of constructing and
reconstructing the self, the real self whose story had not been
told and hidden from history. My Place opens up not only the
history of one woman’s life but also the untold stories of many
women. In Sally’s own words:
I want to write the history of my own family . . . there is almost nothing
written from a personal point of view about Aboriginal people. All our history
is about the white man. No one knows what it was like for us. A lot of
our history has been lost, people have been frightened to say anything.
(My Place 136)
The injustice and contempt targeted at aboriginals through the
dumping of part-aboriginal children into government settlements,
174 Shyama Sajeev
children compulsorily separated from parents and so on, were looked
upon with horror by them. In Daisy’s words, ‘In those days . . .
they took the white ones off you, cause you weren’t considered fit to
raise a child with white blood’ (ibid., 336). The attitude, that the
aboriginals were unfit to raise a child, robbed them of their identity.
Gladys’ experience as an aboriginal girl influenced her life and
way of thinking as a woman. It is this experience that she wants to
shield her children against. ‘. . . every Friday night they watched
movies, and often these were just heart-rending tales, like about
gypsies stealing a child from a family. Glad said she identified
with those films. They all did. Glad always thought of herself as
that stolen child’ (ibid., 246). Gladys and Nan’s reliving the pain
ful experience was too hurtful which made them persuade Sally
and her siblings to assimilate a culture and an identity which was
not their own. They always resorted to an identity other than
aboriginal which was better, less painful and less hurtful. In Sally’s
words, ‘If you leave the past be, it won’t hurt anyone. Nan once
told Gladys as a kid never to tell anyone what she was. That really
was when Gladys started wishing she was something different’
(ibid., 279). Aboriginality and the question of identity of being
torn between white identity and black identity is revealed in the
words of Sally’s grandmother, ‘There I was, stuck in the middle.
Too black for the whites and too white for the blacks’ (ibid., 336).
Sally, representing the aboriginals who, like her, are looking for a
place of belonging and individudal identity says, ‘If we keep saying
we are proud to be Aboriginal, may be other Australians will see
that we are a people to be proud of. . . . I suppose every mother
wants her children to achieve greatness . . . All I want my children
to do is to pass their Aboriginal heritage on’ (ibid., 306). Sally’s
autobiographical account of the liberation of the race is a pursuit
of aboriginal identity.
Autobiographies by women shifted focus from (his)stories of
women to her stories. Studies suggest that woman do possess a
mode of representation of their self-histories which is unique. Auto
biographies written by women also make us think about the form
that they have adopted, their tone of narration, interpretation of
events which makes their writing entirely different from those of
men. Diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are outlets through
which women writers broke the silence surrounding their pain,
despair and weakness. Autobiography or life writing is not only
the story of internal evolution but also inextricably linked to various
disciplines like history, sociology and culture studies. The auto
biographies discussed here serve as a mirror to contemporary societal
norms and the prevailing culture. Their writers attempt to bring
women who were the ‘other’ till then to the forefront/centre. While
writing, they become the subaltern voicing their distress and alie
nation. Spivak is doubtful about the extent to which women’s voices
can be retrieved and restored to history. Instead she suggests that
one must ‘. . . bring to crisis the representational system which
rendered [them] mute in the first place’ (McLeod 194). Women’s
take on matters of concern were never heard or represented and
they were never producers of cultural symbols. They, like any other
oppressed group, have tried to recreate and reinterpret their world
so as to have a measure of power. Power politics was so dominant
in societies of the past decades that women had to restrict their
creativity into the framework provided by patriarchy. It is here that
the importance of autobiography/life writing lay, where women
wrote to impede the male gaze, producing a solid representation
of their selves.
Women authors often sought to discuss their experiences and
struggles by writing about themselves basically for two reasons.
First, they wanted to pass on their experience to other women
so as to make them break from the cocoon of their diminished
selves. Second, it was an act of autonomy in a patriarchal society
where women seldom enjoyed a public voice and hence it becomes
a narration of resistance.
The aim of these women writers, irrespective of their social and
cultural milieu, is to rise above the diminished self; not to become
‘the other’ as propounded by male theorists but to inspire many;
to become their natural selves while foregrounding their experiences.
Be it Sally Morgan, Kamala Das or Melba, they have gone beyond
borders in nurturing positive thoughts amongst general readers
and marginalized section of society. They have gone beyond the
societal norms to convey the true spirit of womanhood.
176 Shyama Sajeev
REFERENCES
Beals, Melba P., Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate
Little Rock’s Central High, New York: Pocket Books, 1994.
Das, Kamala, My Story, New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1988.
Davies, Carole B., Black Women, Writing, and Identity: Migrations of the Subject,
London: Routledge, 1994.
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar, Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A
Norton Reader, New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
Habib, M.A.R., Modern Literary Criticism and Theory, New Delhi:Wiley India,
2008.
Lorde, Audre, Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader, ed.
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
McLeod, John, Beginning Postcolonialism, Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2000.
Morgan, Sally, My Place, Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre, 1987.
Nayar, Pramod K., Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction, Delhi: Pearson
Longman, 2008.
——, Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory, Delhi: Pearson Longman,
2011.
Showalter, Elaine, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte
to Lessing, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977.
Spivak, Gayatri C., The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Mecleau, New York: Routledge,
1996.
Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, New Delhi: Cambridge University Press,
2006.
CHAPTER 9
Daughter of the East and Perils of

(Self )Idealization
VINITA CHATURVEDI
Is it more important to be true or to ring true?

TIMOTHY DOW ADAMS
Daughter of the East was first written and published by Benazir

Bhutto in 1988, shortly before she was elected as the first woman
prime minister of an Islamic nation. A new edition with two extra
chapters and a preface, titled Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography,
was brought out shortly before her untimely death in December
2007. This work is a tragic account of the political events leading
to the execution of the first democratically elected prime minister
of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto; the subsequent house arrest and
internment of his spirited daughter for long periods during the
next five years of her life; her release and a triumphant return to
the world of national politics. The account stops abruptly just
before her electoral win and the Editor’s Note announces her over
whelming lead, going on to become one of the youngest leaders of
a Muslim country. In the two additional chapters in the revised
edition Benazir briefly looked at the events that unfolded in the
intervening two decades, where, as the title suggests, she declared
herself to be the chosen one, a destiny’s child, to lead her nation.
The paper, while relying on one of the seminal works enumerat
ing the fundamental tenets of autobiographical writing, Roy Pascal’s
Design and Truth in Autobiography, attempts to show how Bhutto’s
life-writing violates some of the cardinal tenets laid down by Pascal
178 Vinita Chaturvedi
and problematizes the collapsing of the process of self-discovery
and self-creation that one encounters in the work. This article
would analyse how, it seems to be written with a definite agenda
of resurrecting the image of her father as a martyr; self-projection
and essentializing of her suffering while presenting the incumbent
president, Zia ul-Haq as a power hungry, part-brutal, part-obsequi
ous villain bordering on the diabolic.
Bhutto’s autobiography, begins dramatically on 4 April 1979,
the morning of her father’s ‘execution’ which she chooses to call an
‘assassination’. The recounting then moves from one place of her
detention to another and each horrid confinement occasions her
reminiscences of the past. It is an interesting narrative style in
tended for maximum dramatic impact where memory selects/re
calls incidents from the past while located in the horrible misery
and squalor of the present. The disproportionate first half of the
work continues in this non-sequential fashion while the second
section of the book titled, ‘Taking on the Dictator’, moves chrono
logically when, released from her incarceration, she challenges her
antagonist Zia fearlessly by inciting her father’s political connections
and galvanizing a counter movement against him. According to
Pascal, such,
direct historical and psychological knowledge is not simply interesting and
instructive; it is necessary if we are to get on terms with ourselves. And in
autobiographies this knowledge is given in a particularly attractive way, as a
story in which, as in a novel, we are won over to the ‘hero’. Not that the
author must try to win us by proving that he, the hero, is worthy morally or
by his achievements, of our admiration. . . . But we are won over simply by
being admitted to his intimacy. (Pascal 1)
Bhutto’s autobiography fails on this account for there is an un

abashed glorification of her father’s achievements even when there
is historical evidence of his track record of human rights being far
from being perfect. There was muzzling of free press and his govern
ment was accused of corruption and nepotism. In a later profile on
Benazir Bhutto in The New Yorker, Mary Anne Weaver, who ac
companied Benazir on her political campaigns, acting as one of
her aides and closely observing her, writes that for Benazir, any
Daughter of the East and the Perils of (Self ) Idealisation 179
adverse or objective analysis of her father’s life and actions was
absolutely non-negotiable.
A shadow crosses Benazir’s face when she is asked about her father’s well-
documented acts of repression—the tortures and imprisonments—and
the charges of a rigged election in 1977, which was his final bid to retain
power. She remembers only one side of him: the genius, without flaws; the
populist reformer and spellbinding orator, who restored national pride after a
humiliating defeat by the Indian Army in 1971; the man who returned
Pakistan to civilian rule. She has firmly shaped her memories, as she has
compartmentalized her life, and I had been warned by her friends that her
demand for loyalty to her father’s legacy was absolute. She simply would not
tolerate any criticism of him. (Qtd. in The New Yorker, 4 October 1993).
Not only is there a melodramatic deification of Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto in the work, he is also presented as a principled and astute
statesman who always made the right political decisions. Liberties
are taken with some factual happenings such as the fallout of
Tashkent Agreement; the Shimla Pact is erroneously presented as a
victory for Pakistan; the failure of Bhutto to get UN to officially
censure India is quite simplistically, all ‘. . . about the manipulation
of Third World countries by the Superpowers . . . [and] Pakistan
is defenceless in the face of Superpower self-interest’ (Benazir
Bhutto 56). Although her father’s political legacy is a contentious
issue, he is constantly presented as a messiah, ready to deliver his
country from years of martial rule.
On the personal front he is fearless, determined not to flee the
country in the wake of the military coup and supremely heroic in
facing his trial, ‘My God knows that I am innocent. . . I will file
my appeal in His court on the Day of Judgment’ (136). In his death,
Bhutto has attained near canonization and his hold on the people’s
consciousness is described thus, ‘In his life, my father was admired
as a statesman and social visionary. By his murder, he has been
elevated in the minds of his followers to the rank of martyr and, to
some, a saint. No two forces are more powerful in a Muslim country’
(158). Bhutto’s burial site has become a place of pilgrimage thronged
by people and miracles are reported from the area, ‘A crippled boy
walks. A barren woman delivers a son’ (158). Bhutto enjoyed wide
popularity but the account of such tampered saintliness is at a
variance with the image of him portrayed by politicians such as
Dr. Hamida Khuhro. Though a political rival and a severe critic of
the Bhutto family, Dr. Khuhro’s account of her father’s unfair im
prisonment by Bhutto on trumped up charges and torture is simi
lar to what Bhutto himself retributively suffered at the hands of
Zia. But where Zia’s action against Bhutto was a political one, that
of Bhutto against Khuhro was an act of sheer vendetta because the
latter had dared to oppose the First Family in elections. Similarly,
Benazir’s own account of Bhutto’s reaction to Indian Prime Minister
Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death, the day after the Tashkent Agreement,
does not present him in an angelic light. The non-aggressive
Tashkent pact which resulted in a status quo for both the coun
tries, angered Bhutto, who despaired that he could not get India
to lose face, ‘My father was disgusted, and tendered his resignation
as Foreign Minister. When the Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur
Shastri died of a heart attack the day after the agreement was signed,
my father acidly remarked that he must have died from happi
ness’ (39).
Benazir’s autobiography collapses the shadowy boundaries of
a diary, memoir and reminiscences. According to Pascal, a true
political autobiography should foreground political exposition and
the protagonist could discreetly step in but in Benazir’s autobio
graphy the political affairs are dwarfed first by the towering figure
of her father and then by Benazir herself when she decides to
take on the Goliath-Zia-ul-Haq. Here is an instance of yet another
violation of Pascal’s dictum:
In the autobiography proper, attention is focused on the self, in memoir or
reminiscences on others. It is natural, therefore, that the autobiographies of
statesmen and politicians are almost always in essence memoirs. The usual
pattern includes true autobiographical material about childhood and youth.
But when the author enters into the complex world of politics, he appears as
only a small element, fitting into a pattern. . . . If he puts himself in the centre
he falls into rank vanity; it is as an observer that he can make a unity of his
experiences, not as an actor. (5-6)
Benazir’s autobiography is deeply self-centric, she accords herself
the centre stage in both sections of the autobiography; in the first
by giving herself the status of a tragic heroine, a victim of injustices
of fate and Zia’s tyranny and in the second when she triumphs
heroically over these forces. Benazir’s intense focus in the first half
of the autobiography is on the untold misery and suffering that
she and her mother had undergone in those four odd years that
she had been in and out of the prison, following her father’s death.
Curiously the prime focus is on the protagonist herself while there
is a strange relegation of the other siblings to the background, in
this account of family tragedy which should have focussed equally
on all the siblings alike. The response of other members of Bhutto
family is not even tangentially mentioned.
The narrative scheme of the autobiography is extremely skilful
in manipulating and winning over the reader’s sympathy. All the
flashbacks of Benazir’s free days are related from within the con
fines of the different prisons she was held in so that the reader is
meant to contrast the halcyon days of freedom with the starkness
of her present condition. The opening chapter gives a chilling,
imagined account of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s last moments in prison
and his secret burial without the knowledge or presence of mem
bers of his family. This pivotal moment in history and her personal
tragedy is related from Benazir’s own captivity with her mother, in
a nearby jail. Benazir uses her histrionic talent to accentuate her
grief, when at two in the morning, she wakes up despite the tran
quillizers, with a choking sensation and a silent scream, ‘I felt the
moment of my father’s death’ (3). A similar experience is intuit
ively described by Benazir when, in London she is organizing the
mourning of her martyred party worker in Pakistan and claims that
she feels his spirit wafting over the band of fellow mourners gathered
in her apartment in London. Through her professed belief in these
occurrences, Benazir is trying to build another narrative for her
Westernized persona, which is that of a godfearing, intuitive per
son, in order to strike a chord with her fellow countrymen.
Mary Anne Weaver writes admiringly about Benazir’s ability to
effortlessly switch roles from that of a rational minded, liberal Western
to a traditional, ritual observing Muslim woman. She describes
how Benazir deliberately took to underplaying her looks and in
sisted on wrapping her femininity in the ungainly ‘chador’ in order
to cut an appealing figure before what is deemed one of the most
conservative Islamic societies of the world, a double role that proved
baffling to her.
The de-emphasized outward appearance, the donning of heavily
rimmed owlish glasses and the bulky head coverings were a care
fully cultivated persona to be accepted in the male-dominated
society.
Benazir’s role as a feminist is a problematic one. Although a
progressive, forward thinking individual in real life: a product of
Radcliffe and Oxford, reader of feminist literature, leader of peace
marches in the USA against Vietnam War, president of the student’s
union at Oxford; once in active politics, Benazir adopted a conser
vative stance—choosing the traditional accoutrement to blend into
a largely feudal society, choosing to settle down in an arranged
marriage of convenience. During her tenure as the prime minister
of her country she was criticized for not doing much to champion
the cause of women. One of the most vocal critics of Benazir’s
inertia vis-à-vis women’s education programmes when she was in
power, comes from the education minister of the Sindh province
Dr. Hamida Khuhro, herself an Oxford educated historian. Al
though her fierce political opponent, Dr. Khuhro’s observations
on Benazir’s sexual politics and the latter’s lack of will regarding
women empowerment, in a country with a dubious record of women’s
human rights, is quite perspicacious.
People were expecting a liberal, Western-educated woman with forward-
looking programs. When Benazir came to power, she could have set the trend,
but the first thing she did was to shroud herself in a chador, the most
obstructionist, outward manifestation of Islam, and begin praying incessantly
at saints’ tombs, the most superstitious part of Islam. She’s vastly superstitious,
and it shows. She could have been a reformer, but she wasn’t; she did nothing
for women, which she could have done. And, with her education and her
background, she simply has no excuse. (Qtd. in The New Yorker, 4 October
1993).
Her autobiography shows clearly how, as a woman, Benazir her
self was a victim of patriarchy in both private and public sphere.
Although hugely popular as a politician, she had the daunting
task of not only convincing the feudal lords for political support
but also that section of the masses, the fundamentalists, who looked
askance at a woman leader. Her personal life is a record of a series
of patriarchal diktats that influenced the key milestones in her life.
In the initial pages of the work, she talks about the Pakistani society,
‘In our male-dominated culture, boys had always been favoured
over girls and were not only more often given an education, but
in extreme instances were given food first while the mother and
daughters waited’ (32). While this was the general condition of
society, the Bhutto family was educated, enlightened and progressive.
Benazir along with her sister received the best of the Western edu
cation. However, in her case, the silent governing of her choices of
college, of marriage and of life in general, is insidiously patriar
chal, which manifests itself on many occasions, and it is sometimes
even internalized by Benazir. Through her account of her life she
unwittingly reveals how women in general and she in particular
were situated in this patriarchal set up, ‘There was no question in
my family that my sister and I would be given the same opportu
nities in life as my brothers. Nor was there in Islam. We learned at
an early age that it was men’s interpretation of our religion that
restricted women’s opportunities, not our religion itself ’ (34).
Strangely there is very little recollection of Benazir’s childhood
or growing up years in the work. We see her throughout as an
adult, either suffering or fighting her adversary. The flashback to
her past takes the reader to as late as being on the threshold of
adulthood when she prepared herself for her undergraduate studies.
Here, the choice of her college was dictated by her father with a
heavy hand, who deemed it fit that she studies in some all-girls
college sans any distractions, at Radcliffe and not in the sunny,
hedonistic California, ‘I had begged my father to let me apply to
Berkeley where he had gone, but he wouldn’t let me. The weather
in California is too nice’, he had explained. ‘The snow and ice in
Massachusetts will force you to study’ (42). The father’s going
away gift to Benazir was a beautiful volume of the Holy Koran bound
in mother of pearl, for some probable course correction. Once at
Radcliffe, we see the father making long distance manoeuvres to
influence her choice of subjects. He had always intended Benazir
to don the mantle of political leadership after him and unknown
to her, cajoled the Radcliffe authorities to get her to major in
Political Science. Benazir wanted to study psychology but ended
up chosing comparative government instead, ‘My father was de
lighted; he had secretly written to Mary Bunting, the president of
Radcliffe, asking her to try and steer me towards political courses.
Mrs Bunting had kindly asked me what I wanted to do with my
life, never letting on that she’d had a letter from my father’ (50-1).
A similar autocratic decision was made by her father when it came
to deciding the college for her master’s programme. Benazir loved
the sense of freedom and opportunity that America offered and
she wanted to pursue higher studies at Tufts but he was adamant
that she went to Oxford lest she grew her roots in America. De
jected, she wrote, ‘For the first time I felt my father was pushing
me. But what could I do? It was he, after all, who was paying for
my tuition and expenses. I had no choice. And I was a practical
person’ (67). Even during her stay abroad, he constantly hectored
her against succumbing to the ‘Siren Song of the West’. He kept
reminding her of the perils of racism, about how the south Asian is
tolerated while he/she is studying and fuelling their economy but
how they become a coloured liability once they become immi
grants, all this emanating from the fear that she might settle in the
West and adopt their lifestyle. But Benazir never presented these
interferences of her father as causing any impediment in her life,
rather she presented him as a benevolent patriarch, guiding her
choices, making decisions for her, so internalized was her patriarchy.
After her postgraduate studies in May 1977, father contem
plated Benazir’s marriage in the same autocratic manner—he had
not only deemed it fit that it was time for her to get married, he
had also chosen the prospective groom. In the presence of Benazir,
he said to her mother, ‘You know, Nusrat, it’s time for Pinkie to
get married . . . I’m going to find her a husband. . . . In fact . . . I’ve
already seen a boy I like’ (109). At her feeble protestations, his
terse response was simple, ‘You can’t say no to your father’ (ibid.).
Shortly afterwards, Zia took Bhutto a prisoner in a coup in Sep
tember 1977, which resulted in the beginning of Benazir’s personal
tragedy and the agonizing military rule for Pakistan. Benazir’s
marriage, which finally took place in July 1987, was perhaps the
biggest compromise of her life. It was a marriage of convenience
when she decided to give in to a marriage arranged by families.
The account of her marriage (and she made it very clear that she
was not in love with her prospective match, Asif Zardari) is sum
marily given in the last chapter of her autobiography, almost in
the manner of an epilogue, ‘My personal life took a dramatic turn
on 29 July 1987, when I agreed to an arranged marriage on the
prompting of my family. An arranged marriage was the price in
personal choice I had to pay for a political path my life had taken’
(350). There is something doleful about how circumscribed her
life had always been, in terms of making crucial choices. A captive
of her image, she wrote, ‘My high profile in Pakistan precluded
the possibility of my meeting a man in the normal course of events,
getting to know him, and then getting married. Even the most
discreet relationship would have fuelled the gossip and rumour . . .’
(ibid.).
The ‘limits of representation’ and the ‘inflation of the self ’ are
two known and acknowledged pitfalls of life writings. In this
autobiography these pitfalls cast a shadow over the depiction of
India-Pakistan relationship, the Indo-Pak wars and the burgeoning
figure of Benazir herself in the second section of the book, grandi
osely titled ‘Taking on the Dictator’. After her father’s execution
(she insists it was ‘judicial murder’) Benazir spent the next five
years under various stages of house arrest, solitary confinement or
‘sub jail’ like condition. Some periods of these incarcerations were
undoubtedly horrific in the relentlessness of misery and loneli
ness. Nevertheless, these prolonged chapters present a larger than
life picture of the protagonist who overcame her imprisonment
with superhuman grit and determination. It, however, lacks the
philosophical rumination on life and death, combating of misery
with a Zen like resilience and forgiveness that is the essence of the
autobiography of Aung San Su Kyi of Mynamar, who spent half
her life in incarceration for raising her voice against dictatorship.
During one of her intermittent house arrests, Benazir decided
on a pragmatic move to strengthen her political party, the Pakistan
People’s Party by aligning it with smaller parties. So, along with
her mother she formed a new party, negotiating a coalition deal
with her father’s erstwhile rivals. But Benazir chose to gloss over
this politically expedient move without any self-castigation. As
she surveyed the leaders of various factions assembled in her house
her moral reservations were dismissed in the larger interest of
political gain, ‘I looked at my father’s former opponents now
sitting in his own house to strike a political deal with his widow,
the Chairperson of PPP, and his daughter. What a strange business
politics is’ (166).
In the second part of the autobiography Benazir described her
release by Zia government in 1984 when she was allowed to leave
her country for medical treatment in England. Her exile continued
for two years. In England she organized support of the expatriates,
travelled to America to garner international recognition and re
turned to Pakistan in 1986. This section of the work engages with
the exercise of self-creation, bordering on self-inflation. Once Zia
lifted the martial law in Pakistan, she returned to her country with
the messianic zeal of restoring democracy to the long oppressed
nation. She built up mass movement as she took on Zia. It is in
this section of the book that she showed extreme grit and determi
nation to counter extreme misogyny and machinations of the re
pressive dispensation to fight the elections and finally emerged a
hero. The narrative came to an end on 10 November 1988, when
she put her trust and faith firmly in God for the future. The Editor’s
Note summarily mentions her overwhelming victory.
The two revised chapters of 2007 look back at the intervening
two decades where, after a brief prime ministerial tenure she
was ousted, on charges similar to those levelled against her father,
those of corruption and misgovernance. In these chapters Benazir
attributed her becoming a prime minister to tremendous historical
forces, propelled by destiny to rule her nation. It was precisely
this messianic role Benazir ascribed to herself, something that
Rebecca S. Richards has a problem with. According to Richards,
Benazir actively ‘chose’ to lead her nation. She overcame tremendous
odds, physical and emotional challenges to become a leader. Her
story is a triumph of individual will and determination and not
destiny’s design. It is also an evidence of overarching ambition and
pride. Richards cites an instance in the autobiography when Benazir
could have ended her misery; she could have escaped the appalling
conditions of her incarceration when Zia gave her a chance to be free
provided she gave up her political ambition. But she chose to reject
that proposition. Richards objects to Benazir’s narrative of destiny
taking control of her life precisely because it was human intervention
and active involvement which brought her to this position. It will
require a terrific ‘. . . leap of faith, willing suspension of disbelief,
or allow for the story to just ring true’ (47) to persuade the reader to
acquiesce to this idealized narrative of Benazir being destiny’s child.
Richards also detects what she describes as ‘rhetorical performances’
in the autobiographies of women politicians and this bears out in
Benazir’s grandiloquent self-comparison to the English queen, ‘Like
England’s Queen Elizabeth I . . . I thought I would never get
married’ (2007 edition, Preface, xii). Richards also feels that Benazir
‘. . . tells her life story as that of a predestined martyr to explain
the rather incredible journey of her life’ (46) and in order to lend
validity to this narrative she made innumerable references to the
threat perception to her life, the death threats and the near assas
sination attempts on her. Richards believes that ‘. . . she narrates
both her political and personal life through this lens of destiny
and martyrdom’ (47). It is this self-idealization that made Mary
Ann Weaver comment that Benazir had very consciously and ‘care
fully modelled herself on Evita Perón and Corazon Aquino’. The
opposition to Zia became most pronounced in the second section
of the work, ‘I had finished this book in which I wanted to set
down the record of the brutal Martial Law regime of General Zia
ul-Haq’ (374) and so did the process of self-creation.
The Epilogue signs off with a last picture of an apotheosized
Benazir who refused to rejoice in Zia’s sudden death in a plane
crash, magnanimously confessing that she would have preferred to
have defeated him in elections. With a final clarification, which
does not sound quite convincing, she explained the raison d’être of
the autobiography, ‘For years’ people had interpreted my political
opposition to Zia as a platform for avenging my father’s murder.
But that was not the case. . . . The task-and my motivation—re
mained the same: to return Pakistan to a democracy through fair
and impartial elections’ (380). At the other spectrum of Roy Pascal’s
work is a counter narrative provided by Timothy Dow Adams,
who adds a fourth dimension—‘lie’—to Pascal’s three key terms of
truth design, and autobiography. According to him a dimension
which has largely been unexplored by theorists is that of ‘lying . . .
despite the fact that autobiography is synonymous with lying for
many readers (4)’, the only difference being the degree of decep
tion exercised. While Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography is certainly
not a lie, it comes perilously close to a kind of self-fashioning
explained by Adams when it becomes integral to a partly fictionalized
autobiography:
This form of writing . . . possesses a peculiar kind of truth through a narrative
composed of the author’s metaphors of self that attempt to reconcile the
individual events of a lifetime by using a combination of memory and imagi
nation—all performed in a unique act that partakes of a therapeutic fiction
making, rooted in what really happened, and judged both by standards of
truth and falsity and by the standards of success as an artistic creation. (3)
REFERENCES
Adams, Timothy Dow, Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiographies, The

University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill and London, 1990.
Bhutto, Benazir, Daughter of the East, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988.
——, Daughter of Destiny: An Autobiography, New York: Harper and Perennial,
2007.
Evans, Mary, Missing Persons: The Impossibility of Auto/biography, London and
New York: Routledge, 1999.
Pascal, Roy, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Cambridge, Harvard University
Press, 1960.
Polkey, Pauline and Alison Donnell, eds., Representing Lives: Women & Auto/
biography, London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 2000.
Richards, Rebecca S., Transnational Feminist Rhetorics & Gendered Leadership in
Global Politics, London: Lexington Books, 2015.
Weaver, Mary Anne, ‘Profile of Benazir Bhutto’, The New Yorker, 4 October
1993, Web 6 January 2017. <www.newyorker.com/ magazine/1993/10/
04/bhuttos-fateful-moment>
C H A P T E R 10
Identity and Self-Representation in

Taslima Nasreen’s My Girlhood
A RC H A N A G U P TA
Taslima Nasreen’s My Girlhood (2002) centres around the growing

awareness of gender subordination and female victimization in
Bangladesh. It depicts the construction of femininity in society,
women’s position within marriage, family, etc., while portraying
Nasreen’s fierce indictment against marriage, sexual exploitation
of women, treatment of women in Islam, the War of liberation of
1971 and its women victims. This article attempts to explore the
issues of politics related to patriarchal control of women’s bodies
and mind in Bangladesh. It takes up My Girlhood as a discourse of
resistance, as also a discourse of repositioning of the self within the
larger world. For Nasreen it is a means of asserting herself and
reclaiming her identity. The very title of her autobiography suggests
that the writer is trying to create an identity, as, ‘. . . the term
Meyebela is a word coined by Nasreen and it means “girlhood”, as
there was no equivalent in her native language’ (Mitrea 128). On
the one hand, Nasreen attacks Islam, religious hypocrisy and the
oppressive traditions which discriminate women and on the other,
she tries to construct a self which rejects the rigid patriarchal norms
of the society.
My Girlhood is a young girl’s quest for her individual indepen
dent space. Taslima Nasreen’s quest for love and independence ends
in her self-discovery of what it means to be a woman. It is a journey
to discover her ‘self ’ and her identity and in that process she be
comes aware of stereotypical depiction of women merely as sexual
190 Archana Gupta
objects. Nasreen confesses that she is a fallen woman because she is
unfeminine enough to claim her rights as a human being, to reject
male protection as oppressive and exploitative and to demand
social transformation. Taslima Nasreen has transgressed the tradi
tional norms of expression and representation. She strongly
exposes what lies beneath the so-called family values.
Taslima Nasreen is one of the most controversial writers from
South Asia. She is a feminist writer from Bangladesh and an un
compromising critic of Islam as a religion that opposes women.
She was born on 25 August 1962 to Rajab Ali and Idulwara in the
town of Mymensingh. Her father was a renowned doctor and she
followed his footsteps. Nasreen wrote the first volume of her memoir
Amar Meyebela in 1999 during her exile which was later translated
into English as My Girlhood (2002). The Bangladesh government
banned it for ‘reckless comments’ against Islam and the Prophet
Muhammad. My Girlhood, narrated from a child’s standpoint, is
about the first thirteen years of the author’s life. The first person
narrative travels back and forth effortlessly to describe the child
hood of Taslima Nasreen’s parents, circumstances of her birth and
the experiences of her early years. It begins with the events of the
1971 War of Independence of Bangladesh when she was nine years
old and ends with the most crucial point in the nation’s life—the
brutal assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It is the end of
political innocence as well as Nasreen’s childhood and the begin
ning of her adolescence. The movement for political independence
was the moment when she first became aware of her selfhood and
identity as a female. This was the beginning of a series of child
hood experiences that opened her eyes to a new awareness of the
reality.
My Girlhood is an account of gender subordination in a patriar
chal society. Being a girl Taslima Nasreen was discouraged from
going to shops, climbing trees, playing games as it was considered
unsuitable for girls. She was included in the boys’ games only
when they could not find anyone else. Simone de Beauvoir writes,
‘The little girl, to whom such exploits are forbidden and who,
seated at the foot of a tree or cliff, sees the triumphant boys high
above her, must feel that she is, body and soul, their inferior’ (313).
Identity & Self-Representation in Nasreen’s My Girlhood 191
Girls were meant for assisting their mothers with household chores
and complying with the gendered ways of the society through
bulding home and a world where women belonged to the inner
space and men to the outer. Thus, girls were taught since their
childhood that they were mentally and physically inferior in com
parison to boys and were destined only for household chores.
During war time, Nasreen’s family took shelter in a village and
she noticed women’s habits there as well. She found that women’s
situation was similar everywhere. The girls of Nasreen’s age wore
their sarees in a different style. They woke up early in the morning
to ‘. . . let out the ducks and hens, light the stove, grind spices,
use the dheki to make rice from paddy, and pour rice on a wicker
straw to shake it clean’ (Nasreen, MG 13). The male hegemony
formulates patriarchal definitions in regard to the activities of men
and women. Kate Millett says, ‘In terms of activity, sex role assigns
domestic service and attendance upon infants to the female, the
rest of human achievement, interest, and ambition to the male’
(Millett 26). Thus, Nasreen found that women’s destiny and their
subordination was imposed on them by society.
Taslima Nasreen’s contempt for the patriarchal system is clearly
manifested in her autobiography. Women in Nasreen’s autobio
graphy appear weak, a quality which is imposed on them by
patriarchal oppression. A boy was supposed to carry the family
name forward and a girl was supposed to help her mother, do the
household chores and keep the men happy. Nasreen’s maternal
grandfather was the symbol of patriarchal authority and he differ
entiated between a boy and a girl. Taslima Nasreen describes about
the differences in the rituals performed on a girl and a boy’s birth.
She says that when her brothers were born her grandfather called
out the azan but in her case there was no need for the azan as she
was a girl. Even during the Haittara ceremony, which is celebrated
after the birth of a child, there is a difference. For her two brothers,
an ox had been slaughtered to mark the occasion, and for Nasreen
it was only a goat. Nasreen’s grandfather also believed that education
was meant only for sons and girls should not bother about higher
studies, for he believed that there should be ‘. . . aggression, intel
ligence, force, and efficacy in the male; passivity, ignorance, docility,
192 Archana Gupta
virtue and ineffectuality in the female’ (Millett 26). Thus, she
exposes how gender subordination begins within the family.
Taslima Nasreen, as a Muslim woman has borne the pain of
being used merely as a body. She was used merely as an object
of sex in an orthodox society of Bangladesh. She was sexually
molested by two of her uncles at the age of seven. After that her
belief in family values came crashing down. As Nasreen was a fre
quent visitor to her grandmother’s house, her maternal uncle Sharaf
took her to ‘. . . the room at the far end of the house’ and ‘no
sound from the main house carried this far’. Uncle Sharaf told her
that ‘. . . there are snakes in this jungle’ (Nasreen, MG 67). He
lured her by saying he would show her some ‘interesting thing’. It
reflects a child’s innocence and how she was befooled by her uncle.
Suddenly, she began to feel important. He told her to show some
magic. She writes that her uncle said, ‘Time to show you the
thing . . .’ and ‘. . . without the slightest warning, pulled me down
on the cot. All I was wearing were some frilly shorts. Uncle Sharaf
pulled those too . . .’ (69). When she pulled them up ‘. . . with
one hand he removed my shorts once more, and with the other,
took off his own, pressing his willie hard against my body’ (69).
Thus, she was raped by her maternal uncle Sharaf.
Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) explains rape in the
following way, ‘Penetration is sufficient to constitute the sexual
intercourse necessary to the offence of rape’. A man is said to have
committed rape, according to this section, if he has sexual inter
course with a woman in circumstances falling under any of these
six descriptions—sexual intercourse against her will, without her
consent; with her consent when the consent has been obtained by
putting her or any person in whom she is interested, in fear of
death or hurt; with her consent if her consent is given because she
believes the man to be her lawfully married husband, when the man
knows he is not, with her consent if she is unable to recognize ‘the
nature and consequence’ of that to which she gives consent be
cause of intoxication or unsoundness of mind; with or without her
consent if she is under sixteen years of age (qtd. in Menon, 202-3).
In Taslima Nasreen’s case, she was lured by her uncle and was
raped by him without her consent and she was under the age of
sixteen as well.
Taslima Nasreen’s body was mutilated and her identity was
crushed. She felt depressed and gloomy. According to the Ameri
can feminist and activist, Susan Brownmiller, the human anatomy
is such that men can rape women while women cannot rape men.
This, according to her, is the root of women’s subordination. Rape
is not an act of sex at all but one of power and domination (qtd. in
Menon, 207). It is not only sexual violence but violence on her
inner self, her freedom and her existence. Taslima Nasreen was also
awakened by her uncle to man-woman relationship and exposed
to what Adrienne Rich calls ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (130
41). Nasreen’s uncle said, ‘Do you know what this is called? It’s
called fucking. Everyone in this world does it. Your parents do,
and mine’ (Nasreen, MG 69). A new awareness of the sexual relation
ship between man and woman took place in her mind. Afterwards
her uncle threatened her that if she told anyone about it there
would be a hell to pay and she might suffer dire consequences.
Thus Taslima Nasreen was sexually molested by her close relative.
Consequently, when her mother further wanted her to go to her
grandmother’s house in the night, she disobeyed. She was trans
formed from a shy girl to a grown up girl, fully aware of her physi
cally abused body. Sexual violence, then, is seen as having ‘a unique
character’, as the ‘violation of a woman’s physical and mental being’,
as ‘a serious violation of (women’s) freedom and their being’ (qtd.
in Menon, 230). Nasreen lost her identity and her selfhood after
that incident. She started thinking that she was a sinner and was
being punished for that sin. The irony of the situation is that
though she was raped by her uncles, she considered herself a sinner
and guilty for whatever had happened.
The fear of being stripped naked did not free her anywhere as
Nasreen started fearing darkness as every time she thought that
someone might pull down her shorts again. She also confesses that
after that incident of sexual harassment she started fearing snakes
and she imagined a snake ‘sitting coiled’ under her bed and then
‘slowly climbing up’ and crawling all over her body. She even
dreamed of snakes quite often. The fear of snakes is the symbol of
her fear of being raped again. She, not only, started fearing the
snakes but men also as she says, ‘The fear of snakes and the fear of
men, had me petrified in those days’ (Nasreen, MG 87). Conse
194 Archana Gupta
quently, she feared going close to any male member of her family.
A child learns the first lesson at home but Nasreen, very ironically,
learns a lesson which drastically changed her perception towards
men in general.
There was another incident of sexual assault which took place
when Nasreen’s mother asked her to bring matches from her pater
nal uncle Amanuddaula. He was lying on his bed when she went
there and he looked like her father. First he denied having any
matches with him but suddenly a matchbox appeared in his hand.
As she stretched her hand to take it, he pulled her closer and in
stead of giving it to her, started tickling her under her arms and
stomach. She describes the incident in detail,
He picked up my tense, curled-up body and threw it in the air, as if he was
playing dang-guti. . . . Then he caught me as I fell, his hand sliding down my
body, stopping at my panties. Then he began pulling my panties down. I
tried to roll off the bed. . . . Uncle lifted his lungi. I saw a big snake raise its
head between his legs, poised for attack. I went numb with fear, but to my
greater horror, the snake did attack, in that little place between my thighs—
once, twice, thrice. I remained totally petrified. (Nasreen, MG 91)
She said that he threw her as if she was an object of play. It was
a stereotypical depiction of woman as merely a sexual object. Her
own body appeared to be humiliated, abused and tortured (Mitrea,
133). She confessed that it was a shocking experience for her, which
shattered her young mind completely.
Nasreen interrogated herself as a child for not exposing her uncles
to her parents. Perhaps the socio-cultural beliefs that made a man
superior to a woman hindered her way. She always wondered why
she did not tell anyone about her sexual assault by her own uncles.
She could not believe her own eyes and ears that she had been
raped and thought it was only a nightmare. She thought that those
people could not be her real uncles, they might be someone else
who only looked like her uncles. She had always considered them
equal to her father so they were worthy of respect. She also thought
that if she had talked about those two incidents no one would
believe her. It focuses on a child’s ignorance about male domina
tion of a woman’s body and mind. She felt absolutely broken.
There was no one ‘. . . close enough to whom I could go and cry
my heart out, tell them everything without holding anything back,
show them my wounds? Even Ma was not that close, although
she was my whole world’ (Nasreen, MG 92). She developed a split
personality after that incident. One half of her went out with all
the other children, played games and ran around. The other half
‘. . . sat alone depressed, by the pond, or the rail roads, or the
steps by our door. Alone even in the middle of a crowd’ (ibid. 92).
Once she was raped, she was silenced. She was incapable of con
veying her pain to anyone and therefore learnt to remain silent
and kept it a secret.
Taslima Nasreen grew to understand that the incident was some
thing unspeakable about which nobody ever talked. Her silence
about her sexual assault was broken when she wrote her autobiog
raphy. Critic Bell Hooks also writes that ‘Secrecy and silence—
these were central issues’ for writing an autobiography. . . . This
death in writing was to be liberatory’ (429). By confessing about
her sexual molestation in her autobiography, Nasreen felt liber
ated of the pain and anguish with which she had lived so far. Her
‘female self ’ wanted to punish those men who had toyed with her
body. But she was not allowed to do so. The two incidents left
such a deep impact on her mind that she learned with a shock
about gender subordination and sex.
Taslima Nasreen was so horrified that she related her experience
of rape with the attack of Pakistani soldiers during the year of war
and started imagining herself being raped by them. When she was
pretending to be asleep, she felt as the Pakistani soldiers were gazing
at her:
It was as if a snake was climbing over my body, slowly gliding up to my neck,
coiling itself around my neck and holding it in an icy grip. I found it difficult
to breathe. . . . Their eyes and tongue—dripping lust and fire—swept slowly
over my hair-eyes-nose-ears-neck-chest-stomach-thighs-legs-feet. A cold,
slippery snake slid down the men’s bodies, crawled all over me, sniffed my
back, stomach and genitals, then entered my flesh, my bones, and settled
deep in the marrow. (Nasreen, MG 18-19)
The horror of rape taught Nasreen to detect lust in the eyes of
the Pakistani soldiers when they looked at her young body. She
196 Archana Gupta
imagined those Pakistani soldiers gazing at her with lustful eyes.
The snake symbol indicated that she was being raped by their
gaze. This is the moment when her sexual realization took place.
She understood what it meant to be a woman and how a woman’s
honour ought to be saved first.
During the 1971 war of Bangladesh, women remained under
the constant fear of being raped and sexually assaulted any time as,
‘Rape in 1971 Bangladesh is not to be perceived as an act of sexual
gratification of men’s quenching their thirst for sexual desire, but
rather as a political ploy in which women’s bodies were used as
mere vehicles to scatter terror and degradation’ (Mitrea 129). Taslima
Nasreen remembered the agonizing experiences of the war when
houses were looted by Pakistani soldiers. They plundered women’s
bodies as they plundered their houses. Nasreen’s mother thanked
Allah that their lives had been spared and their honour was safe as,
‘the military men were crazy about women—young, middle-aged,
whatever. One simply had to look at a woman, and a stiff, hard rod
would burst through his pants’ (Nasreen, MG 20). The biological
difference which makes women inferior to men is evident here.
According to Susan Brownmiller, rape was not restricted to beauty
or youth in Bangladesh as girls of eight years and grandmothers of
seventy-five were sexually assaulted. Thus, rape was a means of
dominating women. In her book Against Our Will: Men, Women
and Rape, Brownmiller writes that rape is a means to dominate
and degrade women. ‘. . . is nothing more or less than a conscious
process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state
of fear’ (qtd. in The New York Times, 16 October 1975).
Taslima Nasreen went through another episode of physical abuse
while walking along the banks of Brahmaputra River. A young
man walking from the opposite direction, ‘passed suddenly and
painfully pinched’ her breasts and buttocks. His friends, who were
standing at a distance, clapped and laughed at her humiliation.
She felt so ashamed and panic stricken as if her body was not her
own ‘. . . but a toy they were free to play with’. Women are forced
to be ashamed of their body. By subordinating their bodies men
claim their right to women as their property.
My Girlhood is also an account of religious hypocrisy and domi
nation of women in the name of religion. Women were denied
the right to practise religion, and forced to remain within their
limited sphere. Men interpreted religion in their own interest and
used it as a means of oppressing women. Taslima Nasreen says,
‘Religion has chained women into slavery, turned her into an ob
ject of consumption and denied her the dignity of being human’
(SC 144). The reason for Nasreen’s hatred for Islam was because
she viewed it as an instrument of oppression around her since her
childhood. Nasreen says in her interview with Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria (ISIS), ‘If I criticized Muslim fundamentalists and mullahs
in particular, it is because I saw them from close quarters. They
took advantage of people’s ignorance and oppressed them. They
considered women as chattel slaves and treated them no better
than the slaves of the ancient world.’ Therefore, she strongly con
demned the religious practices adopted by Amirullah in her auto
biography. Amirullah was a religious hypocrite, who used to keep
young girls in his house and tortured them physically. On the
pretext of religious preaching, he exploited young girls, took them
to the closed dark room and molested them. Not only, was he
himself the perpetrator of the deed but young girls were brought
to his house for the fulfilment of sexual pleasure of various other
men.
Taslima Nasreen’s sexual molestation at the age of nine, women’s
domination in the name of religion and her father’s ill treatment
of her mother changed her perception towards men in general.
The relationship between her parents too forced her to believe
that marriage contributes to women’s oppression and exploitation
through economic and political disempowerment and limitation
of opportunities, forcing women to compromise with their desires
and aspirations. Nasreen’s mother was told by her husband to do
all her duties and he often said that, ‘You are a mother of three. It’s
the duty of a mother to take care of her children. Bring your chil
dren up properly, get them educated, that will be your reward’
(Nasreen, MG 31). He was a male chauvinist who believed in
man’s superiority over women. In her acceptance speech of the
2004 UNESCO Madanjeet Prize, at UNESCO Headquarters in
Paris on 16 November 2004, Nasreen declared, ‘A woman’s destiny
198 Archana Gupta
is to be ruled by the father in childhood, by the husband when
she is young, and by her son when she is old’ (qtd. in Mitrea, 132).
The multiple experiences of women’s subordination, the domina
tion of their body and mind turned Nasreen to find love in homo
sexual relationship.
Feminine rebellion was, of course, sexual and women’s bodies
were all that they could treat as their own. It is a moving away
from patriarchal domination and female subordination. Taslima
Nasreen’s bitterness towards men and her rapists led her to become
a lesbian. It was a kind of her revolt against patriarchal domination
of woman’s body and mind. It is a kind of ‘sexual revolution’ in
terms of Kate Millett which according to her, requires first of all,
‘an end of traditional sexual inhibitions and taboo, particularly
those that most threaten patriarchal monogamous marriage: ho
mosexuality, “illegitimacy”, adolescent, pre- and extra-marital sexu
ality’ (62). Taslima Nasreen has a ‘romantic female friendship’
(Martin 385) with her school friend Runi and according to Foucault
her ‘. . . sexuality comes to constitute the ground of identity. . .’
(qtd. in Martin, 381). Nasreen’s love for her friend Runi and her
relationship with her maid Moni was a means of sexual revolution.
It helped her in regaining her lost identity. Feminists like Adrienne
Rich and Judith Butler have critiqued sex/gender system of social
arrangements that are seen as sites of hetero-patriarchy which op
presses its members through heteronormativity (Rich, 130-41).
Marriage normativity and ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ are at the
core of heteronormative structures and seen by Adrienne Rich as a
powerful force of women’s suppression. Nasreen didn’t feel inclined
towards heterosexual love as she rejected the proposal by Ratan,
the son of her father’s friend.
Nasreen developed ‘childhood friendship’ with a senior school
girl called Runi whom she found very beautiful especially her
enchanting eyes. According to Biddy Martin, ‘Whether the em
phasis is on a tomboyish past, on childhood friendships, or on
crushes on girl friends, teachers, or camp counselors—all now the
stock-in-trade of lesbian humour—these narratives point to unsanct
ioned discontinuities between biological sex, gender identity, and
sexuality’ (385).
Nasreen always kept looking for Runi. Her body desired to be
touched by Runi and she wanted to fulfil her desires. It is her
‘romantic female friendship’ with Runi which gives her a sense of
association with her new self. The relationship between Nasreen
and Runi, in generic terms, can be termed as homoerotic same sex
relation. Nasreen imagined that this relationship gave her what
she desired in her life.
Nasreen learns very soon that Runi will be able to understand
her emotional needs which will satisfy her the most. Runi served
as a medium through whom she intended to find happiness. More
over it is Runi who is able to make Nasreen realize love for the first
time. Once when she touched her on her arm Nasreen said, ‘Again
and again I rubbed the spot on my arm, where her hand had
rested, feeling her touch once more. My dolls were forgotten, as
well all other games. . . . All that craved for now was Runi’s touch,
to be sought out and experienced in absolute secrecy’ (Nasreen,
MG 188). Her love for Runi grew so strong that she even started
imagining lying beside her at night. Imagining about Runi, she
established a relationship with her maid Moni one night as she
says,
It was at about this time when I was still deeply and secretly in love with
Runi that, one night. . . . I slipped into Moni’s bed, my hands roaming all
over her body. I removed her clothes and felt her breasts which had suddenly
grown as large as ripe guavas. No one had touched her beautiful breasts
before. Now I did, fondling them, kissing them, smelling them as if I
had been reunited after a long absence with my dearest friend. (Nasreen
MG 189)
Nasreen developed an intimate relationship with Moni and

through it, she reclaimed her identity. In the words of Biddy Martin,
lesbianism became ‘a profoundly life-saving, self-loving, political
resistance to patriarchal definitions and limitations in these narra
tives’ (Martin, 387). It was Nasreen’s self-love, her love for other
women which led to her rebellion against patriarchal definitions.
Her relationship with Runi was liberating and she felt rejuve
nated in her company after the trauma of rape. For her, lesbianism
was ‘feminism’s magical sign of liberation’ (Martin, 386). Within
200 Archana Gupta
a same sex relationship, there is a kind of understanding, bonding,
compassion, love and more importantly dignity and respect which
Nasreen had been looking for all her life. The letters between her
and Runi are an uninhibited confession of her feelings. She felt
happy from within, something that happened never before.
Taslima Nasreen’s autobiography ends with her statement ‘I
continued to grow’ (Nasreen, MG 285). It indicates that her au
tobiography ends with her realization of her existence as a child
first and later her acceptance of her growing up as an adolescent
girl. She demanded for her rights to liberate herself from the clutches
of patriarchal society and find her existence not simply as a daugh
ter, or a sister but as an individual human being and as a woman.
She believed that her identity as a woman was more important as
she wrote, ‘My identity as a woman is larger than any other iden
tity [. . .], a woman’s identity is more important than her identity
as a lawyer or a doctor’ (Nasreen, SC 116). Therefore, through her
autobiography, she asserted her right to construct her selfhood
and her identity by refusing to accept the patriarchal norms of the
society and exposed male exploitation and oppression in her own
life as well as that of others. She exposes male chauvinism, religious
hypocrisy and women’s victimization at large. Nasreen attempts
to demonstrate how it is possible for the young women to reach
within themselves and nurture their own spiritual life in spite of
the physical and emotional pain that men and tradition-bound
societies could inflict upon them.
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202 Archana Gupta
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C H A P T E R 11
Sexuality, Self and Body: Reading

Michèle Roberts’ Memoir
Paper Houses
BALJEET KAUR
Michèle Roberts’ Paper Houses (2007) is an autobiographical

account of a rebellious woman’s struggle to prioritize her life-goals
and roles. The text moves restlessly among people, places, experi
ences and relationships. The narrative takes into account Michèle
Roberts’ twenty years of life after she left Oxford University. It is a
young woman’s description of rebellion, revolution, experimental
living, feminist communes, street theatre, radical magazines and
love relationships in the liberal London of 1970s.
Through reading, writing and her active participation in women’s
movements, Roberts fought against stereotypes circulating in
society and also against the doctrines preached by the Catholic
Church. She records how she rebelled against authoritarianism
and Catholicism, and it is by means of her self-exploration that
she re-created herself as a woman liberated from religious, social
and political restraints. As she states in chapter five of the book,
she decided to write about herself not to portray what she already
knew, but to discover what was yet to be known of herself as a
woman. She wished to know what a woman could be and why she
was what she was. This is evident when she avers, ‘I wanted to
discard naturalism in favour of something truer and deeper; mined
from below the surface of things’ (Paper Houses 121). By using
autobiography as a medium, Roberts wanted to explore the thoughts
that lay hidden in her unconscious. Writing was a source of self
204 Baljeet Kaur
knowledge for her. However, writing her memoir not only helped
her know herself better, but also made her understand and
problematize women’s situation as a whole.
The critique of stereotypical images of the female body, ideal
female self and exploration of female sexuality have been an impor
tant part of feminist theories. The body is a crucial component of
‘facticity’ which cannot be changed or ignored but we can choose
the way we live with it. For Beauvoir, ‘facticity’ refers to the con
crete details of one’s life that cannot be denied and against the
background of which human freedom is limited, for example, one’s
body, sexuality, colour, caste, etc. The way Beauvoir treats body as
a significant element of women’s ‘situation’ is crucial to her theory
of existential feminism (The Second Sex 59). As Beauvoir says in
The Second Sex, women struggle with difference between ideal and
real selves not only because they are the objects of obsessive look
ing, but also because they internalize the way they are looked at.
Thus, women end up being obsessively concerned about their own
image to determine whether or not they measure up to the ideal
images of women’s bodies (The Second Sex 387). The process of
representation is potentially destructive and limits women to the
status of ‘other’ as the ideal images are not congruent with reality.
Roberts debunks the myths surrounding the identity of women
as she asserts that women’s identity should not be defined in ac
cordance with social expectations. She regards women as produc
tive and successful members of a society, as individuals in search of
true self, regardless of social restraints. In her autobiography, she
interrogates the nature of women’s self and sexuality and explores
the possibility of sharing these experiences in more than one way.
Since the publication of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex,
feminist analysis has argued that the conditions of male normativity
reduce women to merely the excluded ‘other’ of man. It holds true
in the experience of all women, not the least, women in the con
text of Christian praxis and theology. Beauvoir’s powerful analysis
shows us how problematic it is to establish a position outside pa
triarchal dominance of our conceptual fields. It has helped to
explain the persistence of sexism and other forms of male violence
that continue to look down upon women’s lives because of their
Sexuality, Self and Body 205
normative hierarchical position in the society. Thus, it becomes
challenging to account for the work and lives of intelligent, inno
vative and responsible women, surrounded by the male-dominated
contexts.
Roberts’ active participation in the effort to question the estab
lished norms of behaviour imposed by society advocates existential
feminists’ emphasis on the notion of ‘existence precedes essence’.
Roberts as a committed feminist realized that women are made to
confine to the ‘givens’ of society. They are supposed to be just
an extension of men, devoid of any individuality. Thus, women’s
meetings organized by Roberts and her friends frightened the par
ticipants’ male counterparts as it gave them a liberal space to be
themselves and to introspect their position at home and within
the society (Paper Houses 49).
Roberts was writing at a time when women realized that their
personal and domestic lives also formed an important part of politics.
The motto of the second wave feminists, ‘personal is political’, was
making an impact. Women were beginning to question why even
men ostensibly sensitive to the feminist cause refused to do or share
housework. The realization that household chores go unnoticed
and unrewarded made women realize the importance of economic
independence. Being born in such turbulent times, Roberts had a
tough time in making her mother understand her revolutionary
stance on women’s place in society. The problem, in Roberts’ words,
was that ‘we were supposed to be dolls to console men. Here were
the crazy doll’s-houses: we swung open their doors’ (Paper Houses
50).
These words remind one of Nora Helmer in Ibsen’s A Doll’s
House. Nora was stuck in a marriage that barred her growth as an
individual. In her seemingly happy marriage, Nora could not realize
that she was treated as a lifeless doll rather than a human by her
husband. Just like Nora, Roberts was amazed to see that women
were not even conscious about the exploitation they went through
in their lives.
Roberts’ autobiography, being the life-story of an assertive woman,
shatters some usual assumptions and misconceptions about femi
nists and feminist philosophies. She makes it clear that feminists
206 Baljeet Kaur
do not despise child-bearing and motherhood. Rather, women’s
liberation movement was started by young mothers and childcare
and good parenting was a crucial part of women’s movement. Un
like what Beauvoir believed, Roberts did not see motherhood,
parenting and household chores as repulsive. She said in her
autobiography that feminists were not against household work and
domestic chores but expected men to share them in order to avoid
these tasks being burdensome and monotonous.
Roberts unabashedly portrayed the smirking attitude of even
well educated men towards educated and assertive women. Women,
who did not fit into conventional moulds were feared and mocked
at as ‘ugly sex-less spinsters’ (Paper Houses 17) because they were
the cause of uneasiness both for men and orthodox women. The
fear of them being equally capable and intelligent made men de
mean women as targets of lust. The act of men betting on bedding
the assertive women in order to show themselves as superior was
common at that time. Roberts quotes one of her well-read friends’
opinions about women. According to him, ‘. . . say what you like
about careers but you were made to have babies’ (Paper Houses 30).
Since Roberts served as an activist in the revolutionary activities
of 1970s, the book is replete with information about the socio
political scenario of the times. As depicted in chapter ‘Holloway’
of Paper Houses, Roberts along with her leftist friends organized
street performances which depicted femininity as a performance
which could be ignored or altered. She confided that during these
acts, they felt more united as a group. They talked about the
troubles they faced as women on every front without any inhibi
tions during their meetings in order to know what women faced
individually and collectively on everyday basis. She and her femi
nist friends emphasized equality on personal, political and social
fronts. They wanted women to get rid of the ‘givens’ of being a
woman. She said, ‘We demonstrated and mocked what were in
those days women’s secret rituals: shaving our armpits, plucking
hairs from our legs and top lips, applying mud packs, rolling on
girdles, doing slimming exercises’ (Paper Houses 47).
By the virtue of being born into an orthodox family, Roberts
experienced the discrimination women were made to face in the
name of religion as well. Catholicism, as Roberts asserted, defined
women as sexless beings, devoid of any physical needs and desires.
Women were believed either to be pious or sexless. Women were
made to believe that sexual needs were wicked and they must deny
them. Roberts made it clear that as a human, she too had sexual
needs, just like a man. And being a feminist did not stop her from
either loving men or wishing to have sex with them—contrary to
popular belief. She longed for a sexual and spiritual companion
(Paper Houses 100). She denied Freud’s claim that women have no
libido. Rather, she looked for a companion with whom she could
relate as an equal. She found one such companion in Bertie. About
her relationship with Bertie, she wrote, ‘Inside our tiny world,
wholly centred on bed, we were equals, innocents, and there were
no clichés’ (Paper Houses 101).
However, soon she realized that Bertie could not fit into the life
she wished for herself. For her, her passion for writing was as im
portant as her love-life. He could not understand and relate to
Roberts’ ambitious self. He did not fit into Roberts’ libertarian life
and she did not fit into his life centred solely on marriage. As a
result, their relationship ended before long.
The description of promiscuity in the book is as startling as
sexism. She wrote with humour as well as passion about herself
and frankly admitted that a therapist whom she visited told her
that she was ‘. . . boring rather than mad . . .’ (Paper Houses 137).
An unsuccessful four-year marriage to William Binns, an art histo
rian, landed her in Italy in 1980s. She was funny, naive and
impulsive but also miserable, self-critical, confused and honest.
Interestingly, she was both the passive and the active agent in her
life. Roberts’ dilemma echoed Beauvoir’s idea in ‘Myth and Reality’
that it was difficult for women to accept themselves as women and
autonomous beings at the same time. The search for autonomy led
to restlessness and fear, sometimes termed as the dilemma of the
‘lost sex’ (65).
Roberts indulged in frequent sexual activity as an act of rebel
lion against her conventional Catholic parentage. She had several
homosexual and heterosexual encounters after adopting a bohe
mian way of living but it failed to satiate her sexual appetite until
208 Baljeet Kaur
she met and fell in love with Jim. Before she decided to fulfil her
sexual desires, Roberts began to read about sex. However, reading
alone could not satisfy her curiosity about the subject. Her first
real knowledge of sex came through her meeting with Alison whom
she met at the Second Women’s Liberation Conference. Alison
served as her sexual mentor. Moreover, it was only after meeting
Alison that Roberts realized her feminist ideals. Alison gave her
scattered ideas a formal name and form. She made Roberts out
grow her fear of sexuality that her Catholic upbringing had in
stilled in her. Roberts realized the significance of the need to own
one’s body and sexuality without any guilt or shame.
Roberts admitted that she thoroughly enjoyed having sex with
women. Lesbian relationships made her understand women bet
ter. Roberts asserted that though she had lesbian partners as well,
she did not succumb to the media’s image of lesbians. She dressed
in a feminine manner by preference. She did not feel the need to
dress differently. Also, she emphasized that she found sex with
lesbians more liberating because it gave her more freedom because
of the absence of any fixed roles. It gave her the right to be both
the active and passive participant in the act (Paper Houses 157).
Roberts take on lesbianism is related to Beauvoir’s view in The
Second Sex that lesbians and prostitutes are regarded as misfits be
cause they pose threat to the foundations of our society formed on
male-female dialectics. As Kate Millett points out in Sexual Politics,
the powerful-powerless rift in gender is not limited to only the
Marxian context. Even sex and body were a part of the struggle to
gain power over the opposite gender. However, in Feminist Theory
and Simone de Beauvoir Moi said that Beauvoir’s take on lesbianism
was ambiguous. She was in favour of the authenticity of lesbian
ism but saw it just as a temporary indulgence for women, not a
life-long option. Moreover, she saw lesbianism as a narcissistic
choice (Feminist Theory and Simone de Beauvoir 199-203).
However, Roberts’ take on her body and exploration of her sexu
ality stood in sharp contrast with what Beauvoir opined about
women’s bodies and sexuality. Beauvoir stated in ‘Myth and Reality’
that women had long been regarded as immanent beings by
reducing them to their bodies. According to Beauvoir, bodily func
tions solely limited to women played a great role in making women
‘the Other’. By limiting women to household chores, marriage
and child-bearing, they were kept away from the public domain of
science, arts and politics. Thus, women were prevented from real
izing their full potential and attaining ‘transcendence’. Other than
the animalistic task of sex, women had no part to play in history or
future. Beauvoir proposed that women are both immanent and
transcendental beings. She argued that women’s situation restricted
them from attaining the state of transcendence because ‘. . . when
one offers the existent no aim, or prevents him from attaining any,
or robs him of his victory, then this transcendence falls vainly into
the past—that is to say, falls back into immanence’ (‘Myth and
Reality’ 60).
On the other hand, Roberts refused to see her body and sexual
desires as hindrances in her exploration of the self. She regarded
her sexual identity as significant as her intellectual self. For her,
the two need not be attained at the cost of each other. Roberts’
views related more to Irigaray’s opinion on the significance of sexu
ality. The need for women to realize their sexual identity un
apologetically along with their intellectual identity had been
problematized by Irigaray as she stated, ‘What we have to do (not
necessarily have to do one thing before the other) is discover our
sexual identity, of our auto-eroticism, of our narcissism, of our
heterosexuality and our homosexuality’ (The Irigaray Reader 68).
Irigaray also advocated the idea that a woman’s sexual identity was
as important as her intellectual and social identity. She pointed
out that our culture did not permit women to gratify their basic
sexual needs, keeping them trapped in the ‘feminine mystique’.
She pointed out that ‘. . . the core of the problem for women to
day is not sexual but a problem of identity. . .’ (The Irigaray Reader
71). By mystifying women’s sexuality, their bodies were labelled
as objects of prey, lust and harassment, making women perceive
their own bodies as unwanted and startling.
Roberts’ views contradicted Beauvoir’s bleak portrayal of female
sexuality and body. As an explorer of London, she elucidated that
even in the late twentieth century it was problematic for women
to roam around the city by themselves. The idea of a young woman
210 Baljeet Kaur
exploring the city as an explorer was unfathomable. She was, rather,
a lonely object, looking for sex or company. A self-dependent
woman, with the tendency to do things on her own was yet a
matter of concern and debate. Through her own example, she
problematized the life of an unconventional woman in the 1970s.
Roberts, in her autobiography, revisited the strategy of dressing
up as well. She made use of the art of dressing cleverly by putting
on unisex clothes at times to become ‘invisible’ to the male gaze,
and at other times to arrest male attention and intrigue it. She
confessesd, ‘I liked men looking at me and having to decode me’
(Paper Houses 188). Thus, Roberts advanced a modern feminist
argument about women’s ability to question and subvert gender
norms. She advocated that the clever and the creative display of
the same body could allow women a degree of autonomy over and
beyond patriarchal constraints. Roberts’ view on dressing was dif
ferent from that of women around her. For instance, George Sand
dressed up in male clothes in order to wander freely in Paris. It
gave her the freedom to roam around without being the victim of
an unwanted attention. Roberts admitted that she did not despise
male attention all the time.
Roberts strongly objected to the orthodox view of women’s body
as a taboo. Even in the twentieth century, feminists have been the
source of trouble and fear for men and society. If a woman took her
body and female self as a source of strength, it aroused a strong
sense of fear even in well-educated men. She decribed an incident
where her friend, James, chided her for wearing earrings with the
symbol of a woman at a dinner, and interpreted it as a sign of
narcissism (Paper Houses 181). Another friend of hers, Dunc, a
psychiatrist, insisted that feminists were unable to lead sane lives
and their feminism was the result of their frustrated personal lives
(Paper Houses 193).
The depiction of elaborate meals is also worth considering in
Roberts’ works. Since the body is a political and historical object,
its representation is crucial in the arena of power, especially with
reference to women. Women had struggled long to gain autonomy
over their bodies but the way women’s bodies were represented in
media and literature had a great impact on the way women looked
at their real and ideal bodies. As Sceats asserted, Western society,
on one hand, promoted unreal and unhealthy thinness and on the
other hand, advocated food as a crucial element of socialization.
Consumerism, fashion and beauty industry indirectly strengthened
female’s dependence on approval, generally male. Sceats borrowed
the adage ‘the best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’ to
highlight the importance and contradictory effects of food (Food,
Consumption and the Body 20). Sceats also studied the term ‘sexual
appetite’ in order to highlight the social, cultural and interper
sonal signification of food. There is ample description of pubs,
restaurants, meals and drinks in all of Roberts’ work, making it a
deliberate attempt by her to study food as a crucial socio-cultural
signifier.
Sceats observed, ‘. . . it is rather a question of the way Roberts
writes about food conveying profound physical, emotional and
imaginative, as well as socially constructed connections’ (Food,
Consumption and the Body 129). Since women’s identity seemed to
be highly dependent on their physical beauty, Western society had
been promoting thinness as an important parameter of beauty and
fitness; consequently, women developed major eating disorders in
an attempt to be unhealthily thin. Thus, writers like Roberts, by
presenting herself as a woman who ate without feeling guilty and
regarded food as a component of physical and emotional satisfac
tion, questioned the conventional image of women in media. A
similar opinion was given by a critic Wolf by stating that ‘[a] woman
wins by giving herself and other women permission: to eat, to be
sexual, to age . . . to do whatever she chooses in following—or
ignoring—our own aesthetic’ (The Beauty Myth 240). Thus, by
refuting to comply with an unhealthy image of women in media and
by presenting a subverted image of healthy real-like women, Roberts
expressed her disagreement with the canons imposed on women.
A similar thesis was presented by Katherine LeBesco in her
article ‘Fat and Fabulous’ in which she argued that in the contem
porary culture, where our jobs required little physical exertion and
a lot of mental work, women who directed more attention to social
and political projects were pushed to the margins as ‘abjects’. She
pointed out that in the era of excessive dependence on technology
212 Baljeet Kaur
and highly processed foods, the aesthetic ideal for women—lean,
toned physiques—was a clear departure from the common cul
ture, adding to the position of women as the ‘Other’ (‘Fat and
Fabulous’ 247).
Roberts’ portrayal of women’s struggle with unrealistic social
images of sexuality and bodies reminds one of what Kristeva calls
the state of ‘abjection’ (Powers of Horror 1989). Roberts represented
the way women were influenced by socially constructed false im
ages of what and how they should look like, despite being aware of
its unrealistic nature. Roberts realized the breakdown in distinction
between her real and constructed selves which Kristeva called the
‘abject’ (Powers of Horror 9). Roberts’ return to her mother at the end
of the narrative symbolized her negation of the state of ‘abjection’.
In The Body by Chris Shilling, Raewyn Connell described three
stages in the development of socially gendered bodies. The first
stage was existence of stereotypes about bodies of men and women.
The second stage was the build up of bodies as per the stereotypes,
according to which, men were encouraged to eat well to build up
their bodies but women were taught to control their hunger to
have slimmer bodies. The final stage was the consequence of bodies
built in accordance with the stereotypes. Thus, women ended up
having less bone strength and weaker immune systems, adding to
the thesis that women were weaker than men. Roberts was able to
see through the shallow social images that defined the ideal female
body. However, Beauvoir took the biological weakness of women
as granted. Though she contested that physical weakness could
not be a reason for secondary status of women, she failed to trace
the reason behind women being physically weaker than men.
Roberts’ obsession with food can be seen as a way to compensate
for the lack of encouragement in women to own up their bodies
and be comfortable in their own skin. As she stated in one of her
interviews, ‘I wanted to reclaim food as a source of pleasure for
women, because it was almost like a sin, I thought, for women.
That’s what ‘sin’ means in conventional English vernacular discourse;
‘sinful’ means something that’s fattening . . .’ (Paper Houses 103).
In her work Food, Sex & God: On Inspiration and Writing, Roberts
suggested that autobiography was not a mere recording of facts
but also discovering what had been lost and unknown in the un
conscious through the use of imagination. Thus, Roberts’s notion
of artistic imagination was associated with one’s identity as a woman
and also with maternal loss. For her, language was an illustration
of what there was in the subconscious, ‘a kind of birth into ab
sence’ (Food, Sex & God 20). Roberts stated that to her, ‘. . . writing
feels like pulling something out of my insides; I’ve made it inside,
now must draw it out, put it out’ (Food, Sex & God 200).The
process of writing for her signified the physical act of filling in the
absence to inscribe the recovery of the maternal body.
REFERENCES
Beauvoir, Simone de,The Second Sex, tr. H.M. Parshley: Vintage Press, 1993.
——, Myth and Reality, Feminisms and Womanisms, Toronto: Women’s Press,
2002.
Ibsen, Henrik, A Doll’s House, Vintage Press, 1997.
LeBesco, Kathleen, ‘Fat and Fabulous: Resisting Constructions of Female Body
Ideals’, Feminisms and Womanism, Toronto: Women’s Press, 2002.
Millet, Kate, Sexual Politics, New York: Doubleday, 1970.
Newman, Arnold, ‘An Interview with Michèle Roberts’, Contemporary British
and Irish Fiction: An Introduction Through Interviews, London: Hodder
Education Publishers, 2004.
Kristeva, Julia, Powers of Horror, London: Blackwell, 1989.
Moi, Toril, Feminist Theory and Simone de Beauvoir, London: Blackwell, 1994.
Roberts, Michèle, Paper Houses: A Memoir of the ’70s and Beyond, London:
Virago Press, 2007.
——, Food, Sex & God: On Inspiration and Writing, London: Virago Press,
2012.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, The Transcendence of Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Conscious
ness, tr. and ed. Forest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick, New York: Vintage
Press, 1957.
Sceats, Sarah, Food, Consumption and the Body in ContemporaryWomen’s Fiction,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Shilling, Chris, The Body, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Whitford, Margaret, The Irigaray Reader: Luce Irigaray, London and New York:
Blackwell, 1991.
Wolf, Naomi, The Beauty Myth, New York: Harper and Row, 1990.
C H A P T E R 12
Vocalizing the Voiceless: Struggle for

a Personal Voice in Maxine Hong
Kingston’s The Woman Warrior:
Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts
M U N I R A T.
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1981)

is Maxine Hong Kingston’s successful attempt at presenting her
personal experiences, growing up as a first generation Chinese
American in California. Even though many critics have dismissed
her work as a misrepresentation of Chinese life and culture, Kingston
has strongly defended her writing as her personal attempt to voice
the voiceless. This memoir is her attempt to reconcile her Chinese
cultural history with her emerging sense of self as a Chinese-American
as she assimilates into a foreign culture.
Born in Maxine Ting Ting Hong in 1940 to Chinese immi
grants, Kingston worked in her parents’ laundry and managed to
get admission to the University of California at Berkeley. She married
Earll Kingston in 1962, taught in California public schools, then
moved to Hawaii and continued to teach where she wrote The
Woman Warrior which later received the National Book Critics
Circle Award. It is noteworthy that in The Woman Warrior, the
author blended the aesthetic form of Cantonese tradition with the
Western form of autobiography very skillfully while retaining the
‘. . . continuities between different times and places, between con
temporary and ancient tales, and between family traditions and
traditional myths [. . .] through a highly intricate process of story
telling’ (Morrison 84).
216 Munira T.
The beauty of this work which has gradually become part of a
multi-ethnic literary canon lies in the fact that it defies genres and
talks of emigration experiences and ethnic American history thereby
creating a new literary genre. According to Patricia Blinde, The
Woman Warrior is ‘a collage of genres’, thereby describing the book as
‘. . . at once a novel, an autobiography, a series of essays and poems.
But while the work capitalizes on the conventions of various genres,
it also evades the limitations of any one genre’ (qtd. in Lightfoot 58).
Andreia-Irina Suciu describes The Woman Warrior thus,
[I]t crosses boundaries between genres, dictions, styles, between fact and fic
tion, as it crosses the boundaries between cultures, Chinese and American. In
the collage of style and form, in the amalgam of language and content, in the
combination of Chinese myth, family history, and American individualism
and rebelliousness, Kingston defines herself as a Chinese-American woman.
(Andreia-Irina Suciu)
The theme of finding one’s own personal voice is the central

aim of Kingston in her memoir The Woman Warrior. Throughout
the text she made various references to her physical and emotional
struggle to find her voice by exploring the silence of the women in
her family and in Chinese culture. Kingston supplied a voice to
many voiceless women, enabling them to discover their identities
as individuals. She used autobiography as her mode to break the
silence imposed upon her, thereby creating her own identity and
also her voice. According to E.D. Huntley,
To a certain extent, Kingston’s text functions as an autobiography in the
sense that it is a personal history centred on reflections about her early life as
she attempts to interpret and understand the cultural codes that have shaped
her life. But The Woman Warrior is less an autobiography than it is a mosaic of
memoir, history and fiction—artistic storytelling in the service of one woman’s
(re)creation of her own identity. (qtd. In Andreia-Irina Suciu)
The Woman Warrior is highly unconventional because of its
unusual mixture of Chinese folklore fantasy and autobiography. King
ston used the stories of China narrated by her mother and her own
experiences as a first-generation Chinese American growing up in
a land of ghosts. These ghosts are Chinese story-ghosts and also
anyone non-Chinese, who by definition are ghosts, if not demons,
Vocalizing the Voiceless 217
‘America has been full of machines and ghosts-Taxi Ghosts, Bus
Ghosts, Police Ghosts [. . .]’ (Warrior 96-7). There are Teacher
Ghosts, White Ghosts, Black Ghosts, Burglar Ghosts; it is a
‘. . . terrible ghost country, where a human being works her life
away’ (Warrior 104). Kingston’s isolation in an alien land which
she attempts to make her own was evident from the manner in
which she described how she and her family were surrounded by
these ghosts, people who didn’t see them, hear them or understand
them.
The lack of a chronological order in The Woman Warrior helps to
construct a more interesting and engaging narrative. While at times,
the reader is captivated by her flights of fantasy, at other times,
she/he engages through her sheer sense of purpose. But what is of
significance here is that Kingston was trying, through what she
remembered and what she imagined, to explore the place of women
in Chinese society—the relationship of mothers and daughters,
the experience of immigration and also the plight of immigrants
everywhere. Her memoir is proof of the fact that Kingston was
greatly inspired by her mother and her mother’s talk-story was
one of the major forces of her childhood. Ever since she started
writing this book, stories—factual and fictional—became an inte
gral part of Kingston’s autobiography. Finding one’s voice in order
to talk-story, a metaphor for knowing oneself in order to attain the
fullness of one’s power, is one of the book’s major themes.
Kingston’s flights of fancy and exaggerations serve to create an
accurate depiction of her thoughts, feelings, and experience as a
Chinese-American child. She used embellishments of fiction as
mere devices to portray her personality and her confusion during
her coming-of-age. Steeped in Cantonese legend and folklore, filled
with unfamiliar phrases and untranslatable expressions, it won rap
turous, if occasionally baffled, praise from mainstream critics; The
Washington Post, speaking for many, called it ‘. . . strange, some
times savagely terrifying, and, in the literal sense, wonderful’. King
ston’s main motive in writing The Woman Warrior seemed to be
her individual search to find her own, personal voice. This search
is evident throughout the memoir’s five chapters where there are
numerous references to this physical and emotional struggle to
218 Munira T.
find her voice and therefore her ‘self ’. For her, writing was the
ultimate medium through which she and many other women who
were voiceless like her could discover viable, individualized ident
ities.
Each of the five chapters of The Woman Warrior can be read
individually as short stories. Kingston’s unique narrative technique
allows her to link these short stories to form her autobiography. A
blending of the first, second and third person narration lends an
element of fantasy to this memoir. The first person narration is
Kingston’s own American voice, the second-person narration in
cludes the Chinese talk-stories and the third person narration is a
mixture which involves the stories of her mother transposed to her
children and back to Kingston. This technique allows her to use
her American language with Chinese tones, thereby merging her
Chinese and American experiences.
The first chapter is ‘No Name Woman’ and the title is signifi
cant because Kingston broke the family-imposed silence that
surrounded the secret of an aunt whose memory had been driven
to oblivion and whom she names as the No Name Woman; a name
less woman suggests someone with neither a story nor a voice.
However, by re-creating the story of how her aunt became preg
nant, and by writing her aunt’s story, Kingston in effect gave this
silenced woman a voice. Although Kingston never learnt what her
aunt’s real name was, the symbolic act of naming her No Name
Woman honoured her and brought her back to life forever.
Even though women did not have voices in traditional Chinese
culture, they inculcated moral and cultural values in their chil
dren through stories which Kingston calls talk-stories. One such
talk-story was the legend of the Chinese woman warrior Fa Mu
Lan, which was a constant reminder to young Kingston that women
could achieve greatness and did good for their society. The second
chapter ‘White Tigers’ is, in part, the story of Kingston’s child
hood fantasy of transcending a life of insignificance. The talk-story
of the warrior woman Mu Lan was Kingston’s inspiration. She imag
ined herself to be Fa Mu Lan, the successful warrior who took the
place of her father in war and returned victorious to take over the
duties of her family.
Kingston’s mother Brave Orchid was voiceless in this alien land
because she could not speak English. In the third chapter, ‘Sha
man’, Kingston empowered her mother by giving her a voice. She
narrated her story, thereby vocalizing her mother’s and other women’s
lives. Kingston’s memoir reveals Brave Orchid’s sacrifices and lifts
her out of the nameless Chinese crowd living in America. Being
voiceless can also lead to dire consequences. Brave Orchid’s sister
Moon Orchid had been taught to remain silent. Her tragic story
in ‘At Western Palace’ is a result of this silence. Moon Orchid was
deserted by her husband. Her silent death demonstrates how
essentially voiceless a Chinese woman was while living in a tradit
ionally patriarchal society. Again, by writing Moon Orchid’s story,
Kingston gave Moon Orchid a voice and thereby life.
In the last chapter, ‘A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe’, Kingston
related her own search for a personal voice. If she found that tradi
tional Chinese society silenced women, she also discovered that
‘[w]e American-Chinese girls had to whisper to make ourselves
American-feminine’ (Warrior 172). This silence was also imposed
on immigrants like her because her parents came to the United
States at a time when Chinese immigration was illegal. It led to
further alienation of Kingston and other first-generation Chinese
Americans who were ordered by their elders not to speak to these
‘ghosts’ lest they be caught and deported or punished. She under
stood the consequences of being voiceless. Writing this memoir
therefore was a kind of therapy for Kingston because while she
wrote about her past and gave voice to the voiceless, she was also
able to achieve her own individual voice and place herself firmly as
a Chinese-American woman in American society.
The Woman Warrior is the tale of a Chinese American who con
veys her life story through Chinese myths, stories about her mother,
aunt and other members of her family along with sketchy details
of her childhood in California that shaped her identity. It is a
sensitive account of growing up female and Chinese-American.
The book gained great popularity because of the criticism that it
received from various quarters. In fact, much of its popularity stems
from this criticism and it became one of the most read books by
teenagers in America today.
220 Munira T.
The first two chapters of The Woman Warrior present a unique
ambivalence introduced and maintained by the narrator’s mother.
Brave Orchid’s talk-story projected two types of women—the
shameful nameless aunt, and the legendary woman warrior. They
were both diametrically opposed to each other. By narrating these
two stories she swings between two extremities—a silent woman
and a brave warrior—thereby confusing the young narrator. It is
out of these perplexities that Kingston deciphers the voice of her
aunt in the first chapter. This voice, which was unable to fight
against oppression, was redeemed for eternity through the author’s
presentation of her aunt’s story in an artistic manner. In the next
chapter, she empowered women and subverted the stereotype of
the passive/submissive/powerless woman. The third chapter is a
voice for women’s social and financial independence. In the fourth
chapter, Kingston took up the cause of women’s rights; and in the
final chapter, she brought in her own personal story of elevating
the self through the power of writing her own story. ‘You must not
tell anyone . . . what I am about to tell you. In China your father
had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well.
We say that your father has all brothers because it is as if she had
never been born’ (Warrior 3). This was the warning that Maxine
Hong Kingston heard from her mother and her search for a per
sonal identity with the story of an aunt, whom she named No
Name Woman began. Although Kingston tried to make sense of
what her mother told her, she remained unsure about the facts
surrounding her aunt’s suicide. She felt confused and lost as an
author but interpreted the story according to her American values
of individualism and a strong, nurturing sense of womanhood.
Here she illustrated the imaginative side of her personality as she
tried to recreate her aunt’s tale.
Her aunt’s memory was erased as if it had never existed because
of a crime which could have been condoned if she had delivered a
baby boy. Her aunt became pregnant while her husband was away.
Her traditional, voiceless existence forced her to remain silent
when she was questioned about the man involved. Her family was
punished because of her act of adultery and her aunt commited
suicide along with her child in the family well. The story was
reconstructed by Kingston after she heard her mother’s ‘talk-story’
because she wanted justice for her aunt. Kingston called her
mother’s reminiscences and historical tales ‘talk-stories’. These oral
stories were similar to folk tales. They had magical qualities and
were used by her mother to instil cultural and moral values in her
children. Because of this realistic-magical aspect and also because
of their Chinese context, these talk-stories were both confusing and
inspiring. Kingston ruminated over them and tried to sift the real
from the fantastic. Maxine’s constant efforts to please her Chinese
parents and achieve success in America were at odds with each
other. The conflict that she faced as China and America played
tug-of-war with her cultural identity, taught her to balance the
two extremes, to settle this confused side of her personality. By
recreating these stories, she was able to understand and assimilate
them in her life and find her voice. She was also able to reconcile
her Chinese past with her American present.
In ‘White Tigers’, Kingston continues her search for a Chinese-
American identity. This chapter is about the heroic struggle of Fa
Mu Lan, one of the brave Chinese women warriors who fought
valiantly and made her clan proud. It was from her that the memoir
got its title. Kingston imagined her childhood self as the Chinese
folk heroine Hua Mulan, who joined the army in male disguise in
order to defend her home village. It is a story of liberation and
perfect subservience. Kingston imagined herself to be Hua Mulan
(whom she calls Fa Mu Lan) who, after defeating all her enemies;
returned home to carry out the responsibilities of a dutiful daugh
ter-in-law. Young Chinese women were told stories of such valour
and courage so that they could be instilled with a sense of confi
dence. These stories also serve other purposes. When Kingston
talked of achieving big things in life as an individual, her mother
used the story of Fa Mu Lan to make the point that sacrificing
oneself for the family and village was more important than gaining
individual success.
In ‘Shaman’, the third chapter, the voice of silence is promi
nently heard. Kingston had many questions to ask Brave Orchid,
but she could not expect answers that were relevant to her own
life. This forced her to depend on her own creativity/imagination.
222 Munira T.
Hearing her mother’s talk-stories, she concluded that her mother
was also a warrior like the legendary figures because she was able to
stay the night with a ghost and drive it away. Thus, Kingston
began to accept that she would learn to live with, the differences
between her American life and the values and practices expected of
her in her Chinese life at home.
This chapter begins with the word ‘Maybe’, which signals that
Kingston reinterpreted her mother’s talk-story to understand how
this story affected her own American life better. This narrative strategy
was similar to Kingston’s invention of a personal history for No
Name Woman and introducing Fa Mu Lan’s talk-story using the
subjective ‘would’. By creating one possible scenario of Brave
Orchid’s bravery, Kingston emphasized how her mother was her
self a woman warrior, who was not afraid to sleep overnight in a
haunted room.
Kingston, also found it contradictory that her mother, who was
medically trained as a midwife, could believe in superstitions. While
writing the stories of her mother’s encounters with ghosts and
monsters, she had to recognize the deep vein of ingrained Chinese
lore in Brave Orchid’s talk-stories. Brave Orchid trained at the
medical school returned to her village as a medical warrior to save
lives. She also set another, more important example of her inde
pendent, warrior like spirit in deciding to retain her own name
rather than take her husband’s after they married. That Brave Orchid
retained her own name, that she had a name at all, contrasted
with Kingston’s aunt’s namelessness. Here Kingston broke her
mother’s silence by narrating her life story.
In the last section of ‘Shaman’, which took place after the next
two chapters chronologically, Brave Orchid confronted Kingston
about why she didn’t visit her parents more than once a year. ‘The
last time I saw you’, Brave Orchid complained, ‘. . . you were still
young’ (Warrior 95). Although both women still held opposite
outlooks on life, Kingston emphasized that they were not as different
as she perhaps would like to believe. Brave Orchid’s complaint
that she does not see Kingston often enough introduces a preoccu
pation with time that dominates Kingston and Brave Orchid’s
conversation here at the end of the chapter. Although Brave Orchid’s
complaint as a lonely old woman requiring care and protection
remains valid, their conversation at the end of the chapter helped
both of them to gain a better understanding of one another. Brave
Orchid finally acknowledged her daughter’s needs, ‘It’s better, then,
for you to stay away. . . . Of course, you must go, Little Dog’
(Warrior 127). The affectionate term ‘Little Dog’ affected Kingston
greatly, who now understood that her mother loved her, even if
she didn’t say she did. Kingston wrote contentedly ‘She has not
called me that endearment for years—a name to fool the gods’
(Warrior 127).
At the end of the chapter, Kingston reaffirmed that she and
Brave Orchid were both women warriors, ‘I am really a Dragon, as
she is a Dragon, both of us born in dragon years. I am practically
a first daughter of a first daughter’ (Warrior 127). She tacitly ac
knowledged that she owes her creative abilities to Brave Orchid,
whose talk-stories were the impetus for Kingston’s own power of
language as a woman warrior, as a dragon in her own right.
In the next chapter titled ‘At the Western Palace’, Kingston re
lates the story of Brave Orchid’s younger sister, Moon Orchid,
who failed to assimilate into American culture and was slowly driven
to insanity. Separated from her husband for thirty years after he
left China and moved to America for better job prospects, Moon
Orchid arrived in America from Hong Kong, where she lived a
very comfortable life owing to her husband, who regularly sent
money to support her and their daughter, but never corresponded
with them personally. When Brave Orchid arranged for Moon
Orchid to come to America, she had no idea what turn her action
would take or how fatal it would be for her sister. Moon Orchid
and her daughter stayed with Brave Orchid for several weeks, a
difficult time for Brave Orchid and her children. Brave Orchid
was at times very impatient with her sister who was unable to do
any manual work either in the house or in the family-owned
laundry. Moon Orchid’s stay with Brave Orchid and her family
also exposes the ever-present cultural gap between generations in
immigrant families. This rift is caused, in part, by Brave Orchid’s
failure to realize that many traditional Chinese customs were not
adaptable to American culture.
224 Munira T.
This chapter also has a talk-story. It is Brave Orchid’s shortest
talk-story about the emperor and his four wives and is the best
example of how talk-stories are meant to empower individuals. For
Brave Orchid, the talk-story justified her and her sister’s moral
righteousness in confronting Moon Orchid’s husband and his
uncivilized wife, who must acknowledge the rights of the first wife.
It was only when Moon Orchid unsuccessfully confronted her
husband that the importance of language to establish a personal
identity was emphasized. When her husband asks Moon Orchid
why she has tried to trace his whereabouts, she can only whimper
and whisper. Words fail her and her loss of language is the decid
ing factor in her husband’s decision that she cannot fit into his
American life. Speaking of the many guests he regularly entertains
in his home, he says to Moon Orchid, ‘You can’t talk to them. You
can barely talk to me’ (Warrior 153).
Any chance of a renewed personal relationship between Moon
Orchid and her husband was doomed to fail because of the vast
cultural difference between them. Moon Orchid’s traditional
Chinese upbringing had conditioned her to be completely passive
towards men, to accept any directive of her husband uncondition
ally, and not challenge his authority. ‘You don’t have the hardness
for this country . . .’, her husband told her (Warrior 153). She
realized that his power of language, which she did not have, was the
greatest obstacle between them.
Although ‘At the Western Palace’ seems less of a talk-story than
the previous chapters, Kingston is strengthened by recalling Moon
Orchid’s struggle to assimilate in America. ‘At the Western Palace’
described the collision of two extremes: China, in the form of Moon
Orchid, and America, represented by Brave Orchid’s children. This
conflict was visible throughout Kingston’s life. It culminated in an
explosive confrontation between Maxine and her mother, in which
Maxine finally expressed her frustration regarding Brave Orchid’s
talk-stories and constant cutting remarks about her appearance,
intelligence, and future. Kingston realized that she must also
reconcile with these opposites if she had to live peacefully. To be
able to put her thoughts into words at last is a drastic step which
represents the discovery of Maxine’s voice—the voice that will streng
then and mature to become Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior.
By confronting her mother, Kingston, for the first time in her life,
discovered a strong, personal voice with which she could reconcile
the competing Chinese and American cultures. She learned to ex
ercise power through the use of words and the ability to form
ideas. But Kingston’s difficulty in sorting out what was factual in
her life and what was imaginary continued even after she and Brave
Orchid have had their shouting match.
In the final chapter ‘A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe’, Kingston
discusses further the difficulties she experienced growing up as a
Chinese-American female. The greatest among these challenges
was learning to speak English to non-Chinese people, while strug
gling to confront traditional Chinese culture, represented by her
mother, which inhibited her efforts to integrate fully into Ameri
can culture. She tried to find a middle ground on which she could
live within each of these two respective cultures, and while doing
so, she created a new, hybrid space between them. At the close of
the chapter, she draws on a talk-story about the legendary Chinese
female poet Ts’ai Yen to demonstrate her own achievement of a
delicate harmony between two competing cultures. Throughout
her identity-forming process, she also found that she must assert
herself by breaking away emotionally from her mother, who
had been the centre of her life. Once free, she could develop an
identity of her own. Here, Kingston dealt with the generational
and cultural conflicts of Chinese-American women who were re
presented through her mother and aunt.
Brave Orchid understood all too well the necessity of her daugh
ter having the power of language, and the relationship between
language and personal identity. Symbolically, Brave Orchid told
Kingston that she cut her frenum so that her tongue ‘. . . would
be able to move in any language. You’ll be able to speak languages
that are completely different from one another’ (Warrior 164).
The silence that Moon Orchid, Kingston, and other Chinese
girls in Kingston’s school experienced seems culturally induced.
Moon Orchid never overcame her apprehension to speak Chinese,
her native language, with her husband; the adult Kingston still
struggled to speak English publicly; and the Chinese schoolgirls,
226 Munira T.
although they spoke English sooner and more confidently than
Kingston, were initially silent. ‘The other Chinese girls did not
talk either’, Kingston noted, ‘. . . so I knew the silence had to do
with being a Chinese girl’ (Warrior 193).
Her frustration at not being able to voice her feelings and her
self-imposed silence forced her to do something which was totally
out of character. Finding herself alone one day with a silent girl in
the bathroom of the Chinese school, Kingston confronted her and
tried to make her talk. Despite becoming violent and brutal to
ward her, Kingston could not force the girl to talk; however, she
did make her cry, although that was not Kingston’s intention. Ironi
cally, by the end of this scene, Kingston found herself crying along
side the silent girl because she finally realized that she was trying
to deal with fears which were very similar to her own.
The volume’s final talk-story, focused on the second-century
Chinese female poet Ts’ai Yen, saying, ‘Here is a story my mother
told me, not when I was young, but recently, when I told her I
also talk-story. The beginning is hers, the ending, mine’ (Warrior
240). Kingston’s choice of words is especially important here; she
publicly acknowledged that Brave Orchid’s talk-stories still played
a significant role in her life, and that she and Brave Orchid shared
a special bond—a love for talk-story.
Among Ts’ai Yen’s writings is the lamentation ‘Eighteen Stanzas
for a Barbarian Reed Pipe’, in which Ts’ai Yen related her life among
her captors and her return to her own people. The title of the final
chapter of The Woman Warrior, is based on it, suggests that Kingston
identified herself as living among ‘barbarians’. More significant,
however, is the symbolic relationship between Ts’ai Yen and King
ston’s parents. Ts’ai Yen was physically forced to leave her village,
and Kingston’s parents, especially her father, due to depressed eco
nomic conditions in China, had no choice but to leave their home
land and seek employment and better prospects in America. Ts’ai
Yen characterized her captors as barbarians, and Brave Orchid
thought all Americans were ‘barbarians’. Ts’ai Yen, held captive for
twelve years, sang about China and her Chinese family as a means
to remember her cultural past, while many talk-stories by Brave
Orchid were her means of preserving her cultural past.
Although Ts’ai Yen was eventually reconciled with her family in
China, Kingston noted only briefly the former captive’s return to
her homeland. Instead, she focused on Ts’ai Yen’s recognizing the
validity of the barbarians’ cultural validation rather than on her
lament over her separation from her native culture. By concentrating
on Ts’ai Yen’s recognition of and reconciliation with the nomads,
Kingston suggests an ability to live harmoniously in both American
and Chinese cultures. The talk-story implied not only Brave Orchid’s
recognition of the American influences on her daughter, but also
Kingston’s own eventual acceptance of her Chinese past, which,
after all, ‘translated well’ (Warrior 209).
Kingston did not describe her life as a linear progression from
birth to adulthood. Instead, she began with the story of No Name
Woman, continues with a fantasy of herself as the fabled Chinese
woman warrior Fa Mu Lan, describes the life of her mother and
the advent of Brave Orchid’s sister in America, and closed the book
with a chapter that was, about herself. Only the last chapter is
entirely and exclusively about the life of Maxine. However, all of
the chapters relate to her indirectly. Throughout the five chapters
of The Woman Warrior, there is a movement from the theme of
silence in the first line of the first chapter ‘You must not tell any
one’ (Warrior 3), to a voice in the final line and the last chapter ‘It
translated well’ (209). For Kingston, silence was equal to a lack of
voice, which she associated with the loss of identity as a woman;
which she wanted to find. However, she was also aware of the risks
involved in asserting independence from her own Chinese com
munity (UK Essays).
Thus, Kingston’s different voices culminate to constitute the
voice of her own subjectivity, and to emerge from a past domi
nated by stories told to her into a present articulated by her own
storytelling (Wong 59). Finally, the writing of The Woman Warrior
was Kingston’s way of reconciling with her cultural roots and ex
ploring her past. This becomes her remedy for silence, a technique
for discovering her own personal voice and place as a Chinese-
American woman writing in the language of the ‘ghosts’.
228 Munira T.
REFERENCES
Kingston, Maxine Hong, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of Girlhood Among

Ghosts, London: Picador, 1981.
Lightfoot, Marjorie J., ‘Hunting the Dragon in Kingston’s The Woman Warrior’,
MELUS (Autumn–Winter 1986): 55-66. Web 8 April 2009.
Morrison, Jago, Contemporary Fiction, US: Routledge, 2003.
Suciu, Andreia-Irina, ‘Voices and Voicing in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman
Warrior, American E-Journal 10.1 (Spring 2014). Web.
‘Theme of Silence in the Woman Warrior English Literature Essay’, UK Essays.
UKEssays.com, November 2013. Web 26 November 2017.
Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia, ‘Autobiography as Guided Chinatown Tour?: Maxine
Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and the Chinese American Autobio
graphical Controversy’, Multicultural Autobiography: American Lives, ed.
James Robert Payne, Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992,
pp. 248-79.
C H A P T E R 13
Lifting ‘the Quilt’: Ismat Chughtai’s

A Life in Words and the Subversion
of the Normative
S A S WATA K U S A R I
Ismat Chughtai, often considered to be one of South-Asia’s fore

most and feisty woman writers, can also be referred to as described
by M. Asaduddin, the translator of her memoir as one of ‘Urdu
literature’s most courageous and controversial writers and its most
resolute iconoclast’ (A Life 9). In her lifetime, Chughtai gave rise
to heated controversies by transcending the mythical1 limits set for
women. In order to appreciate the truly courageous and subversive
spirit of Chughtai one has to analyse her life and times carefully.
Ismat Chughtai was born in 1915 in a typical Muslim house
hold in Uttar Pradesh in undivided India. The year of her birth
allows one to assume that she must have been brought up in one of
those orthodox families that often perceived women as the inferior
other. That Chughtai was a victim of such an attitude becomes
clear when she narrates, rather humorously, in her autobiographi
cal work A Life in Words, how her family and friends did their best
to stop her from getting education. She writes,
Sending us to a boarding school caused a great uproar. The entire family
threatened to boycott us, saying that my father was making his daughters
Christians, that it would be difficult to marry us off and that he would have
to maintain us all our lives. Amma shed bitter tears. Abba finally gave in. His
friends also advised him to withdraw my sisters from school as, according to
them, to educate a girl was worse than prostitution. (A Life 72)
230 Saswata Kusari
This typical patriarchal attitude did not change even after
Chughtai completed her middle school and took up a job. She
narrates how the ‘. . . entire family stood up against [her] and made
[her] life a hell’ (A Life 79). However, the attempt to suppress the
voice of Chughtai and the women of her time was not an isolated
phenomenon. Women like her were victims of a vicious cycle of
patriarchal nexus that treated women as second class citizens. Voic
ing her angst against such morbid patriarchal ideology that did
not allow women to be educated, Mary Wollstonecraft, in a letter
to M. Talleyrand-Perigord,2 back in 1792, wrote, ‘if she be not
prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will
stop the progress of knowledge and virtue [. . .] but the education
and situation of woman, at present, shuts her out from such in
vestigations’ (6). In the ‘Introduction’ to her A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman, she further stressed that ‘. . . neglected educa
tion of [her] fellow-creatures is the grand source of misery’ (9).
Almost a century and a half later, Virginia Woolf voiced the same
sentiments, albeit in a different context, when she argued how
‘. . . any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century
would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days
in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard,
feared and mocked at’ (140). Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own as
serted, repeatedly, how women’s misery was an outcome of the
lopsided attitude of society towards them; and how women could
change their social position if they were provided with their own
independent space. Though more than four hundred years had
passed by, the words of Chughtai revealed that the attitude of the
society remained equally regressive.
Chughtai dissented, resisted, subverted and went on to achieve
what she wanted to. In a conversation, revealed in A Life in Words,
with the manager of a school where Chughtai worked, she stated,
To open a girls’ school, and that to for the girls of the Muslim community, is
inviting trouble for oneself. Life becomes a hell. But the girls who pass out
from here after acquiring an education will remember your sacrifices. Just
think in all their houses a little lamp will be lit. And as for infamy, it boils
down to this: you do not like those who want to fashion their lives according
to their own priorities rather than the expectations of the society. People like
Lifting ‘the Quilt’ 231
those who share their values. I don’t care what others think of me. I won’t
allow anyone to interfere with my life. (230)
However, her achievement did not end merely in passing the
examination, getting a job and asserting her feminist values to a
manager. She not only leaped over these patriarchal hurdles set for
women but also went on to do what many male authors of that
time would not have dared. Chughtai’s greatest achievement lay
in subverting the puritanical moral standards that crept in, be
cause of the cultural osmosis, during the Victorian era. As M.
Asaduddin points out, ‘she was instinctively aware of the gendered
double standard in the largely feudal and patriarchal structure of
the society she lived in and did everything to expose and subvert
it’ (A Life ix). Controversies surrounding Chughtai reached their
peak after the publication of ‘Lihaaf ’ (‘The Quilt’) in 1942. The
story shocked contemporary society so much that Chughtai had
to face an obscenity trial. (In this context, it must also be remem
bered that obscenity trials were a Victorian phenomenon). How
ever, as the words in her A Life in Words reveal, Chughtai remained
unfazed even when the police reached her place with summons
from the court. When she refused to accept the summons and was
threatened that she might be put behind the bars, she said, rather
‘endearingly’, ‘Prison? Good. I’ve a long desire to see a prison house.
I’ve urged Yousuf umpteen times to take me to a prison, but he
just smiles. Inspector Sahib, please take me to jail. Have you
brought handcuffs?’ (Chughtai, A Life 22). The refusal to bow
down in front of the repressive forces of the society and the spirit
to subvert the normative to cut out a niche for herself and for
others like her are the qualities that make Chughtai unique and
the lines quoted above are a reminder of her fiercely subversive
spirit.
But why was ‘Lihaaf ’ considered dangerous at that time? The
story, told from the perspective of a young girl, narrated the life of
an affluent woman known as Begum Jaan who, it was revealed
through several hints and innuendos, was frustrated with her hus
band, the respected and aged Nawab. The Nawab was respected
mainly because of his unblemished character as there were no juicy
stories about him indulging himself with prostitutes. However, as
232 Saswata Kusari
the story progresses, it became clear that the Nawab’s interest lay
in men. The queerness of Nawab had led to the frustrated life of
Begum Jaan. The focus of the story then shifted to the nocturnal,
under-the-quilt exploits of Begum Jaan and Rabbu, her masseur.
When the child narrator saw ‘Begum Jaan’s quilt was shaking vig
orously . . .’ (Chughtai, The Quilt 20) she felt afraid, but was com
forted by Begum Jaan and asked to go to sleep. When Rabbu went
to the village for a couple of days, Begum Jaan coerced the child
narrator to massage her, and she complied, rather uncomfortably.
Rabbu then came back; and the story ends with another nocturnal
sojourn between Rabbu and Begum Jaan with the narrator sink
ing deep into her bed, in confusion and fear.
Not only the plot but some of the expressions in the story also
had heavy erotic undertones. For instance, the child narrator, de
scribing the intimate nocturnal activity of Rabbu and Begum Jaan,
wrote: ‘Then came the slurping sound of a cat licking the plate . . . I
was scared and went back to sleep’ (The Quilt 21). In another
instance the description was equally suggestive: ‘There was that
peculiar noise again. In the dark Begum Jaan’s quilt was once again
swaying like an elephant . . . [t]he elephant started shaking once
again, and it seemed as though it was trying to squat. There was
the sound of someone smacking her lips, as though savouring a
tasty pickle’ (The Quilt 26). The interplay of tension between the
‘innocence’ and the ‘experience’ is what makes this story a master
piece. That grown up men and women indulge in sexual activity,
albeit non-normative, in a secretive manner reveals the hypocrisy
that surrounded (and still does) sexuality which was nothing but
an ‘epistemology of the closet’ in the South-Asian countries in the
post-Victorian era.
Most critics and scholars tend to look at Chughtai as the fore
most feminist litterateur who, along with Rashid Jahan, Wajeda
Tabassum and Qurratulain Hyder, gave birth to a revolutionary
feminist movement in Urdu Literature. However, it would be
erroneous to assume that Chughtai was the first one to bring
female desire to the forefront. Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, in
Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, have
translated several Urdu Rekhti poems into English to show how
homoerotic and non-normative love and desire were celebrated in
these liberal verses. In an essay entitled ‘Gender, Language, and
Genre: Hindus, Muslims, Men, Women and Lesbian Love in Nine
teenth -century Urdu Rekhti Poetry’ published in Gandhis’ Tiger
and Sita’s Smile: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Culture, Vanita de
scribes Rekhti poetry as ‘a genre of Urdu poetry written from the
late eighteenth century onwards in India, which uses what the
poets termed ‘women’s speech’, has a female persona-speaker, and
dwells on women’s lives and concerns’ (Vanita 105). Describing
the ‘female-female love relations’ depicted in these verses, Vanita
further writes:
I have elsewhere analysed in detail the terms used in Rekhti to refer to a
woman’s lover (Dogana, Zanaki, Ilaichi), as well as to the sexual relations
practised between women and same-sex sexual relations in general. . . . Poems
describe romantic attachments between women and also provide explicit
details of kissing, embracing and frictional as well as manual sexual relations
(rubbing clitoris with fingers; penetration with dildo and so on) . . . women
lovers are depicted exchanging love letters, visiting one another by day in
palanquins and by night via ladders that ascend to rooftops, wearing each
other’s clothing, dressing and undressing each other, inviting and entertaining
other female couples, eating together, and visiting gardens where they swing
together, enjoy the beauties of nature, and sometimes engage in sex outdoors.
(Vanita 110)
The description of Vanita pointed to an extremely liberal, sub

versive and non-heteronormative space which not only allowed the
same-sex relationships to flourish but also various non-normative
modes of sexual encounters, such as orgies, to thrive. The words of
Vanita are a further reminder that India, where Vatsyana conceived
his Kamasutra, was a land of ars erotica. Now, how did such sexual
frankness get excised from the annals of culture? The answer lies in
the overarching puritanical morality of the Victorians; which de
serves critical attention.
Foucault, in The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge shows
how sexual frankness, prevailing at the beginning of the twentieth
century, was gradually replaced by a puritanical attitude which
focused on carefully confining sexuality within close recesses of
home (3). The non-reproductive, homoerotic sexual practices were
234 Saswata Kusari
gradually overpowered by monogamous, heteronormative sexual
ity. In short, ars erotica was replaced by scintia sexualis. The victim
of this so-called sexual ‘purification’, more than men, were women
who were projected by William Acton as having no sexual feeling
at all. His exact words were: ‘the majority of women (happily for
them) are not very much troubled by sexual feelings of any kind’
(Furneaux). Acton was not the only one to cherish such regressive
sentiments. This seemed to be the general sentiment of the age
which gave rise to the ‘virginal ideal of the Angel in the House’, a
term coined by Coventry Patmore in his 1854 poem with that
title, which laid out a model of the domestic goddess, who appar
ently retained her chastity even as wife and mother. In her purity
and capacity for ‘sweet ordering’, as the influential Victorian critic
and essayist John Ruskin memorably put it, the angel in the house
was to sanctify the home as a refuge for her menfolk from the
trouble of public life’ (Furneaux, Victorian Sexualities, par. 5). This
modern [victorian] prudishness, Foucault argues, ‘was able to en
sure that one did not speak of sex, merely through, the interplay of
prohibitions that referred back to another: instances of muteness
which, by dint of saying nothing, imposed silence. Censorship’
(17).
With the increasing stranglehold of the British government on
India, the overtly moral cultural values were smuggled in to rede
fine the native culture(s) as well; and India, as mentioned earlier,
the land of ars erotica gradually became the land of scintia sexualis.
In this context, Hoshang Merchant observes, ‘[n]o love that can
not take a spiritual form is accepted; any articulation of such love
outside these two institutions sees social rejection, violence, pun
ishment or judicial action can be taken into consideration’ (xiii).
Vanita further claims that erotic projections are found not only
in Urdu ghazal and rekhti poetry but also in various Hindu texts as
well. The erotic architecture in the temples of Khajuraho and
Konarak3 reveal that even Hindus had a rather liberal outlook to
wards sexual practices. Regarding the erotic sculptures Devdutt
Pattanaik writes,
The range of erotic sculptures is wide: from dignified couples exchanging
romantic glances, to wild orgies involving warriors, sages and courtesans.
Occasionally one finds images depicting bestiality coupled with friezes of
animals in intercourse. All rules are broken: elephants are shown copulating
with tigers, monkeys molest women while men mate with asses. And once in
a while, hidden in niches as in Khajuraho, one does find images of either
women erotically embracing other women or men displaying their genitals to
each other, the former being more common (suggesting a tilt in favour of the
male voyeur). (qtd. in ‘Did Homosexuality Exist in Ancient India’ par. 7.
devdutt.com)
Many literary and scriptural texts refer to homosexuality and re
veal a tolerant attitude towards non-heternormative sexual prac
tices. Keeping all these perspectives in mind, it will be safe to
claim that Chughtai was aware of the pre-colonial sexual culture(s)
(which would be revealed later) and how these culture(s) were
sometimes redefined and remodelled under the foreign rule to give
them a more ‘acceptable’ social face; and her risqué literary end
eavours, were, not only to challenge the superimposed grand nar
rative of the ruling class but also to reveal the hypocrisy that ran
rampant under the garb of this sanctified sexual discourse.
From another viewpoint, it might be argued that the hypocrisy
of the Victorians regarding sex, was exposed by several scholars
and historians; most notably by Steven Marcus and Michel Foucault.
Holly Furneaux, in this context states how while the recent
work has indelibly worked to complicate the ‘overly simple ideas
of Victorian prudery, idea of Victorian sexual repression lingers’
with its derivation in the works of anti-Victorian modernist au
thors like Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf. Furneaux further
states:
In Eminent Victorians (1918) Strachey sought to liberate his generation from
the perceived reticence and ignorance, especially in sexual matters, of their
pre-Freudian fathers and grandfathers. In 1966 Steven Marcus elaborated on
such views in his long and influential The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexual
ity and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England, which presented
the Victorians as sexual hypocrites, maintaining a veneer of respectable society
over an underbelly of prostitution and pornography. (‘Victorian Sexualities’
par. 4)
Foucault also shows how the development of the discourse on
sexualities, while being repressive for the most part, opened up
236 Saswata Kusari
new and possibly alternative modes of discourses on sexualities.
Foucault cites the example of My Secret Life, written by an anony
mous Victorian man; the popularity of which reveals that under
neath the garb of prudishness Victorians did enjoy their sexual
rendezvous. The conflict between sexual morality and the wish to
express freely is at the heart of the Victorian culture. Interestingly,
sexuality became a medico-juridical topic of discussion during the
Victorian period itself. So, while there were secret lives, public
display of deviant sexualities might have been fatal.
It may be noted that Ismat Chughtai remained unapologetic in
her life and in her autobiography because she knew that she was
revealing nothing but the prudishness and hypocrisy of society.
Since sexuality fell under the medico-juridical parlance in the
Victorian era, homosexuality was seen as a disease as well. This was
obvious from the infamous trial of Oscar Wilde and the invention
of the article 377 which, remained in the IPC until quite recently.
The horrific reactions of the child narrator, when she encountered
the queer sexual acts of Rabbu and Begum Jaan, seem symbolic of
the horror of the society which was taught to condemn and vilify
non-reproductive sexualities.
It was not merely homosexuality that was abhorred post the
proliferation of the overtly moral sexual sermons in the Victorian
era. Women who defied the normative models of sexual behaviour
were also looked down upon; and that, unfortunately, also became
the general sentiment in India. In her literary career, Chughtai
devoted a lot of time to showcase women’s sexual desire as natural
as that of men. Though such projections brought her private and
public humiliation, she did not relent. In spite of being threatened
by the moral police of society including her family members—‘In
fact, Shahid fought with me the whole night, even threatened to
divorce me’ (A Life 24)—she remained adamant about what she
wanted to project in her literary endeavours. This is apparent in
the way she projected Rani in the short story ‘The Mole’. The
protagonist of the story was Rani herself who was picked up from
dungeons of poverty to pose naked, by a painter named Ganesh
chand Choudhury, aspiring to win a prize of five thousand rupees
by exhibiting a painting of a nude woman. Rani was not ashamed
about her body and talked about her desires candidly. Even as she
posed for the painter, she keeps on disturbing him by showing
him her mole in a ‘bad spot’ of her body and talking about how
she had shown the mole to a local man called Ratna whom she had
taken along with her when she went to take a bath in the pond.
She narrates:
‘I showed it to him’, she began to stroke the mole.
‘You did? You…showed the mole to Ratna?’
[. . . ]
‘Ah . . . well . . . wah! What could I do if he saw it?’
‘How . . . how could he see the mole when you, you . . . ’ Choudhury’s teeth
clattered like a door loose on its hinges.
‘I was bathing in the pond. I was scared to go alone, so I took him along lest
Someone came there without warning. . . .
‘. . . I was going to get drown—the water was this deep, you know’, she said
placing a finger a little below the mole.
‘. . . Bitch, don’t you know how to swim? . . .
‘Oho! I wasn’t going to drown really. I . . . I was just going to show him the
mole.’ (The Quilt 33-4)
After narrating this incident Rani goes on to talk about her fur
ther sexual flings with men like Chunnan. The stories of Rani’s
sexual life shocked Choudhury whose moral values were those of
the society to which he belonged. However, many sections of the
story hint at the painter by getting attracted to Rani and how he
‘. . . felt a strange sensation in his armpit’ (The Quilt 31) every
time Rani flirted with him and how her flirtatious behaviour brought
out some bold brush strokes from the painter. However, one morn
ing Rani disappeared and for several days Choudhury was ques
tioned by the police. A few days later Rani is caught by the police
‘. . . leaving a blood-soaked bundle on the road’ (The Quilt 43).
The bundle carried a new-born whom Rani had to abandon. After
the trial in the court of law, Choudhury, was let off because he was
found to be impotent.
The story, much like ‘The Quilt’, defies the quotidian morality
of the Victorians, that tried to project women as passive recipients
of male sexual urge. Those who projected sexuality as a basic hu
man instinct and not as a tabooed subject often faced the wrath of
238 Saswata Kusari
society. In A Life in Words Chughtai suggests how she was not the
only victim of such moral policing. She wrote:
Manto (Saadat Hasan Manto) phoned us to say that a suit had been filed
against him too. He had to appear in the same court on the same day. He and
Safiya landed up at our place. Manto was looking very happy, as though he
had been awarded the Victoria Cross. Though I put up a courageous front, I
was quite Embarrassed . . . I was quite nervous, but Manto encouraged me so
much that I forgot all my misgivings. (A Life 24)
Manto’s happiness at being summoned by the court was per

haps due to his realization that they were on the right track as the
hypocritical society could not bear the brunt of their honest, fiery
writings. Chughtai, however, went on to say how afraid she be
came when filthy letters, dragging members of her family and her
two-month old child into muck, started to arrive. Before the second
hearing, she and Shahid went to stay at the place of a certain Mr.
Aslam who, after exchanging greetings, started to ‘. . . rant about
the alleged obscenity in my writing’ (Chughtai, A Life 29). The
conversation between Mr. Aslam and Chughtai goes thus:
‘And you have used such vulgar words in your Gunah ki Ratein! You have even
described the details of a sex act merely for the sake of titilation’, I said.
‘My case is different. I am a man’.
‘Am I to blame for that?’
‘What do you mean?’ His face was flushed with anger.
‘What I mean is that God made you a man, and I had no hand in it. He made
me a woman, and you had no hand in it. You have the freedom to write
whatever you want, you don’t need my permission. Similarly, I don’t feel any
need to seek your permission to write the way I want to. (A Life 29-30)
When asked by Aslam whether she wanted to compete with

men, she retorted, ‘Certainly not. I always endeavored to get higher
marks than boys in my class, and often succeeded’ (Chughtai, A
Life 30). In fact, later in the same chapter of the autobiography
she mentions how the boys were afraid of her when she was young:
I was a spoilt brat . . . the world around me seemed like a delusion. The
apparently shy and respectable girls of these families allowed themselves to be
grabbed and kissed in the bathroom and in dark corners by their young male
relatives. Such girls were considered modest. Which boy would have taken
interest in a plain Jane like me? I had studied so much that whenever there
was a debate, I would beat to a pulp all the young men who were scared at
the sight of books. They considered themselves superior to women merely
because they were men! (A Life 39)
When Aslam questioned her about her religious knowledge, she

replied that she had read Behisti Zevar, by Maulana Asraf Ali Thanvi
for the ‘edification of girls and women . . . discuss[ing] all aspects
of life, including the sexual’ (Chughtai, A Life 30). With Chughtai’s
extremely rational arguments, Aslam, the metonymy for the
society, had no option but to backtrack. In the court, Chughtai,
goaded by Manto, refused to plead guilty in spite of pressure from
several quarters. The judge did not find them guilty and let them
go without any punishment. After the trial, when the judge met
her in the anteroom and suggests that ‘Lihaaf ’ was not filthy but
some of Manto’s works were, she retorted, in the same fiery yet
witty manner, that in order to make society aware, the filth had to
be brought home to the public.
The conversation between Ismat Chughtai and Aslam, and the
narration of how she never considered herself inferior to men when
she was younger, encapsulate her fierce feminist spirit highlighted
in the introductory paragraph of this paper. Moreover, her knowl
edge of her own culture, in its purest form, armed her with weapons
with the help of which she relentlessly questioned and challenged
the preconceived notion of moral superiority of the Western cul
ture. The reference to Behisti Zevar also acted as a reminder to her
readers about how the imposition of the so-called superior values
of the West were imposed superficially on the indigenous culture(s)
to redefine the oriental culture. The controversies after the publi
cation of ‘Lihaaf ’ was well known but the study of this autobio
graphical account, especially the chapter ‘In the Name of those
Married Women’, allows the readers to understand this spirited
writer more comprehensively as she bares her soul; and made her
readers aware about an anti-hegemonic, indigenous, anti-colonial
cultural space by throwing light on non-normative sexualities and
desires which were looked down upon by those who believed in
prudish Victorian morality.
240 Saswata Kusari
NOTES
1. The word is borrowed from Simone Beauvoir’s formulation of the idea of

myths which help the patriarchal society to subdue women.
2. The letter is included at the beginning of the Norton edition of Wollstoncraft’s
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
3. Hindu temples situated in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha respectively.
REFERENCES
Chughtai, Ismat, A Life in Words, tr. M. Asaduddin, New Delhi: Penguin,

2012.
——, The Quilt & Other Stories, tr. M. Asaduddin, New Delhi: Penguin, 2011.
Foucault, Michel, The Will to Knowledge/The History of Sexuality: 1, tr.,
Robert Hurley, London: Penguin, 1998.
Furneaux, Holly, ‘Victorian Sexualities’, Victotorian-sexualities: Discovering
Literature: Romantics and Victorians, London: British Library, 15 May 2014.
Web. 7 June 2017. <www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/article/>
Merchant, Hoshang, Forbidden Sex/Texts: New India’s Gay Poets, New Delhi:
Routledge, 2009.
Vanita, Ruth, Gandhi’s Tiger and Sita’s Smile: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and
Culture, New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2010.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 3rd edn., ed. Deidre
Shauna Lynch, New York: Norton, 2009.
Woolf, Virginia, A Room of One’s Own, ed. Sutapa Chaudhuri, Kolkata: Books
Way, 2009.
C H A P T E R 14
Indian Nationalism and Hindu

Widowhood: Contesting Margins
in Indira Goswami’s
Adha Lekha Dastabej
N I L A K S H I G O S WA M I
A relentless motif surrounding Indian nationalism has been the

proliferation of the image of Indian womanhood, wherein the
‘woman’ symbolizes the spirit of purity. The national construct of
Indian woman thereby has been shaped by the attributes of loy
alty and compassion, benevolence and self-sacrifice, devotion and
religiosity and so on, which then stands as a sign for ‘nation’.
Therefore, anything that threatens this idea of what is considered
to be an ‘ideal’ woman, represents a betrayal of all that it denotes:
family, society, tradition, culture, religion, and most significantly,
the nation. This symbolic subjugation of the Indian woman has
lead to her systematic oppression to the extent that her body and
its representation are subjected to the hegemony of patriarchal
nationalism. Early Indian literature has always been inclined to
capitalize on this, perpetuating their control through the establish
ment of female dichotomies, ‘the angel of the house’ or the virtuous,
dutiful, sexually pure woman, versus the fallen woman—a desig
nation assigned to them by the phallocentric society. Thus, Indira
Goswami in her autobiography Adha Lekha Dastabej (1990) or
An Unfinished Autobiography probes the underlying foundation of
the rituals and religious ethics and the unquestioned beliefs which
perpetrate and perpetuate female oppression.
Historically, the genre of autobiography was chosen as a me
dium of self-referential writing by Indian women only from the
late nineteenth century onwards, ironically as a consequential effect
of colonialism. By all means, the genre, indeed, had its roots and
legacy in the Western cultural and literary tradition, as a bequest
of the colonial-modernity. Thus, the movement was interlinked
specifically with the Western concept of individualism, with social
reform, and more importantly, with a growing sense of selfhood in
women. In this sense, the autobiography of Indira Goswami, better
known as Mamoni Raisom Goswami, remains a compelling testi
monial account of a widow who led a rebellious life at a time when
the position of women, specifically widows, in the Hindu upper-
caste societies had declined, and they were constantly subjected to
a wide-ranging repressive customs and practices.
Bhabha’s reflection on narration of one’s nation in Nation and
Narration (1990) puts forth a remarkable insight on the idea of
travel, journey and identity. The ‘locality of national culture,’ as
Bhabha notes, ‘is neither unified nor unitary in relation to itself’
(Bhabha 4). Furthermore, this dichotomy of inside-outside should
rather be seen in terms of ‘. . . the process of hybridity incorporat
ing new “people” in relation to the body politic, generating other
sites of meaning’ and thereby, ‘in the political process, producing
unmanned sites of political antagonism and unpredictable forces
of political representation’ (Bhabha 4). This addressing of the nation
as narration, thus, emphasizes the avowal of the cultural authority
along with the political power. ‘What emerges as an effect of “in
complete signification” is a turning of boundaries and limits into
the inbetween spaces through which the meanings of cultural and
political authority are negotiated’ (4). While the term ‘journey’ is
often used to refer to a notion of space expressed through spatial
and temporal configurations, here it is expressed as journeys
of identity. In the autobiography Goswami undergoes more of a
psychological venture in the process of contesting the ethics of
religious orders and cultural conventions, while becoming em
powered and taking charge of her life in the new environment.
The motif of travel interwoven along the entire discourse of
Goswami’s autobiography is, thus, observed as a reflection of both
Indian Nationalism and Hindu Widowhood 243
social and psychological displacement chronicling her metamor
phosis into an autonomous body purged from the hellish fire of
the cataclysms of her life. Her life narrative, Adha Lekha Dastabez,
is indeed a daunting representation of her metamorphosed self in
laying bare the intimate details of her experiences. The article,
addresses how Goswami appropriates her autobiographical writ
ing in order to globalize the social reality, interwoven with her
immediate experiences vis-à-vis the dubious status of the Radhe
swamis or destitute widows living in oppressive conditions while
earning their livelihood by begging and singing bhajans or the
praise of almighty, and also taking dire steps of prostituting them
selves in Vrindavan in the process of challenging the traditional
roles assigned to women.
Kiran Chandra Bandopadhyay’s Bharat Mata or Mother India,
the 1983 play, portrayed India in terms of a dispossessed woman,
mostly representing her as a widow or deranged by suffering. Simi
larly, Bharat Gan or India Songs (1879)—the anthology of patriotic
songs, as well as Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Anandmath (1882)
portrayed the figure of mother to be rescued by her brave sons—a
depiction of weak and vulnerable image of motherhood. Such rep
resentations of the ‘mother’ in the wake of independent India needs
to be perceived in terms of the complexities of the post-colonial
discourse that resulted in an acute transformation of nationhood
into the recovering images of the suffering/recovering post 1947
India. It is here that one must observe how such symbolism
downplayed the sexuality of ‘Mother India’ mostly by absenting
her husband and personifying her resilience against lure and cor
ruptions, thereby, projecting her widowed self as a motif that is
woven through the entire discourse of nationalism and patriotism.
This literary journey of a widow has been further transmuted into
the cultural encounters intermittently weaving it with the dis
course of laaj or shame concerning both, the family unit as well as
the nation. Thus, this self-referential writing of Indira Goswami is
not a mere testimonial project by an oppressed female, but by a
widow witnessing and chronicling an unusual detail of the suffer
ings that women are subjected to, and more importantly, their
everyday struggles and resistances against it.
Indira Goswami’s autobiography here highlights the exploita
tion and poverty of widows dumped in the sacred city of Vrindavan
to eke out their days in prayer by uncaring families under the
guise of religious sanction and tradition. The author, in writing
her life narrative, probes into the underlying foundation of the
rituals and unquestioned socio-religious beliefs which perpetuate
female oppression. Born in a Brahmin family, the author experi
enced the restrictions and constrictions of conservative Hindu so
ciety. Historically, the idea of honour itself became double-edged
when considered with regard to upper caste Brahmins since these
castes feared losing honour if the widow remarried or worst, fell
out of her chaste existence. The widows were, therefore, made to
undergo de-sexualization by allowing them only to wear a white
saree, by removing her vermilion mark and shaving her head as a
means of evoking the image of pity and sympathy from onlookers.
However, in contrast to the extreme form of oppression ascribed to
these Radheswamis, Goswami’s widowhood after eighteen months
of conjugal life and her subsequent sufferings woke her up from the
stupor of passivity, marking her eventual metamorphosis from a
subjugated position of a ‘female’ to a feminist subject. The insistence
on the term ‘metamorphosis’ in the paper reflects on an intellec
tual and a cognitive transformation endeavoured by the author.
The narrative, divided into three parts, portray three phases of
her life. The first part ‘Life is no Bargain’ centres around her child
hood shrouded in depression until the death of her husband in
Kashmir, the second ‘Down Memory Lane’ covers her attempt to
tackle her sense of loneliness by taking refuge in a teaching at
Goalpara Sainik School, and the last part ‘The City of God’ is the
culmination of all her miseries in the dishevelled and unpleasant
city of Vrindavan where she encounters the poverty ridden condi
tions of the destitute widows and her final leap as a professor in
the University of Delhi. Ideologies, both religious and national,
have always been singled out to explain the subordination of women.
This particular context marks the way Indian women are assigned
nationalist ideals through the perpetuation of Hindu religious
values and social rules. Widows here are the most vulnerable beings,
the passive victims of the onslaught of such ideological affairs.
Goswami, by disrupting the conventions and redefining the nature
of margins as a site of resistance, rebels against this systematic
hegemony by exploring her sexuality and reclaiming her body.
Thus, this journey by Goswami from Kashmir to Goalpara and
then, from Vrindavan to Delhi is not mere physical travel but a
deep philosophical venture into the individual psyche to establish
an autonomous subjectivity.
Suffering from acute depression ever since her childhood, she
mentions, in the very opening of her autobiography, her intense
inclination to jump into the Crinoline Falls situated near their
house in Shillong. She states how hers was ‘. . . a curious and mys
terious bend of mind that [she] could never completely overcome’
(1990, 10). Such repeated attempts of suicide marred her youth
which was further catalysed by the sudden death of her husband,
Madhavan Raisom Ayenger in a car accident in Kashmir. Her
widowhood and her subsequent sufferings intensify her social sen
sitivity towards others like her and this marks her journey to
Vrindavan. ‘A girl accustomed to living in comfort and luxury, in a
concrete building . . .’, now decided to ‘. . . adjust to living in
ruined and dilapidated temples with no amenities. The very idea
is absurd!’ (1990, 106). Goswami throws light on the various at
tempts made to de-feminize and de-sexualize widows all the time.
Heads completely shaven, clad in white sarees, these destitute
women had to dedicate themselves completely to the devotion of
God, leading austere lives. Written in the stream of conscious tech
nique, the narrative draws an incident from her childhood, about
the treatment towards her widowed aunt, ‘Don’t touch her, don’t
touch this woman who has just been widowed’ (1990, 670).
Goswami’s climactic closure with a similar fate with the death of her
husband, and her subsequent dejection led to a constant battle
between her ‘feminine self’ and her ‘female self’. The author narrates
an event concerning social exclusion of widows in Indian society.
Goswami, during a religious function at her house in Guwahati,
was made to sit separately from the rest of the guests and eat with
another widow (1990, 66). Striving for her existence, she decides
to pursue her research which took her to the city of Vrindavan
amidst the destitute Radheswamis. Pre-marital love and sexual re
lation was a highly taboo region for the Vaishnavite Brahmins.
These were the very code of conduct and dharma prescribed by
society, where marriage was nothing more than a mere transfer of
the authority from the woman’s father to her husband, a ritual
commonly termed as kanya daan or the giving away of daughters
during the marriage ceremony.
At various points in the novel, Goswami herself reveals her own
inhibitions regarding her feminine sensibilities. She says, ‘But I
cannot deny that another kind of desire had taken hold of my
body at that time; and it is also true that there was no dearth of
admirers, either. But thoughts of any physical relations with any
of them never entered my mind’ (1990, 15-16), reflecting a dic
tum so deep rooted in her psyche, that it completely muted her
female sexuality. Lewis Hyde, while describing the act of ‘gifting’
in his study of primitive culture explains how the relationships
established through ‘gifts’ were not merely social but could also be
spiritual and psychological. The concept of ‘gift exchange’, Hyde
states, is the ‘preferred interior commerce at those times when the
psyche is in need of integration’ (58). In this vein, identity, parti
cularly female identity can be viewed as a reflexive ‘gift’ cemented
in a jarring network of identities amidst the ideological constraints
of the society. If identity has a property of ‘exchange value’ as a
‘gift’, it also entails itself as having a productive value as a com
modity (Marx 2-3).
Rahul Gariola, explaining this dictum of gender hierarchies,
states:
We may thus say that for women identity has great use-value in the schema of
gendered society but little exchange-value, since gender can never fully
be exchanged or reach a point where it establishes an equivalence with
another facet of identity as rooted so deeply within both the self and society
(subjectivity and agency). Any exchange at all occurs within the gendered
subject, who scrambles to compromise her own identity; the bartering
of gender roles and other facets of identity is thus an individual, internal,
symbolic act never uninformed by the surrounding society. (308)
For a subaltern women or a widow of Vrindavan, this would
mean her subordination to the patriarchal customs and regula
tions necessitates her, to a certain extent, to be validated by those
in power. Thus a Hindu woman could locate her agency only in
relation to the gaze of the Hindu man whose religious ideals para
doxically produce her as a subject and as a commodity, and whose
gaze was somewhat parallel to the paternal gaze of a colonizer.
Traditional Marxism analyses relationships in terms of use-value,
exchange-value and surplus-value, and the same stands true in its
consideration of the effects of gender on production. Luce Irigaray
notes the manner in which systems of exchange functions in a
patriarchal society with all its modalities of productive work kept
intact. Thus, in a culture of arranged marriage, in accordance to
the traditional Hindu custom, daughters’ productivity is marked
by their contributions in maintenance of the family honour, thereby
reducing them to goods to be passed from one man to another,
from father to husband. In other words, the orientation of women’s
subjectivity itself is converted into signs where their point of
orientation is always male-centred. Identity, therefore, must be
fluid for a woman along with its non-threatening socio-political
dimension to the patriarchal projects, where her fluidity is not
necessarily her ultimate liberation, but is instead, a by-product of
the mechanisms of patriarchal power in the process of forging new
ideologies that re-interpellates women.
Spivak in ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ describes the act of sati or
widow sacrifice as the act where the Hindu widow ascends the
pyre of her dead husband and immolates herself. The tradition of
sati was not a universal practice, nor was it caste or class fixed.
However, its abolition by the Britishers is considered as a typical
case of ‘white men saving brown women from brown men’, against
which the nativist argument of how the widowed wife actually
would have wanted to die is pitted (93). This dual subordination
of widowed women, in turn, pushes her to a situation where the
entire superstructure of male domination operates in a way as to
ensure that the widowed woman is not only expected to mount
the pyre of her husband and self immolate, but the very act is
made to appear as a wish fulfilment. Although the practice of sati
was abolished in India in 1829 after a series of parliamentary de
bates, however, this malevolent practice of immolation was pushed
into a mental sati, wherein much attempts were made at erasing
her individual identity behind her social position as a grieving
widow buried beneath the mourning white attire. However, this
kind of clothing and social appearances is not an imperative in case
of a widower. Gariola in his essay analyses the way Santosh Singh
examines the validity of the act of self immolation. Santosh Singh
states ‘A woman, unable to bear the pangs of separation from her
deceased husband, considers her life futile without him, ends her
life by taking poison or by hanging herself or by jumping into
a well, river or lake, or throws herself from high altitude, is not
considered a ‘Sati’ (310). Thus, a widow’s self-destruction could
be considered honourable, according to the codes mandated by
Hinduism, only if the act is commenced upon the funeral pyre of
her husband, thereby, re-enacting the mimetic performance of the
myth of Lord Shiva and his wife Parvati. (Gariola 310).
Thus, the Marxian notion of identity as ‘gift’ and the exchange
value of female subjectivities comes to the fore, where a Hindu
woman is deemed to grant herself the greatest honour by self im
molating in her dead husband’s funeral pyre, simultaneously
assuming the role of Goddess Parvati. Singh further highlights how
the widow is viewed as a nonproductive object and a worthless
nuisance who now has to perform every form of penance and re
demption of the sins she committed that caused her husband’s
death, and go through all types of deprivations and humiliations
(qtd. in Gariola 311). In this vein, Ashish Nandy notes how the
ritual of widow burning is directly proportional to regional eco
nomics.
Like men, women in India, too, are assessed more and more in terms of their
productive capacity and the market value of that capacity. Wherever that
market value is low and market morality infects social relationships, the chances
of sati—now more appropriately called widow-burning—increase. They also
increase when women have access to economic power within the family but
family relationships become largely interest-based as a result of large-scale
break-downs in cultural values. (139)
In ‘The Traffic in Women’, Gayle Rubin analyses the relation

ship underlying capitalism and women, which she terms as ‘sex/
gender’ system. Rubin observes how ‘Sex is sex, but what counts
as sex is equally culturally determined and obtained. Every society
also has a sex/gender system—a set of arrangements by which the
biological raw material of human sex and procreation is shaped by
human, social intervention and satisfied in a conventional manner,
no matter how bizarre some of the conventions may be’ (165).
The term ‘sex/gender’ here is quite appropriately used by Rubin
in analysing the ways through which the socio-economic environ
ment oppresses women and minorities, and deploys gender and
sex to achieve their desired effects, as evident in the example of
Shiva-Parvati myth. Thus, both in marriage as well as in the act of
self-immolation as a widow, a Hindu woman is made to operate
on fundamentally the same principle: as a gift to the patriarch. In
the contemporary scenario, sati has been abolished and the ritual
of widow burning is no longer a practice, yet the physical practice
of sati undergoes a transformation where the devotion towards
earthly husband is transferred to the other-worldly master, of which
Indira Goswami’s autobiographical narrative is a glaring example.
In this manner, both, the marriage of Hindu woman and the practice
of widow-burning operate on the same principle, as an act of gift
ing women and exchanging it among the patriarchs of the society.
Labelled as worthless without husband, these impoverished widows
were forced to enter ashrams or widow houses, compelled to beg
gary, and at times, even prostitution in order to survive. Goswami’s
autobiography emphasizes this patriarchal rendition of religious
ethics into law and order that is mostly inhuman and unreason
able. Moreover, with the coupling of religion and ethics, comes
to the fore the socio-judicial construct of authority that controls,
dictates and metes out disorder which often culminates into violence
against women. The autobiography reveals how religion acquires
the ‘force of law’ and imposes injustice and violence on widows.
Goswami belonged to a Brahmin family an order already contami
nated by the massive onset of feudal decay. Goswami had experi
enced the corrosive and inflexible feudal customs. The sexual abuse
of women, especially, young widows of Vrindavan by powerful
males and their overwhelming weight of traditions and customs
alongside the guilt imbibed by the widows and their apprehensions
for social transgressions, mark their pitiful existence.
Thus, Aadha Lekha Dastabej illustrates the popular culture as
sociations of widows with sexual availability and thereby equating
it with prostitution. ‘[W]ithout the protection of a husband, her
adharmik [unrighteous] nature is bound to assert itself. She is thus,
like the prostitute, an embodiment of lustful and uncontrollable
sexuality . . . many of the common words for widow, such as the
Hindi rand or the Punjabi randi, are obscene terms of abuse that
also mean “a whore”’ (Denton and Collins 45). Forced loveless
sexual intercourse, sterile burning of unfulfilled dreams and unre
quited desires that women are condemned to amongst several other
forms of physical and emotional abjection of their needs and hopes
find repeated mention in Goswami’s autobiographical narrative.
Moral ethics intertwined with the ethics of religion play a very
significant role in dictating such unsaid code of conduct under the
garb of rectitude and righteousness. Ethics is often taken to be the
field of enquiry, the structures of examination, analysing the founda
tions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ pursuit of human goals. Primarily based
on humanistic assumptions justified by its appeals to reason, ethics
is sought to be the vital impulses of life itself. While Sartre states
that knowledge, freedom, virtuousness, spirituality, wisdom and
the power to make sound choice contributes towards the greater
well-being of the society around as what could be considered as
the prerequisites of a ‘good’ life, Michel Foucault seeks to divorce
ethics from the moral code and couples it to the creation of a
political subjectivity. Meanwhile, a theist study ethics in terms of
religious codes, within the branch of theology, considers religion
as the absolute basis of ethics. Religion and ethics thus came to be
merged together, making the life of these widows extremely miser
able and making them overly dependent on ritualistic practices.
This can be evidently seen in the episodes concerning the destitute
widows in Adha Lekha Dastabej who would have nothing to eat
but would manage to save meagre amount of coins tied to their
waists for their last ritual, even if they have to prostitute them
selves for it. Gendered at its core, religion can thus be traced in
terms of violence propelled by it that lies at its very heart.
Nietzsche considers the prime postulates of human productions,
such as religion, philosophy and morality as effective producer of
suffering that plagues an individual. His antagonism towards reli
gion where he says ‘God is Dead’ can be efficiently justified by
religions like Christinity that promotes slave morality, whereby a
slave lives his life in resentment and fear of his master, thereby
giving rise to humiliation and mortification of the being (Genea
logy of Morality 22). Thus, violence is what lies at the very heart of
such practices that camouflages a deep seated resentment against
freedom behind religious codes of conduct. A similar resentment
is expressed by Indira Goswami in her narrative where she traces
people’s preoccupation with babajis or Hindu saints with god-like
status, and the subsequent sexual exploitation of the destitute
widows by them. The autobiography, based on her experience,
nostalgia, and the memories of her own widowhood and the wid
ows in Vrindavan as well as the obsession of the people with their
blind beliefs in the religious practices, exhibits an ironic double
standard of the ethics prevalent in such religious communities
thereby linking religion to morality. Evidently, the onus of such
onerous task is indefinitely ascribed to women, who are, time and
again, targeted and victimized. Religion thus, can be deduced as a
disciplinary institution underlying patriarchy. Infested with prac
tices that reinforces and even multiplies the asymmetrical power
relations operating on the underside of law, religious ethics serves
as a backbone in strengthening the gendered power relations.
Women, already existing at the periphery of the society, are trans
muted into scapegoats which the society carefully singles out as the
surrogate victim to cleanse the entire community (Gerard 12-14).
The (mis)perception traversing across all the castes that believes
young widows are the most vulnerable ones to get involved in
illegitimate sexual relations is what results in curbing their sexuality
and re-locating them within the ashrams (or communities of Hindu
religious retreat) of Vrindavan. Thus, religious ethics can be viewed
as an unsaid force of law which no entity can invalidate.
The deep seated defiance in rebelling against the patriarchal
authority is elucidated by Ania Loomba in ‘Dead Women Tell no
Tales’ where she states:
. . . [T]he disenfranchisement of Indian men led to a situation whereby women
became the grounds and signs for the colonial struggle. Indian nationalisms of
different shades produced their own versions of the good Hindu wife, each of
which became emblematic of Indian-ness and tradition, a sign of rebellion
against colonial authority and a symbol of the vision of the future. (312)
The widows of Vrindavan are conditioned in a way that they

believe they have no right to seek any form of pleasure—bodily or
otherwise, but to submit themselves in the devotion of Lord Krishna,
singing his praises in the temples for meagre amounts, and in the
process, invariably being exploited by the hooligans and priests
alike. Goswami states how the priests would ask the young desti
tute widows to do the domestic chores in the house and at times,
even coercing them to their beds (173). She further states that
‘[t]hese “celibate” priests used to do their work of worshipping
those naked girls in their own manner’ (161). The accounts of their
bodies ravaged by physical exploitation and their life bereft of any
family support is what forms the core of Goswami’s narrative. She
further explores the abject conditions of the Vrindavan widows in
her novel The Blue Necked God (2012). She observes how even
after the death of the poverty-ridden dead widow, due veneration
was not paid to their bodies and instead people fought over the
corpse for paltry sum of the money the widow possessed for her
ouddha dehik or last rites (64). ‘There was no dearth of wickedness
and licentiousness in Braja.’ Even the priests kept destitute women
for their sexual satisfaction under the cloak of Jugal Upasana (or
divine worship or veneration of God that requires couple or a pair).
Parallel to her own self, Goswami’s construction of her female
character Saudamini in Nilakantha Braja (1976) or The Blue Necked
God is very significant. Like Goswami, Saudamini was a widow
who arrives in Vrindavan with her father Dr. Roychoudhury and
his wife, as Saudamini ‘had started having an affair with a Christian
youth soon after she became a widow’. By nature she was a rebel,
a non-conformist. She was spontaneously drawn by her curiosity
to walk on the forbidden avenue. ‘The anguish and frustration of
its [Neelkanthi Vraj] heroine, Saudamini, largely reflected my own
emotional state. The pain and hurt she suffered in the beginning
were exactly what I suffered’ (1900, 146). Saudamini’s father
wanted her to sacrifice her residual life at the service of the needy
and sick people despite her wishes. In her demand for autonomy
she asserts, ‘I cannot spend my entire life like this, doing charity
work. . . . I am not a Devi, I am an ordinary girl, and cannot pass
all my years in serving society like you. . . . I am an independent
person, and fear no one and nothing’ (2013, 71). Saudamini in all
her autonomy was however reduced to a state of a fallen woman by
society. Even after trying very hard, she was not able to free herself
from the shackles of patriarchal bondage she had imbibed. Her
evocative self-questioning is reminiscent of Goswami’s own bewilder
ment in her autobiography. She ponders how she ‘had numerous
admirers before Subroto, her husband, had come into her life and
shown her how divine true love could be. But in spite of the plead
ings and persuading of her admirers, she had never given in to
them, had never allowed any of them to take liberties with her
body. No, she had never done such things. So then, why was she
in this situation?’ (2013, 171). Saudamini loved the Christian
youth and wanted to spend her life with him but not at the cost of
her father’s life. Thus, when she could understand that her father
offered his life to the Jamuna after he had set her free, she could
not sustain her freedom and surrendered her life, too, to the river
Jamuna. Goswami has thus, foregrounded the wretched condition
of the women sustaining the patriarchal Brahmin society as a back
drop.
Indira Goswami in her semi-autobiographical novel Nilakantha
Braja and her autobiography, Adha Lekha Dastabej has portrayed
a society where women were unconditionally marginalized to a
great extent. Yet contrary to the expectations Goswami’s narrative
does not end with a marriage. She states how many of her suitors’
attraction to her was not a mere casual affair for instance, Hit Kumar
Gupta was one of the many admirers offering Goswami a new life
all over again. However, matrimonial alliance was now an in
conceivable path to her autonomy and thus, her life narrative ended
with her migration from Vrindavan to Delhi University, from a
patriarchally bound body to an autonomous subject. Both Sauda
mini and Goswami challenged the norms laid by the patriarchal
society to marginalize and exploit women. They defied the social
codes and religious barriers. Where Saudamini got involved in a
love relationship with a Christian youth, Goswami rejected any
attempt in binding herself in a societal construction of a relat
ionship based on matrimony. Thus, they claimed sexual autonomy
in their own way, from a self-effacing nationalistic body defined
by chastity and servitude to an assertive and autonomous feminist
self. Hiren Gohain notes, that fate of women in obstinate feudal
societies remains a core concern of Goswami’s ‘active meditation’
and so is the ‘. . . baffled search for sexual self-expression of the
women, often crushed by the weight of custom and tradition and
sometimes overwhelmed by their own guilt and dread of trans
gression’ (140).
Goswami’s daunting task of writing her life story helped her in
creating a distinguished place for herself amongst the other Assamese
women writers as well as to look within herself and confront her
inner self from which she kept running most of her life. Her obses
sion with death turned into her love and zeal to live for others. It
is a journey from ignorance to knowledge and from darkness to
enlightenment.
The autobiography, Adha Lekha Dastabej, is unusual, mapping
and revealing the complex and contradictory relations within the
discourse of religion, nationalism as well as negotiations and strug
gles concerning diverse forms of gendered violence and oppression,
and against patriarchal tendencies predominant in society. As
evident, female agency and feminist subjectivity predominate
Goswami’s life, as she took control of life time and again while
radically challenging the received socio-historical knowledge in the
process of carving out an identity for herself amidst taut cultural
and socio-historical practices.
REFERENCES
Althuser, Louis, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, Lenin and

Philosophy and Other Essays, New York: Monthly Review, 1971, pp. 127
86.
Bhabha, Homi, Nation and Narration, New York: Routledge, 1990.
Chatterjee, Partha, ‘Colonialism, Nationalism, and Colonialized Women: The
Contest in India’, American Ethnologist 16.4 (1989), pp. 622-33.
Dasgupta, Shamita, A Patchwork Shawl: Chronicles of South Asian Women in
America, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
Denton, Lynn Tesky and Steve Collins, Female Ascetics in Hinduism, Albany:
SUNY Press, 2004.
Derrida, Jacques, Acts of Religion, tr. Gil Anidjar, New York: Routledge, 2002.
Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York:
Pantheon, 1977.
Gairola, R. ‘Burning with Shame: Desire and South Asian Patriarchy, from
Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” to Deepa Mehta’ “Fire”’,
Comparative Literature 54.4 (2002), pp. 307-24.
Gohain, Hiren, ‘Review: Ineffable Mystery’, Indian Literature 33.1 (135)
(1990), pp. 139-45.
Goswami, Indira, An Unfinished Autobiography, tr. Gayatri Bhattacharjee,
Kolkata: Cambridge Publishers, 2010.
——, The Blue-Necked God, New Delhi: Zubaan, 2013.
Hubert, Henri, and Marcel Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press (Midway Reprints), 1981.
Hyde, Lewis, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, New York:
Vintage, 1979.
Irigaray, Luce, ‘Women on the Market’, The Logic of the Gift: Towards an Ethic of
Generosity, ed. Alan D. Schrift, New York: Routledge, 1997, pp. 174-89.
Marx, Karl, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, tr. Samuel
Moore and Edward Aveling, ed. Frederick Engels, New York: Inter
national Publishers, 1947.
Nandy, Ashis, ‘Sati as Profit Versus Sati as a Spectacle: The Public Debate on
Roop Kanwar’s Death?’, Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of
Wives in India, ed. John Stratton Hawley, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1994, pp. 131-49.
Nietzche, Friedrich Wilhelm, On the Genealogy of Morals, tr. Walter Arnold
Kaufmann New York: Vintage, 1967.
Rubin, Gayle, ‘The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex’,
Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter, New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1975.
Singh, Santosh, A Passion for Flames, Jaipur: RBSA Publishers, 1989.
Spivak, Gayatri Chalravorty, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, Colonial Discourse and
Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman,
New York: Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 66-111.
C H A P T E R 15
Veiled Voices: Semi-Autobiographies of

Yemeni Writers Nadia al-Kawkabani
and Shatha al-Khateeb
HATEM MOHAMMED HATEM AL-SHAMEA
Writing women’s autobiographies in a country like Yemen remains

huge challenge considering that the Yemeni tradition limits the
space of women, particularly the literary space. Women’s writing
is considered a ‘shame’ because it enables the writer to reveal his/
her ‘self ’. Women’s writings, as Nawal El Saadawi argues, ‘reveal
the self, what is hidden inside, just as it tries to see the other’
(345). The two Yemeni novelists, Shatha al-Khateeb and Nadia
al-Kawkabani, in this regard, challenged such traditions and started
writing on the women’s identity and their situational positions in
Yemeni society. Women’s writing is considered as a rebellions act
against the unjust tradition. El Saadawi says, ‘The written word
for me became an act of rebellion against injustice exercised in the
name of religion, or moral, or love’ (352). Hence, as revolutionary
writers, both al-Kawkabani and al-Khateeb identified themselves
through some of their works. Like al-Kawkabani, al-Khateeb sought
to ‘reveal an aspect of [her] identity that was hidden in [her] tradi
tionally conservative closet when [she] chose to speak of [her]
experience’ (292). For instance, in her novel, Black Lily, Shatha
al-Khateeb traced her identity as a diasporic woman. Al-Khateeb
lives in Saudi Arabia and went to Jordan for pursuing her studies
at al-Batra’a University for women. Al-Khateeb uses narrative to
depict not only her story but also the story of all women who leave
their conservative society. She draws a picture of a conservative
woman who lives in a liberal society. Al-Khateeb is able to trans
258 Hatem Mohammed Hatem Al-Shamea
form narrative into ethical life that reflects her conservative family
and society. Both al-Khateeb and al-Kawkabani transformed and
extended the Yemeni tradition of self-preservation in creative nar
ratives. In her book, Writing a Woman’s Life, Caroline Gold Heilbrun
states four reasons for a woman to write her life-narratives, which
are the following:
[T]he woman herself may tell it, in what she chooses to call an autobiogra
phy; she may tell it in what she chooses to call fiction; a biographer, woman
or man, may write the woman’s life in what is called a biography; or the
woman may write her own life in advance of living it, unconsciously and
without recognizing or naming the process. . . . Women of accomplishment,
in unconsciously writing their future lived lives, or, more recently, in trying
honestly to deal in written form with lived past lives, have had to confront
power and control. Because this has been declared unwomanly, and because
many women would prefer (or think they would prefer) a world without
evident power or control, women have been deprived of the narratives, or the
texts, plots, or examples, by which they might assume power over—take
control of—their own lives. (11, 16-17)
Hence, writing an autobiography is a kind of recording of history
in a form of story that keeps a mutual link between past and present.
It is an open invitation to share life with those who are curious
about history and the past. It is as stated by Luci Tapahonson in
her autobiography, Saanii Dahataal that ‘. . . writing . . . is “mine,”
but a collection of many voices that range from centuries ago and
continue into the future’ (xii). This means that writing autobio
graphy is like watching a documentary that shows the recorded
history of individuals. An autobiography then turns the story of
individual to the story of a community. ‘Pre-contact indigenous
auto-biographical forms emphasize a communal rather than an
individual self; they often narrate a series of anecdotal moments
rather than a unified, chronological life story; and the may be
spoken, performed, painted, or otherwise crafted, rather than writ
ten’ (Wong 12).
VOICES BEHIND THE VEIL
The two Yemeni writers, al-Kawkabani and al-Khateeb dared to

raise their voices from the dark veiled space. They did not fear their
Veiled Voices: Semi-Autobiographies of Yemeni 259
oppressive tradition. Both of them showed that Yemeni women
have the ability to raise their voice against patriarchal traditions
and challenge them.
While attempting to reveal her identity, al-Kawkabani gave a
picture of her personal memory and her political history in a way
that shows the real environment in which a Yemeni woman lives.
She tried to turn her autobiography into commune-biography mak
ing intimate stories that intertwined with her own. Reading their
autobiographies makes the reader feels that he/she is reading the
story of every Yemeni woman. The multi-voices that intermingle
with the narrator’s voice create a picture of the entire social and
political situation in Yemen. The different spaces that both writers
deliberately create are to show the unlimited space that a woman
has to share with her male partner. In this sense, when a Yemeni
woman writes her autobiography, she tries not to cross the border
of the tripartite taboo, ‘religion, politics and sex’.
However, not just the Yemini women but all Arab women in
general are politically and religiously marginalized. Dallel Sarnou
argues that Arab women ‘. . . are not only marginalized by religious-
cultural norms, but are also excluded by domineering male-
manipulated regimes. The censor, eventually, is common and is
one: patriarchy’ (2).
Like al-Khateeb, al-Kawkabani produced a narrative that depicted
life experience during some exceptional historical periods. She
sought self-realization that she experienced after the collapse of al-
Mutawakliah monarchy. The situation became severely violent and
led to more military clashes. She urges the reader to reread about
the outcome of the revolution. She traced the reasons that were
beyond the political clashes in 1967 after the end of the Yemeni
revolution. She showed that the position of women was still re
stricted as much as it was before the revolution. Moving smoothly
through her narrative, the reader explores the setback of the revo
lution and finds out that the primary reason is the absence of
woman involved in the revolution.
Al-Kawkabani illustrates the need for re-examining and re-evalu
ating the past political history during and after the revolution in
Yemen. In her semi-autobiographal novel, al-Kawkabani called for
re-evaluating the socio-political identity that seemed to decline
due to the setback of the Yemeni revolution in 1962. The political
events in Yemen left a severe impact on the women’s social life.
Both writers show that a Yemeni woman confronted multiple
oppressions in their social life. She was under the control of her
conservative family, patriarchal tradition, religion, and political
authority all at the same time.
Al-Kawkabani had a distinctive style in writing about a woman’s
life. She let her reader go deep into the historical and political
events of Yemen. She employed folklore and traditions in her writ
ings. A reader finds himself immersed in detailed description of
some ancient places and political events. She made the reader an
observer and investigator who in his turn would start examining
the Yemeni society before and after the revolution. The reader stood
as a judge evaluating the situation, tracing the Yemeni women’s
life among suppressive traditions. Thus, one sees Hdiah’s attempt
to model her behaviour sometimes on that of her grandmother
who is Ethiopian, and sometimes on her Yemeni mother. She also
bore the same love of her father for his hometown, Sana.
Both writers leave their texts open ended for the reader to draw
his or her conclusion. They give freedom to the reader to choose
the best possible ending for what he/she has read.
The autobiographical text is always a mirror of the writer’s mind.
It reflects the inner self of the writer. It also reveals the hidden
stories of the author that he/she experiences in life. In this sense,
al-Khateeb brings out her self-experience in al-Batra’a University.
Both, al-Khateeb and al-Kawkabani used anonymous names to
retell their love story. They attempted to challenge the Yemeni
restricted traditions and break them off. They uncovered the secret
sides of women’s private life that many men were curious to know
about. At the same time men found such writing shameful and a
savage challenge to their traditions.
According to Yemeni tradition, men are dominant making re
strictive rules for women to follow. Women are considered inferior
to men and they have to follow those patriarchal rules. However,
after the Yemeni revolution on the 26 September 1962, Yemeni
woman started writing poetry and novels. They started writing
anonymously to avoid the violent and aggressive reactions of the
radical men who still believed in their backward traditions. In
fact, in Yemeni history there are two Yemeni queens who ruled the
country; one in the pre-Islam period and the second in the post-
Islam era. The periods of their reign are till date celebrated by the
Yemenis—men and women alike. Interestingly, the holy Koran
confirms and praises the Yemeni Queen, Balqees’ ruling era. It
does not condemn a woman’s right in politics.
Yemeni women’s writings guide us to fathom and critically study
their cultural positions. We need to relocate them within a larger
social context as they have been subjected to unjust laws and trad
itions. Islam has given equal rights to both men and women yet
some uninitiated folks deny women their rights. The patriarchal
society refuses to break their traditional taboos. Misunderstanding
of Islam makes them believe in tradition rather than religion. They
consider relegion was part of tradition and therefore do not go
against it. Women are denied the right to inheritance. Men do
not want to share their properties with their brothers-in-law. So,
they sometimes get them married within the family. They prefer
endogamous marriage rather than exogamous for their female rela
tives. Some men ‘. . . endeavour to maintain the integrity of fam
ily holdings, chiefly by persuading women to cede share to their
male relatives, by brothers making their patrimony a joint estate
(khushrah), or by making their land a family “waqf ” (waqf
dhuriyyah), the overall trend is for property to become fragmented
over time’ (Weir 18).
According to the Yemeni tradition, Yemeni women are not al
lowed to see their future husbands before wedlock. They can only
see them on their wedding night. However, women in the cities
have challenged such restrictions. In contrast, women in the rural
areas still struggle to get their rights. In general women cannot refuse
a polygamous marriage. Their male relatives decide whether or not
to accept the polygamous marriage for their daughters or sisters.
Even though Islam gives a woman the right to decide whom to
marry, there are many who are oppressed and deprived of such
rights.
There are also some women who attempt to find their identity
through their culture which is considered as a backdrop to their
own identity. Those women attempt to fill in the gaps that have
been created between women in the present and in the past. Their
religious affiliation has inspired them to confront the patriarchal
hegemony that takes advantage of women’s illiteracy. It is an at
tempt to distinguish between who they are and who they were,
so that they can posit themselves where they should be in their
future lives. Yemeni women challenge patriarchy through culture
to identify themselves with the ‘other’. Halls says ‘identities are
the names we give to the different way we are positioned by, and
position ourselves within, the narrative of the past’ (225).
While Yemeni women struggle to confront their religious op
pression, it is assumed that their freedom is actually a new Euro
pean conspiracy against the Yemeni culture. Women’s voices are
looked down upon by the tradition bound Yemeni society as a
frontal attack on their culture. This is very clear in al-Khateeb’s
Black Lily when she pointed out that the women’s space was lim
ited to her house and that was all.
Both al-Kawkabani and al-Khateeb attempted to show the situa
tion and the polity of the Yemeni society through their characters.
The main characters in both the semi-autobiographies illustrate
their ability to break the taboos of tradition by pursuing their
studies abroad. Further, they started interacting with males out
side their families which is considered a taboo in Yemeni society.
However, these women wanted to unshackle the patriarchal chains
that enslaved women through tradition and resisted male domina
tion. The patriarchal society could no longer stop their aspirations.
Al-Khateeb focused in her novel on the space given to a woman
in the two societies—conservative and open society. She depicted
a woman in the conservative society as a woman who could not
break her restricted traditions as apposed to a woman who moves
freely within the society. Al-Kawkabani depicted a brave woman
as the one who fought for her rights and broke the traditional
taboos. Both the writers critique the pervent and fanatic minds
operational within the Yemini society.
In al-Kawkabani’s My Sanae, the heroine, Hadhian was con
fused as regards to her choice between a married man and a single
man. In both the novels, the reader observes that women did not
consider huge age difference between them and their men as a
hurdle. If they are attracted to someone emotionally, they are also
willing to overlook polygamy. It is normally accepted in Islamic
community that a man can marry four women and live with them
together in separate houses or in one house if they feel comfort
able.
For al-Kawkabani, the 1962 revolution in Yemen was a ray of
hope not only because it ousted the Imamate rule, but for a new
life for both men and women. Yemenis had a dream of freedom
that would bring food, medicine, education and social justice to
all people. Women thought that they would have unlimited space
and participate in political decision-making. That they would sup
port men not just as wives and mothers. But their hopes faded
with the approach of some extremist groups that came from both
Iran and Saudi Arabia. These two countries exploited the poverty
of the people and their illiteracy. They planted extremist beliefs in
the minds of Yemeni emigrants who went there for work. Those
some workers came back with hardened ideologies and beliefs.
Contradicting the Islamic scriptures, the Koran and Hadith that
permits women to participate in politics, the clerics deny them
that right, trying to limit woman. Al-Khateeb presents two sides
of a woman’s life, the social life and scientific life. Living in a radi
cal and severely patriarchal society like Saudi Arabia, al-Khateeb
avoided talking about the political role and life of women. Thus
she attempts to deal only with women’s relationship with her fam
ily and friends; her role in school and university and her newly
gained identity in Jordan.
While, al-Kawkabani skilfully linked her semi-autobiography
to the history of her country. She attempted to historicize in detail
every political and cultural event in her country as she handed out
those details to the next generation. Her attempt to guide her
people to restore their glorious revolution is seen in all her works.
Interestingly, al-Kawkabani revealed her emotional life in her revo
lutionary efforts. This technique kept the reader living her story to
its fullest. Thus, Yemeni women have succeeded in creating their
own literary space wherein they have resisted all kinds of social
taboos and reaped success in the fields of literature and education.
REFERENCES
Al-Kawkabani, Nadia, My Sana’a, Sana’a: Obadi Publication, 2013.

Al-Khateeb, Shatha, Black Lily, Bairut, Lebanon: Darelfikr Alarabi, 2012.
El Saadawi, Nawal, Daughter of Isis: The Early Life of Nawal El Saadawi,
London and New York: Zed, 2009.
Smith, Sidonie, A Poetics of Women’s Autobiography: Marginality and the Fictions
of Self-representation, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
Tapahonso, Luci, Saanii Dahataal/The Women Are Singing. Sun Tracks, vol. 23,
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1993.
Weir, Shelagh, A Tribal Order Politics and Law in the Mountains of Yemen,
Austin: University of Texas, 2007.
Wong, Hertha D., Sending My Heart Back Across the Years: Tradition and
Innovation in Native American Autobiography, New York: Oxford
C H A P T E R 16
Breaking the Silence: Tehmina

Durrani’s My Feudal Lord
RUBINA IQBAL
Our closed society considered it obscene for a woman to reveal her

intimate secrets, but would not silence be a greater crime?
TEHMINA DURRANI
The above lines from Tehmina Durrani’s memoir, sets the tone for
her personal narrative. She is a Pakistani women’s rights activist
and social worker who has made her indelible mark in the field
of autobiography with My Feudal Lord (1991). Her life story high
lights the malaise affecting democracy in Pakistan in the form of
a feudal value system which has penetrated deep into society weak
ening its very foundation. She also attacks the malignant and
exploitative patriarchy that has been thriving on the silence of Muslim
women for centuries.
Through her honest articulation, Durrani refuses to be the mirror
through which the male voice speaks. ‘The mirror is a pre-written
text, speaking the patriarchal language and inscribed with patriar
chal values: in it “woman” is “written,” and to it women must attend
in order to reflect adequately what is already there’ (Hausman
205-6).
The genre of autobiography offers Durrani space and liberty to be
vocal about the exploitation and ill treatment, she faced in society
on private and public fronts. Writing empowers her and helps in
the formulation of her identity. For many women, access to writ
ing one’s autobiography means access to the process of identity
266 Rubina Iqbal
construction. Therefore, the distinction between self-representa
tion as a political discourse and self-representation as an artistic
practice is less important than their simultaneity of function in a
particular culture and for specific audiences says Leigh Gilmore in
Autobiographics (qtd. in Beard 1).
Autobiographies are modes of self-representation where binaries
between writing as artistic venture and as political and social dis
course melt to form another kind of discourse. In On Autobiography,
Phillipe Lejeune defines autobiography as a ‘. . . retrospective prose
narrative written by a real person concerning his own existence,
where the focus is his individual life, in particular the story of his
personality’ (Lejeune 4).
In her memoir, Durrani got the opportunity to travel inward
to recreate a new edifice from her shattered being and celebrate
the essence of womanhood and femininity. It also captures the
ethos and the mood of the period in which it was written. She
furnished this work with great details about the tenure of Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto and the military regime of Zia ul-Haque. Thus, her
narrative becomes important in the field of new historiography as
it gives the perspective of a marginalized class during a tumultuous
phase in Pakistan’s political history. This text has been translated
into thirty-nine languages since its publication, which in itself
endorses its popularity.
A beautiful woman with a charismatic personality, Durrani is
tortured and made to live a hellish life. She wrote her life story to
cast stones at feudal hypocrisy and break the traditional silence of
women about their victimization. By highlighting the mechanism
of oppression, she looked for social and political change. With the
release of this book, she became Pakistan’s most powerful feminist
voice.
Durrani’s commitment to the social cause is also reflected in her
second book A Mirror to the Blind (1996). It is the biography of the
Pakistani social worker Abdul Sattar Edhi. Her third work Blas
phemy (1998) is a controversial novel which exposes the secret lives
of the Muslim clerics and spiritual leaders. Durrani proclaimed
that the facts presented in it were verified and only names had
been changed to protect those women who were at the centre of
Breaking the Silence: Tehmina Durrani’s My Feudal Lord 267
the story. This book looks critically at the traditional practice of
Nikah Halala. She described several cases where this provision had
resulted in the humiliation and torture of Muslim women.
Tehmina Durrani belonged to the elite of Karachi. She was the
daughter of the former Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, and
the former Chairman of Pakistan International Airlines, Shakir Ullah
Durrani. Her mother Samina’s grandfather was prime minister of
the court of the Maharaja of Patiala. Samina was a very domineer
ing woman who loved her children but on her own terms. She
believed in immaculate images and instant submission and hated
denial in any form.
Durrani’s relationship with her mother was a strained one. She
was not her mother’s favourite child as she was dark, whereas her
mother and other siblings were quite fair. Since the very begin
ning, her mother could also sense a radical streak in her. She proved
her mother right through her decisions to choose life partners by
going against her family and subsequently her divorces from Anees
Khan and Mustafa Khar. Durrani married three times and sought
divorce twice.
Her first marriage with Anees Khan was against the desire of
her influential family. At that time, she was barely seventeen and
studying in a boarding school at Murrie. Anees’s family background
was very ordinary. He was a mere junior executive, earning a paltry
wage of 800 rupees (about 8 pounds) per month, whereas Durrani’s
parents were looking for a much better match. But her swarthy
complexion came to her rescue as Pathans were generally found to
be very handsome and fair. It was difficult to find a good match for
her from the family of Pathans who usually looked for exceptional
beauty in a girl. She was not even engaged at the age of seventeen
and her mother was afraid that she might remain a spinster, which
was the worst humiliation for a Pakistani woman. So, her parents
agreed to this alliance.
Durrani introspects about her marriage with Anees and finds
that love was not the reason for her wedding rather her desire to
escape from the bondage of her traditional family. Though Anees
was a very understanding man, he lacked the dynamism and
charisma that she was looking for in her life partner. While she was
268 Rubina Iqbal
married to Anees, she met a powerful politician Mustafa Khar at a
party. She was enamoured by his mesmerizing and dominant per
sonality and started meeting him secretly while she was still mar
ried to Anees. Her candid confession of betraying her husband
and her guilt of being the other woman in Khar’s life are few epi
sodes of this narrative which endorse its honest revelation. Khar
was a married man and Sherry was his fifth wife. Mustafa Khar was
an authoritarian, overbearing, and extremely conservative, a com
plete opposite of Anees Khan. Sherry was living a subjugated and
pathetic life as Khar considered his wives his private property with
out any feelings and opinion of their own. Durrani knew about
Sherry’s unhappy marriage, but willingly fell into Khar’s seductive
trap.
In a mode of self-confession, she frankly admits that she was
beguiled by her own false perception that she would be a compatible
match for Khar. She was convinced that, ‘. . . the failure was with
Sherry, not Mustafa. She was simply not woman enough for this
charismatic, powerful man’ (62). She married Khar after getting a
divorce from Anees Khan. Khar’s strong and dynamic personality
bewitched her as he was in total contrast to her father’s weak role
in her family. But there was a dark side to him, which she had
overlooked. He was abusive and violent not only to his wife, but
also to his subordinates. He beat the servants on the slightest pretext
and in one instance, put red chilli powder into his maid Ayesha
Dai’s private parts because she had annoyed him.
Khar’s father Yar Khan was a wealthy landlord. The Khars realized
the importance of political connection to legitimize their authority
and safeguard their interest, thus Mustafa joined politics and stood
for a seat in the National assembly at the age of twenty-four. Durrani
attacks the autocratic regime in Pakistan and writes, ‘But in Pakistan,
although lip service was paid to democratic principles, feudal lords
remained in control. It was they who decided who would sit in the
national assembly and who would reside in the prime minister’s
house’ (41). Aristocracy ensured a system of slavery by creating
dependencies for peasants in feudal interest, generating a culture
of feudal impunity. At that time 75 per cent of the Pakistani parlia
ment was composed of landowners.
Under Bhutto’s prime ministership in 1973, Khar was given the
office of the chief minister of Punjab province. Durrani’s relation
with Mustafa Khar gave her an opportunity to talk about the state
of politics in Pakistan. Since the very inception of Pakistan in 1947,
Muslim League was dominated by zamindars, nawabs and feudal
lords. ‘Political office is inherited in Pakistan. The provincial and
national by assemblies were dominated by feudal landowners’ says
Manzur Ejaz, a political economist. Democracy in Pakistan has to
go a long way before the feudal system can be dismantled. ‘The
group of narrow minded and backward feudal class does not allow
the development of a modern state. And no outdated class dies
without putting up a fight’, says Pakistani author Shaukat Qadir.
Her move to spend time with Mustafa while she was still in the
nikah of Anees was adultery for which Islam pronounces stoning
that woman to death. Her secret marriage with Khar was against
the teaching of the Koran, as no witness was present and they did
not announce their wedding publicly. She knew all this in her
heart, but her emotions overrode her common sense, morality and
decency.
In this frankly written autobiography she exposed her guilt
stricken conscience when she talks about her meeting with Mustafa
while Anees was still her husband, ‘I felt an underlying guilt. Cheat
ing on a man was an unnatural situation for me’ (71). Besides, she
felt that by displacing Sherry from her rightful place as the wife of
Mustafa Khar when she was expecting a child, was a sin for which
God punished her through her ordeal. According to Olney, ‘This
artistic activity helps the autobiography in determining true identity
and enables her/him to bring out an accurate picture of herself/
himself. The self-preferentiality of autobiography is also self-inter
rogative and thus a work beginning in self-depiction ends in a
deeper knowledge of the self ’ (150).
This memoir has been divided into four sections and each section
deals with one phase of Durrani’s life. The first part ‘Introduction’
contains details of her passion for Anees and her first marriage. It
also contains the account of her strained relationship with her par
ents. The second part entitled ‘Law of the Jungle’ provides details
of her married life with Khar, his political exile in Britain and her
support to her husband’s political ideology.
Mustafa’s values were steeped in a medieval milieu—a mix of
270 Rubina Iqbal
prejudices and superstitions. He had a predefined notion of the
role of the wife in a husband’s life. According to the feudal trad
ition a wife was honour bound to live her life as per her husband’s
whims. He treated his wives as commodity and ruled them auto
cratically. He justified his claim by quoting from the Koran. He
asserted that the Koran says ‘A woman was like a man’s land’, so he
considered them in functional terms and rejected them if they
were barren. Durrani accuses him of distorting Koranic verses and
using them for his own vested interest. She believes that land should
be tended and cultivated with love and care, and then only, ‘. . . it
produces in abundance. Otherwise, it would be barren’ (107).
Khar was a very possessive and jealous husband who did not
like Durrani’s contact with the external world and so he kept her
cloistered and suppressed. She was not even allowed to read news
papers. She was forced to give the custody of her daughter Tanya
born from her first marriage to her former husband to save her
from any danger from Mustafa which tortured her throughout her
life.
Tehmina’s first encounter with this violent, abusive and brutal
Khar was a shocking discovery, ‘I had fallen into the classical trap
of the Pakistani woman. The goal is marriage and, once achieved,
the future is a life of total subordination. I had no power, no rights,
no will of my own’ (100). There was no end to his atrocities against
her. He used to beat her up savagely at her slightest fault or sensing
any sense of denial. He used to hit her if food was late or not good,
if his clothes were not ironed properly. He even assaulted her in
the hospital just two hours after the delivery of her child because
she complained against his behaviour.
In the course of her thirteen years of marriage with Mustafa,
she suffered alone, in silence. She felt like a conditioned zombie.
Her husband pulled all her strings like a puppet master and she
danced to his tune. According to Tahire S. Khan,
Feudals have a high sense of masculinity and power and therefore, a woman’s
defiance and rebellion are considered a monstrous act that can shake the
foundations of respect and esteem of the men of the family, whether man of
a feudalist or peasant family living in rural settings, or upper or lower class
man living in Urban centres. Men of the family from each strata of society in
these regions do not hesitate to soak their hands in the blood of their own
female blood relatives. (53)
Durrani tried hard to keep her troubled marriage intact and
strove to hide her feelings and bruises from the world as divorce
was a stigma in her society, ‘A Pakistani woman will endure almost
anything in order to hold a marriage together. In our society,
marriages maybe purgatory, but divorce is hell’ (77).
She never got the support of her family and parents, save her
brother Asim Durrani. She felt that ‘The system of patriarchy can
function only with the cooperation of women. This cooperation is
secured by a variety of means: gender indoctrination, educational
depravation, the denial of knowledge to women of their history,
the dividing of women . . .’ (Khan 56).
Her suffering was beyond endurance when she came to know
about Khar’s illicit affair with her youngest sister Adila. His infi
delity shook her, she left his house and sought a divorce from him
which he refused. He asked for her forgiveness and promised to
mend his ways. The constant persuasion and remorse made her
forgive him and she agreed to come back. She put a condition
before him to sign an agreement that gave her right to divorce
and the custody of the children if he broke his promise which he
willingly made. After that, he started to behave like an ideal hus
band and convinced her that a child born in this phase of their
relationship will be special. Thus, Hamza was born. Soon after her
pregnancy, Khar returned to his same violent and abusive self.
Durrani found it beyond her endurance.
She gradually realized her role in her effacement and subjuga
tion and turned into a lioness as described by her in the chapter
titled ‘The Lioness’. This third section, focuses on the last phase of
her relationship with Khar. Here, she metamorphoseed from a
meek, subservient woman into a potent and strong being and raised
her voice against injustice and exploitation. She longed to create
an identity of her own—not as a daughter, a wife or a mother but
as an individual.
The second time when she decided to get a separation from her
husband, Khar kidnapped her children and sent them off to
Pakistan. His condition for returning her children was that she should
272 Rubina Iqbal
not ask for separation. Her motherly love won over her sense of self-
respect and dignity and she returned to him. After that, Khar
came back to Pakistan from his political exile in England and was
arrested.
At this juncture, Durrani took the reign of her husband’s party
in her own hands. She became her husband’s comrade in the real
sense of the word when she fought with Zia-ul Haque’s administra
tion to procure Khar’s release from political imprisonment. This
was completely manipulated by Mustafa who was receiving royal
treatment in jail and controlled Durrani from there. He dictated
and controlled every move of hers. Durrani ran from pillar to post
to meet his unjust and inhuman demands. When, she was suffering
from some ailment to do with her breast and wanted to be treated
by the best doctor, Mustafa asked her to visit a local physician to
keep her close to himself. At one point, she had gynaecological
issues for which Khar insisted on her to consluting only a female
gynaecologist in spite of knowing her own doctor’s efficiency. In
one of their meetings in jail, Mustafa even forced himself on Durrani
and she winced in pain because her stitches were still tender after
her recent uterus surgery which she had to undergo because excessive
childbearing had created problems.
Khar was released from prison due to Durrani’s relentless efforts
but he started meeting Adila again, even though she was married
now. He even tried to save himself from the charges of infidelity
through lies and hypocrisy. During this time, Durrani’s only moral
support, her grandmother died of lung cancer. She was already
forsaken by her family, a very conservative and opportunistic lot.
Durrani felt forlorn and battered and finally decided to leave
Mustafa forever. It was not an easy step, ‘A divorcee in Pakistan
society is always a prime target for malicious gossips, wagging
tongues and leering glances turned me into a recluse’ (85). When
she decided to rebel finally, she paid a huge price for it. Mustafa
threatened her that their divorce would turn her into a pariah.
Durrani’s entry into normal households would be banned as her
very presence would be considered a threat to their marriages. In
her culture, speaking about love and divorce was a taboo and
accusations were levelled at females only. But this time, she decided
not to give up. She was divorced from Mustafa Khar after her two
previous failed attempts. His uncountable sins left no room for
forgiveness, ‘I will never return’, I vowed. ‘No matter what’, she
reiterated (367). She was without shelter and money and projected
as a bad woman who cooked up stories of her husband’s extramarital
affair to appear innocent but she remained confident to fight her
battle.
Durrani was forced to sign all essential documents to transfer
the ownership of all their properties in England and Pakistan to
her husband Mustafa Khar. She also lost the custody of her four
children. There was no one to support her from her family and
friends. She turned, into a social and political outcast. She wrote,
‘I shuddered at the realization of the position that a woman falls
into after divorce—especially if her ex-husband is an important
person. Increasingly, I understood why women dare not break away’
(372). But nothing could stop her from freeing herself from Khar,
neither emotion nor financial and social deprivation.
Durrani realized that on the political front too, Mustafa was a
philanderer. He abandoned his mentor Bhutto when the latter
needed him the most. Khar took political asylum in Britain to save
himself and left Bhutto at the mercy of his enemies. Mustafa
stealthily made a deal with the Indian administration to defeat his
own army. He committed a plethora of political backstabbing
and then covered them with empty rhetoric and his charismatic
persona. He compromised with his principles and used all shortcuts
to be in power.
This work also shows a streak of Islamic feminism in Durrani’s
craving for an independent identity under the aegis of Islamic teach
ings. She ventured to highlight how feudal lords manipulated the
teachings of Islam to attain their end. Mustafa was very selective as
far as Koranic teachings were concerned. She never complained
against Islamic teachings which Khar manipulated discriminating
on the basis of sex but rather found solace in prayer and Koranic
recitations. At the time of her divorce, when she felt alienated and
lost she left everything in the hands of God and prayed to Him ‘to
avenge me’ (Durrani 368) as He did Imam Hussain.
Durrani felt that by breaking her silence and sharing her experi
274 Rubina Iqbal
ences of trauma she was on the path of Islam because to suffer
injustice and humiliation silently was more sinful than the act of
exploitation and violence itself. This memoir is an onslaught on
Patriarchy and Feudalism besides exposing the naked truth of
politics in Pakistan. The third focal point of this book is reinterpre
tation of Koranic teachings. ‘For me blasphemy is when the word
of God and the teachings of the Holy Prophet Peace Be Upon Him
(PBUH) are distorted. What could be more Blasphemous than
that?’ (The Express Tribune, 25 February 2013). She talked about
Khar’s relationship with her sister Adila and repelled his sexual
advances in the light of the teachings of the Koran.
I stared over his shoulder and begged God to punish him. This is incest,
God. You have forbidden a man to have a relationship with two sisters at the
same time. It is in Your Koran. If you have made this rule, then you will
never allow this to happen to me again. Never allow this man to touch me
again. (Durrani 355-6)
It shows her immense faith in her religion. Durrani says that

this book was not her vengeance against her tormentors, rather it
recaptured her journey, her struggle before she could emerge as a
wise, strong and liberated human being. ‘It was all so strange. Our
family full of intrigues and deception backbiting and backstabbing,
was a microcosm of Pakistani society. The rule was simple; Do
whatever you want to do, just blanket it’ (345).
In her scathing and bitter attack on feudalism, she said that
feudal lords were absolute rulers in Pakistan who could justify any
action, ‘Feudalism was a license to plunder, rape and even murder.
The rich got richer; the poor despaired’ (Durrani 40). She felt
disgusted at the way ‘. . . some feudal families utilized Islam as a
weapon of control. The patriarchs were venerated as Holy men,
who spoke with Allah’ (Durrani 40-1).
After her divorce, she decided to publicly narrate the details of
her personal life which was a saga of torture and humiliation.
Against the centralized and unified narrative of hegemony, Durrani
posited her own perspective to challenge patriarchy and feudal
values of dominant groups thus filling the gap in history.
She finally liberated herself from the rigid confinement of her
house where she was considered a repository of all values and be
came free at the end. Her story does not show her as an upholder
of woman’s liberation rather an ordinary Muslim woman who
learned about herself and her role in society during the writing of
this memoir. The genre of autobiography acted like a redemptive
medium that could also provide a site for ‘cultural critique and
social change’ says Bergland (162). Durrani found the inner strength
to fight for herself and challenged the restrictions of a male-
oriented, conservative society. Her personal writing was a resistance
narrative on behalf of a whole lot of Pakistani women who faced
exploitation and violence irrespective of class and caste. Women
autobiographers see their own identities as part of their struggle to
challenge hegemony; women writing these genres create autobio
graphical acts of political and narrative resistance defying cultural
and social images with predefined roles thus fighting with episte
mological violence.
In this polemic against her culture and society Durrani exhorts,
‘Muslim women must learn to raise their voices against injustice’
because ‘. . . silence condones injustice, breeds subservience and
fosters a malignant hypocrisy. Mustafa Khar and other feudal lords
thrive and multiply on silence’ (Durrani 375). She tried hard to
locate herself outside hegemonic space and speak for herself as an
individual. Like a character in Women Between Mirrors, she moves
on with words of Helena Parente Cunha echoing in her mind:
From now on I’m going to be free of any sort of preconception. I need to
enjoy the life I’ve been banished from. I’m going to continue creating my
reality of independence in the same way I invented my submission. . . . I
refuse to consider myself tied to a total psychological coherence and I pro
claim the union of opposites. (Cunha 83)
REFERENCES
Beard, Laura J., Acts of Narrative Resistance, Project Muse: 2009, Web
2 January 2018.
Bergland, Betty, ‘Postmodernism and Autobiographical Subject: Reconstruct
ing the “Other”, Autobiography and Postmodernism, ed. Katheline Ashley,
276 Rubina Iqbal
Leigh Gilmore and Gerald Peters, Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 1994.
Cunha, Helena Parente, Mulher no Espelho, Sao Paulo: Art Editora, 1983,
Woman Between Mirrors, tr. Fred P. Ellison and Naomi Lindstrom,
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989.
Durrani, Tehmina, My Feudal Lord, London: Corgi Edition, 1995.
Hausman, Bernice L., ‘Words between Women: Victoria Ocampo and Virginia
Interview of Tehmina Durrani, The Express Tribune, 25 February 2013, Web
2 January 2018.
Khan, Tahire S., Beyond Honour: A Historical Materialist Explanation of Honour
Related Violence, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Lejeune, Philippe, On Autobiography, tr. Katherine Leary, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Manzoor, Ejaz and Shaukat Qadir in Ali Mustafa’s ‘Pakistan’s Fight against
Feudalism’, Web 29 December 2017. <www.aljazeera.com>
Olney, James, Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical, Princeton: Princeton
Valis, Noel and Carol Maier, In the Feminine Mode: Essays on Hispanic Women
Writers, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1990.
C H A P T E R 17
Re-Reading Azar Nafisi’s Memoir

Things I’ve Been Silent About
S H A I S TA M A N S O O R
Every man’s life may be best written by himself.

JOHNSON
Autobiography, an important literary genre of contemporary times

that gained impetus in the early twentieth century, had originated
much earlier. William Mathews in his article entitled ‘Seventeenth
Century Autobiography’ is of the opinion that it had originated in
the seventeenth century, though at that time it was usually written
either for personal record or to address limited readers which usually
included friends or relatives. Mathews further refers to Benvenuto
Cellini who had started his autobiography with the declaration
that stated, ‘It is duty on upright and credible men of all ranks,
who have performed anything noble or praiseworthy, to record in
their own writing the events of their lives’ (1). An autobiography
is devoted entirely to the purpose of revealing the inner self as well
as narrating experiences, which indirectly give us extensive view of
the person as well as the socio-political scenario of the time when
the autobiography was written. So along with writing autobiogra
phies or any other such personal writings, reading them also
became an important literary task. Autobiographical writings there
by became an important tool for peeping into the life and culture
of people.
Like all other literary genres, autobiographical writings were
introduced only by men. Credible men, as said by Benvenuto
278 Shaista Mansoor
Cellini, wrote about their success stories to immortalize their fame
and influence people through their writing. They were seen fol
lowed by common men from all over the world, who usually chose
writing autobiography to make their plight and postion in the
society known to the world. Women had also started writing auto
biographies long ago, but they were not as successful as women
of recent times are. One of the first women to write an autobio
graphy was Margaret Cavendish in 1656, but her book was not
received positively unlike her male counterparts. However, in the
early twentieth century autobiographical writings by women have
gained importance. Women from all corners of the world and from
all walks of the life began to write about their life. Most of the
women autobiographical writings were their testimonies which
recorded their position as the society’s ‘other’.
Muslim women have started to write their inner narratives quite
recently. However, it may be noted that the word ‘Muslim’ is fairly
novel in English literature considering they were earlier catego
rized under the genre of ethnic fiction or non-fiction. Muslims
were confined to the status of Edward Said’s ‘Cultural Other’ or
Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Subaltern’, and they were either entirely absent
or subjugated in literary hierarchy. But after 9/11, a new wave of
interest was born in the life of Muslims. People from all over the
world especially from First World countries wrote about this par
ticular religious sect, mostly in a derogatory tone. This judgemental
attitude towards Muslims incited them to put forward their own
point of view through fictional and non-fictional writings. Women
followed men in their mode of representation of self and their
communities. Muslim women were doubly devalued, first for being
women and then for being Muslims. But despite their marginali
zation, these women tried to break conventions and presented their
concerns through their writings. Their works gained fame in no time,
people were interested in knowing the inner stories of Muslims,
which gave these works a large readership and helped them to
carve out a unique position in the literary canon.
Azar Nafisi is one such Muslim woman, who used the genre of
autobiography effectively to portray herself, her native society and
culture. Azar Nafisi is an Iranian born American writer, who gained
Re-Reading Azar Nafisi’s Memoir 279
eminence with the publication of her much controversial memoir
Reading Lolita in Tehran in 2003. Nafisi was born in one of the
upper class families of Iran, which gave her the opportunity to
study outside Iran from the age of thirteen. She was initially sent
to Lancaster, after which she moved to Switzerland and Oklahoma
respectively to complete her studies. She went back to Iran in 1979
after the Islamic Revolution and started teaching at University of
Tehran. Reading Lolita in Tehran centred on her life in Iran at the
time of the revolution, which changed Iran into an Islamic Re
public. The revolution of 1979 led to the downfall of the Shah
and Ayatollah Khomeini came into power as religious, political
and social leader who imposed strict Islamic rule over Iran. This
memoir of Azar Nafisi highlights the role of literature in the strict
and oppressed society of Iran, while focusing specifically on the
sufferings of people of Iran under the Islamic rule.
Things I’ve Been Silent About (2008) is a sort of companion
volume to Reading Lolita in Tehran. It is more of a memoir describ
ing the personal life of Azar Nafisi in Iran and her intellectual
and physical migration from Iran to America. In this memoir she
narrates her personal history in the backdrop of changing political
conditions of Iran. In the prologue of Things I’ve Been Silent About
Nafisi states,
I do not mean this book to be a political or social commentary, or a useful life
story. I want to tell the story of a family that unfolds against the backdrop of
a turbulent era in Iran’s political and cultural history. There are many stories
about these times, between the birth of my grandmother at the start
of twentieth century and my daughter’s birth at its end, marked by the two
revolutions that shaped Iran, causing so many divisions and contradictions
that transient turbulence became the only thing of permanence. (Nafisi xviii)
The memoir is divided into four major parts ‘Family Fictions’,
‘Lessons and Learning’, ‘My Father’s Jail’ and ‘Revolts and Revo
lution’—unfold the personal history of Azar Nafisi in an organized
way, focusing on major themes like the author’s relationship with
her parents, her life in era of post-Islamic Revolution in Iran and
changing religious and political scenario of the country. Through
this memoir, Nafisi tries to present a vivid picture of her social,
political and religious identity. In this vein, her memoir completely
280 Shaista Mansoor
fits in the description of the autobiographical writings given by
Aparna Lanjewar Bose who states:
The genre of autobiography provides opportunity to map spaces and record
past though based on selective memory but nevertheless deeply and intrinsi
cally interlinked with communities’ history. Whether they are narratives,
testimonies, memoirs, autobiographies one should not get into that debate
as what is predominant is the exposition of self that suffers from the vantage
point of self that feels the urgency to document. . . . Autobiographies of the
marginal celebrate the ordinary commonplace and thus become uniquely
representational of community celebrating life in all manifestations without
romanticizing. Therefore in individual identity lies the group identity. (55-6)
The most important subject around which Things I’ve Been Silent
About revolves is the changing political and social scenario of Iran.
With the advent of the Islamic rule in Iran, restrictions were im
posed on the people, many customs which had been common
earlier were considered as Western and anything Western was con
sidered as decadent. Life under Islamic rule was miserable, people
from all walks of life were affected. As rules and regulations be
came more strict, people felt suffocated. Islamic rule led to gender
segregation in Iran wherein womenfolk were affected in more ways
than men. Islamic republic of Iran was supremely patriarchal, hence,
men enjoyed some power and their lives were less restricted than
the women. Women were expected to be submissive to men. This
gender inequality and segregation was prevalent in the educational
institutes as well, which continues even to this day. One of the
women, Sima, who studies in Iran’s Women-only Seminary, de
scribes her experience about present-day Islamic rule in Iran. For
her, the ‘most painful’ experience was gender segregation. Male
teachers are separated from female students. ‘If teacher was a
man, they would set up a partition in the classroom. . . .’ She says
for her, the religious studies taught at Mashhad rely heavily on
gender segregation, ‘Female students must only mix with others of
their own sex and they can only guide other women’ (Ghajar,
para 11).
Women under the Islamic rule were reduced to the state of sub
servient objects; they were dominated by men of their families as
well as government vigilantes, who kept an eye on them every
moment. They were forced to cover themselves entirely from head
to toe, except their faces. Women were stopped from wearing any
makeup, laughing loudly in the public places and were even stopped
from walking fast on the roads; to be precise they were stopped
from doing anything that made them noticeable, and expected to
live an invisible life. Forcing Iranian women to cover themselves in
a veil was considered an act of suppression by Azar Nafisi as she
felt that wearing the veil ‘was about the freedom of choice. No
regime, no figure of authority, had the right to tell a woman how
to relate or not relate to God’ (Nafisi 292). Some women in Iran
used to veil themselves even before and during Shah’s rule but now
it was a compulsion. People who defied the Islamic rule in any way
were punished severely. The simple act of even putting on make
up led to floggings and fines. All this led to great resentment among
people against Islamic rule.
Even though little space in this volume is devoted to the dissection of the
politics of post-Revolutionary Iran, Ms. Nafisi does a deft job of showing
how Islamic fundamentalism changed people’s daily lives even as she traces
her own family’s political peregrinations. The author found her youthful
revolutionary dreams about liberating the proletariat turning to deep disillu
sionment with the rule of the mullahs, while her father, who had spent four
years in jail during the Shah’s regime, went from holding high hopes for the
revolution to believing that the mullahs were destroying Islam from within.
(Kakutani, ‘Family and Nation in Tumult’ 2)
This turbulent era led to the feeling of homelessness in many.
Like many other Iranians, Azar Nafisi felt rootless in the newly-
formed Islamic Republic of Iran. This drifting attitude in people
was deeply embedded in gender bias, which had been an integral
part of Iranian society even before the revolution but it intensified
in the post-Revolution era. Women faced different kinds of dis
crimination; their identity was reduced to nothing. There are various
instances in this memoir where different women question their
identity based on their gender. The statement ‘If only I were a
man’ is repeated several times throughout the memoir. This gender
inequality created discomfort among the inteligentsia and forced
many of them to go away to another country. Nafisi was one such
intellectual who lived an alienated life in the era of post-Revolu
282 Shaista Mansoor
tion, which the author herself admits by stating that ‘I had, partly
because of my sex and vocation, felt somewhat displaced, never
wholly at home’ (Nafisi 291). Nafisi, like many other Iranians,
decided to migrate to America with her family in order to live a
free and respectable life. Before leaving for America, she felt that
‘Home is not Home anymore. Our lives altered, not just by catas
trophe and carnage, but also by a different kind of violence, almost
imperceptible, that wormed its way into our normal everyday lives’
(Nafisi 227).
M.H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham have defined a memoir
as the biography written by author himself or herself, where focus
is not just on author’s ‘developing self ’ but also ‘. . . on the people
and events that the author has known or witnessed’ (Abrams,
Harpham 27). So the other major theme of Things I’ve Been Silent
About, apart from Iran’s socio-political state of affairs and its effect
on the identity of the author, is the relation Nafisi had with her
parents, especially her mother. Even the subtitle of this book,
‘Memoirs of a Prodigal Daughter’, refers to the prominence of this
theme. From the very beginning of the book one could sense lack
of cordiality between Nafisi and her mother. Nafisi’s mother, Nezhat
Nafisi, is suffering from a kind of loss which is the main cause of
almost all of the problems her family faces. Nafisi begins her memoir
with the description of ‘Saifi’, her mother’s first husband and son
of one of the prime ministers of Iran. The main point of this de
scription is that her mother has never ever been able to put her
marriage with Saifi behind her. Even Saifi’s death due to some
incurable disease, which was hidden from Nezhat at the time of
their marriage, did not bring her out of her imaginary life with
Saifi. Nezhat presented her life with Saifi as a glorious one but
according to Azar Nafisi’s father and some other relatives, Nezhat
had been treated like an unwanted guest in Saifi’s home and her
married life with Saifi had been completely spent in nursing him.
Nezhat’s preoccupation with her first marriage was the most im
portant cause of disintegration in Azar Nafisi’s family and it was
only due to this reason Azar was a major accomplice in her father’s
unfaithfulness to her mother. She resented her mother’s behaviour
with her and her father and began to grow closer to her father.
Nafisi in her prologue talks about her father’s disloyalty towards
her mother;
Most men cheat on their wives to have mistresses. My father cheated on my
mother to have a happy life. I felt sorry for him, and in one sense took it upon
myself to fill the empty spaces in his life. I collected his poems, listened to his
woes, helped him choose appropriate gifts, first for my mother and then for
the women he fell in love with. He later claimed that most of his relations
with these other women were not sexual, that what he yearned for was the
feeling they gave him of warmth and approval. (Nafisi xv)
Love of literature, imagination and storytelling is also an impor
tant topic in Things I’ve Been Silent About. Azar Nafisi describes
her family of being fond of telling stories, her father and mother
had their own way of telling stories. Nafisi’s father Ahmad Nafisi
had one published memoir and another more intriguing one which
was unpublished. Nezhat Nafisi did not write her stories for the
public as she believed it to be against Iranian culture to ‘air our
dirty laundry in public’, but she was constantly occupied with
narrating her personal stories which were more of fiction than facts.
Literary life forms the corner stone in the memoirs of Azar Nafisi.
Reading Lolita in Tehran is completely set up in a literary world
and Things I’ve Been Silent About has strong references to literature
especially Persian classical literature like Shahnameh, Vis and Ramin
and even to the contemporary poetry of Forough Farrokhzad. This
love for literature helped Azar Nafisi to create her place in literary
hierarchy. Since early childhood she, with the help of her father
began to relate to literature and storytelling. Her father communi
cated with her through his stories, personal as well as drawn from
Persian literature, which led to Azar Nafisi’s discovery of literature
and history of her own country. Azar Nafisi says in one of her
interviews, published in Publishers Weekly, that it was love of read
ing literature and researching her family and Iran’s history that
helped her to write this memoir. She mentions how she read ‘Nigel
Nicholson’s beautifully written Portrait of a Marriage that included
information about his mother, Vita Sackville-West’s affair with
another woman’ along with poetry of Iranian women ‘who didn’t
write straight-out autobiographies but wrote about their lives in
poetry’.
284 Shaista Mansoor
I thought I would be writing about three women: my grandmother, my
mother and me. In the beginning, I read and researched a great deal of
historical detail to place them in context historically. I started studying
memoirs. . . . It doesn’t matter what you’re writing, it’s how you treat it; you
must see the complexities and paradoxes. . . . For me, writing this book was a
test of myself. It was the most painful experience I’ve ever had. (Monday
Interview: Azar Nafisi on Things I’ve Been Silent About)
Apart from the above major themes discussed by Azar Nafisi,
Things I’ve Been Silent About also describes growth of Azar Nafisi as
an intellectual writer. This memoir can be read as an example of
the genre of bildungsroman as it traces the author’s journey from
childhood to maturity. It narrates the life history of Azar Nafisi
from a very young age and talks about her habits, morals and values
which were inculcated by her family and the close acquaintances
of her family. This book also reflects on her unsuccessful first mar
riage and more mature and sensible second marriage with Bijan
Naderi. Childhood instances of molestation by respectable and
righteous men like Aunt Mina’s husband and Haji Agha Ghaseem
also have an important place in this memoir, as these illustrations
reflect on child-abuse and ill treatment of females irrespective of
age and family background by trusted men. Free and comfortable
life of Azar Nafisi in America is also briefly mentioned in the last
chapters of Things I’ve Been Silent About.
Thus, Things I’ve Been Silent About as a Middle Eastern women’s
memoir is an unparalleled portrayal of the true essence of religion,
culture and society of Iran which the author deftly conveys to the
readers along with her personal literary touch. A considerable por
tion of this memoir revolves around the description of Nezhat
Nafisi, who is portrayed a powerful woman ‘gone waste’ due to
lack of opportunities. Azar Nafisi also presents vivid picture of
post-revolutionary Iran which had changed drastically under the
rule of Ayatollah Khomeni. She used her love of literature to escape
from every odd situation of her life and create her own chronicle of
Iran and her family in particular. Azar Nafisi, in an interview with
Robert Birnbaum, said,
I felt I wanted to write about her [mother] and my grandmother within the
context of that history. And to recreate the history and how did each age or
each era changed and what it meant for a woman like her to live in each of
these eras. So I am not sure how much of it will be personal biography and
how much will, be history. I seem to be constantly drawn to this boundary
between fiction and reality because in this book I did it and in my Nabokov
book I wanted to mix them. (‘Azar Nafisi by Robert Birnbaum’)
REFERENCES
Abrams, M.H. and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms,

Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2015.
Birnbaum, ‘Azar Nafisi, Identity Theory, 5 February 2004, Web 5 May 2017.
Kakutano, Michiko, ‘Family and Nation in Tumult’. The New York Times,
12 February 2009, Web 6 May 2017.
Bose, Aparna L., ‘(Re) Defining Margins: The Poetics and Aesthetics of Dalit
Women Writings and—African American Women Writings—Compara
tive Perspective’, Crossing the Borders:Multicultural Dialogue in Literature,
ed. Dharminder Singh Ubha and Deepinderjeet Randhawa, GSSDGS
Khalsa College Patiala, 2015, pp. 28-58.
Ghajar, Aida, ‘Inside a Women-Only Seminary in Iran’, Iran Wire, 26 May
2017, 13 June 2013.
Howell, Kevin’, Monday Interview: Azar Nafisi on Things I’ve Been Silent
About’, PublishersWeekly, 22 December 2008. Web 5 May 2017.
Kehe, Marjorie, ‘Book Review: Things I’ve Been Silent About’, The Christian
Science Monitor, 9 January, 2009, Web 14 June 2017.
Matthews, William, and Ralph W. Rader, Autobiography, Biography, and the
Novel: Papers Read at Clarks Library Seminar, California: University of
California, 1973.
Miller, Jane, ‘Review: Things I’ve Been Silent About’, The Guardian, 4 April
2009.
Nafisi, Azar, Things I’ve Been Silent About, New York: The Random House
Publishing Group, 2008.
C H A P T E R 18
Rational Femininity and the Mode of

Hijra Autobiographies: The Affects
of being a Gendered Object
NANDINI PRADEEP J.
Literature, has predominantly been a discourse of subjectivity and

the palimpsestic reiterations of its effects. ‘I’, for instance, has been
an unquestioned central eye of perspective at least as far as per
sonal genres, like the ‘autobiography’, are concerned. But those
of us, who belong to a parallel universe of lives beyond the periph
eries of culture, are forced to accept an object position, which pur
ports the personal into a relational category with reference to the
many narratorial subjectivities accepted by the popular culture.
This proposed position is given the categorical title (needless to
say ‘unquestionable’) ‘natural’, and is subject to manipulation by
forces other than those under the jurisdiction of the self. Transgender
autobiography 1 in this context is an emerging category, a new
literature, which discards the dilemmas of heteronormativity in
popular discourses.
A popular appellation for the transgender in India, the term
‘hijra’,2 etymologically, has been thought of as a derivation of
either the Persian hiz which means effeminate or of hich and subse
quently hichgah which refers to a person who is nowhere (Reddy
247). There have been a number of discourses on the hijra life in
India including documentaries by the BBC and the National Geo
graphic Channel, as well as books and articles. For this particular
study, we have at hand three texts of hijra autobiography written
by transgender women from across India: Me Hijra, Me Laxmi
(2015) by Laxminarayan Tripathi, The Truth About Me: A Hijra
Life Story (2010) by A. Revathi, and I am Vidya: A Transgender’s
Autobiography (2007) by Living Smile Vidya. As these three texts
undergo the scanner, we will analyse the integral element of femi
ninity in this increasingly popular and relevant genre of literature
new to the Indian literary scene.
The primary question while embarking on such a journey is
essentially the most basic one: Is this discussion, and representation
of an alternative gender reality really new to us as a civilization and
an intercultural population? The quest for an answer would even
predate the concept of civilization as the idea of the transgender is
seen to have breached the complacencies of Indian imagination
way back in the epic period itself. Whether it was the tales of
Brihannala, or Shikhandi, India as a cultural space was accustomed
to the liminality or the transcendence of the transgender. How
then did it become a marginal, underrepresented literary location?
This question, cannot be addressed easily, although logically many
answers might come to us with a learned ease of the academician.
When we consider transgender autobiographies in particular as
a new literature and literary culture, there are few problems an
inquisitive researcher could face. Hypothetically speaking: (1) there
is no subjective position for this new category in the old canons and
therefore, it starts off by assuming the position of an object which
is a provisional structure of narrativization; (2) the ‘I’ is a collective
‘we’ that does not represent a common ‘our’ but an assumption
specifically designed to protect the hijra identity; (3) the trans-
gender ‘I’ resembles an idea of a feminine which is uniquely weighed,
measured and appropriated to project a rational identity which is,
largely, one of convenience; and (4) it suffers from the redundancy
of narrative cadences. Where is this genre intending to place itself
in the map of literatures? The subsequent four sections would be
in the form of a deliberation on these four hypothetical arguments.
THE ‘I’—THING V/S OBJECT
Fate, also thirsty, now and then maybe

has raised a woman to its lips and drunk,
Rational Femininity and the Mode of Hijra 289
whom then some little life has too much shrunk
from fear of breaking and has carefully
placed in that tremulous vitrine, wherein

its various preciousnesses are consigned
(or objects such as pass for precious there).
RAINER MARIA RILKE
This excerpt, taken from Rilke’s poem titled ‘A Feminine Des

tiny’3 published in the first part of his collection New Poems (1907),
compares the fate of a woman to that of a wine glass which was
once a thing to be treasured, but with time it becomes an object
which ‘. . . wasn’t precious and never rare’. The object, as Rilke would
have it, is indeed a site of much memorialization, de-memorialization
and the contestation of their validities—just like the woman, or, if
we could narrow it further, her body. The hijra is ‘one part-woman’4
in an essentially biological sense. Her body has the vulnerability of
the feminine and the masculine sense of physical power, which
makes her enigmatically desirable as well as physiologically fear
some. It is here that we go back to the aforementioned arguments
and analyse how the hijra body is the host of several vital questions
related to the representation of gender.
Our first deliberation on these assumptions would ideally be
gin at subjectivities or identities—two central terms as far as the
non-binary genders are concerned. But instead, we shall start our
discussion with two other usages which we come across rather too
frequently in common parlance—objects and things. Bill Brown
in his seminal essay published in the Critical Inquiry titled ‘Thing
Theorym’, argues that things are distinct from objects for they have
the excesses which take away the effectiveness of an object. The
thingness of the thing gives it a liminal space which makes it tem
porally and spatially enigmatic, although it is largely rooted in the
realm of the ideational alone. ‘Temporalized as the before and the
after of the object, the thingness amounts to a latency (the not yet
formed or the not yet formable) and to an excess (what remains
physically or metaphysically irreducible to objects)’ (Brown 5).
These exhortations deem themselves relevant in the case of hijra
identities: the interstitial identity that these women carry off is
one of great mystique, and this strangeness is rooted in their irre
ducibility to binaries. For this reason, they remain a ‘thing’ in the
psyche of our people, and an ‘object’ in their own narratives. To
cite a similar scenario, Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness
(1943) introduces the famous example of how a young woman
who goes out with a man for the first time becomes an object
when she refuses to acknowledge her true emotions (that is of un
certainty); when she refuses to remain simply the object of desire
(Sartre 78). Further, the young man holds her hand, even though
she is least interested: here, says Sartre, her hand becomes a thing
(Sartre 79). These instances provide us with the necessary insight
to come to a conclusion that the reason behind such an insistence
of objectivity is that objects have a specificity which provides them
with a purpose, and a raison d’être. From a peripheral ‘I’, one might
ideally desire a subjective self, but hijras consciously avoid such an
individuation in order to create a space for themselves.
In a critical piece titled What is a Thing? (1967), Martin Heidegger
argues that ‘. . . the basic characteristic of the thing, i.e., the
essential determination of the thingness of the thing to be this one
(je dieses) is grounded in the essence of space and time’ (16). Else
where he elucidates thus: ‘What accordingly is a thing? It is a
nucleus around which many changing qualities are grouped or a
bearer upon which the qualities rest; something that possesses
something else in itself ’ (33). Accordingly the hijras becomes a
‘thing’ in the visible social order because they bears an image of a
self substituted for their own reality; they possesses within them
the idea of something else. This ‘thingness’ of the hijra life tran
scends into ‘objectness’ in these autobiographies.
Vidya, for instance, talks about herself, and her community as
‘. . . the object of everyone’s ridicule . . .’ (93): the particular use
actually refers to that state of thingness. She opines that people who
portray the transgender population are blind to their pain and
suffering. They have to live a double or even triple life of being a
woman, a man, and a transgender of the popular imagination.
These multiple role-playings have become an inevitable part of
their lives; a façade of their so-called normalcy, the object-state, as
one would term it.
As a man, says Laxmi, her body was nothing but a playhouse,
‘. . . a plaything, and any man could do anything with it. . .’
(Tripathi 27). This helplessness of the play-‘thing’ is erased as she
becomes the mythical demon-like human figure of the hijra. The
fear associated with the hijra life, which Revathi also talks about, is
at once a tool of social ostracization as well as protection. This idea
is resonated by Laxmi when she says ‘I was now neither a man nor
a woman. I was a hijra. I had my own identity’ (Tripathi 43). This
identity provides them with the experiences which validates their
gendered positioning in the respective societies. This also enables
them to accept the various challenges they are faced with in this
tedious journey which starts with the basic right to exist and ends
with another most elementary right of death and burial. The cas
tration, the abysmal fear of death, the disastrous journeys, their
repercussions, and the inability of spaces and its inhabitants to
accept the reality of the trans life are at the root of this thatched
roof of selfhood, and survival.
In these long-winded travelogues of the hijra-existence, we realize,
only the characters and their social placements differ, but their
essential and consequential narratives and mode of narrativity re
main the same—more than less. This takes us to the subsequent
idea of the unitary hijra soul—the one-identity articulations of
the third gender.
‘I’ V/S ‘WE’
‘The word hij refers to the soul, a holy soul. The body in which the
holy soul resides is called a “hijra”. The individual is not important
here’ (Tripathi 39). This is the very first act of realization about
the hijra life that Laxminarayan Tripathi states in her debut book;
she shows us through her own perception what it is to be a hijra.
In a way, it’s the giving up of an individual cause to uphold the
cause of a community. Although all these varied autobiographies
talk about the individual and the atrocities against the self, time
and again our writers remind us that this pain, this suffering, this
humiliation is not restricted to the self but to the collective un
conscious of the hijra psyche.
‘My sex, my skin colour—all were natural. Why did people
never understand?’ (Vidya 135), a pained Vidya would ask. ‘I am
not Saravanan—I am Vidya. Is the government listening?’ (Vidya
136) she continues as she probes the society as well as the systems
of governance. In another poignant retort to the existing societal
norms, she argues that ‘Dalits have a voice, feminists are heard—
they can hold rallies, demand their rights. But transgenders are
the Dalits of Dalits, the most oppressed of women among women—
they enjoy no equality, no freedom, no fraternity. They continue
to lead a wretched life, devoid of pride and dignity’ (Vidya 136-7).
Laxmi expresses the same sentiments as she quips that ‘. . . the
hijras were the ultimate subaltern, deprived of fundamental rights
guaranteed by the constitution. We are slaves, non-persons’ (Tripathi
91). It is to make themselves more audible that all these hijra nar
ratives raise their voices and articulate in every possible manner.
They realize, says Laxmi, that ‘. . . what mattered was our sense of
solidarity. That alone would save us’ (Tripathi 55). The vocaliza
tion of this ethos is apparent throughout this narrative genre which
encompasses of people from all over the country, yet speaking
the same words in different languages. This is also the sign of a
religious adherence to the hijra identity which is pervasive of the
‘I’, ever-moving towards the ‘we’ as a tool of emancipation, as a
measure of self-reparation with an understanding that only the
subjective can empower the collective, as a shield against the societal
atrocities, a home where the ‘other’ would not barge in to question
one’s beliefs and very existence. This attempt, therefore, like many
others, is not just trying at obtaining a position for the third gender,
it’s the conscious effort a community exudes to recover that prin
ciple of the self which was assumed to be dead over these years. If
Foucault relates the derivation of sexuality as a correspondence of
cultures to the death of God (31), hijra life narratives, in contrast,
would belong to a post-theistic regime of recovering the ancestral
bones of a collective inheritance, a collective conscience, from the
depths of human history and mythology. Here, it is not about
sexuality alone, it has also to do with a resistance against the erasure
of identities, nature and a destructive form of nurture which sub
sumes humanity as a predominantly binary, heteronormative one.
This also takes us to the pivotal question of the hijra femininity
and its many manifestions, and how these select narratives assist in
forming the hijra sensibility of a feminine effect.
RATIONAL FEMININITY AND ITS AFFECTS
A text, at any given moment, is understood by the reader from a

standpoint which is quintessentially rooted in their mother tongues.
Looking back into one’s own language and cultural history, one
finds that, for instance, the Malayalam words for thing and object
could roughly be differentiated as sadhanam and vasthu, respect
ively. It is interesting to also take into account that in the early
Travancore histories, if the wife of a Smarthen (a Namboodiri) is
listed in any legal documents, she would be referred to as the
‘thing’ or sadhanam. This is especially true in the case of any charges
such as adultery (Menon 78). This is an intersectional point in
history where the thingness of the woman is penned down rather
explicitly. There is the need to go back to this history because one
needs to reaffirm the fact that patriarchy sees woman outside her
limits as a thing—an object of no use—and by association the
hijra, who is our concern here, is also viewed through the same
lens. The hijra’s perspective about her self is central in such a study
and thereby, the hijra autobiographies provide us with a pinhole
vision of this ‘other’ world.
Laxminarayan Tripathi narrates her understanding of the hijra
experience thus,
God . . . has created a special place for it [the hijra community] outside the
man-woman frame. A hijra is neither a man nor a woman. She is feminine,
but not a woman. He is masculine, a male by birth, but not a man either.
A hijra’s male body is a trap—not just to the hijra itself who suffocates within
it, but to the world in general that wrongly assumes a hijra to be a man.
(Tripathi 40)
This sense of spirituality has been associated with the hijra body
since antiquity; for instance, in the Mahabharata, Shikhandi’s
female body is gifted with a male organ by the Yaksha and he
becomes the owner of a special fate; he becomes instrumental in
the victory at Kurukshetra. The hijra body, then, is aligned more
with the sacred than the profane in popular imagination.
Vidya believes that the hijras ‘. . . are women at heart desperately
seeking to delete or erase our male identity. That is why we crave
the surgical procedure that will give us the bodily likeness of that
female identity’ (Vidya 100). The castration or nirvana,5 which is a
crucial concept in the hijra story, is at the heart of this desire to be
a transformed woman. Many choose not to do this, but many
more opt for it, wanting to be complete and flawlessly female.
Vidya describes her post-nirvana self thus: ‘My experience was
akin to spring cleaning—like cleaning an old house, removing the
cobwebs and dust, swabbing the floors and whitewashing the walls.
My woman’s body no longer had a male protuberance’ (Vidya
104).
The effect of this physical transformation is a varied experience,
and this suggests the sexuality of the hijra women. Not all hijra
women are completely heterosexual; some of them prefer female
company too. In India, however, there is a strong resistance to this
homoerotic notion of a trans-woman with another woman. It is
doubly tabooed among the hijras the same way incest is.
To avoid this confusion regarding their sexuality, they prefer to
be found wearing female clothes rather than male ones: ‘I was a
woman and I was nothing without my passion to be a woman. . . .
My womanhood was raging to destroy my manhood. . . .’ (Vidya
68). Vidya would say. Among the three narratives, only Laxmi resists
castration as a deliberate choice; both Vidya and Revathi find it
imperatively a part of the hijra life. Revathi works hard to earn the
amount sufficient for the nirvana, she proudly says how she had
broken the seniority order with her efforts to get one step closer to
that life she always desired. She narrates her desire to get rid of the
‘male object’ to become ‘a woman, like other women’ (Revathi 66).
In short, she wants to reject the male object to become from a
female thing to a complete female object. This resonates in Vidya’s
words as she says she was ‘. . . prepared to do anything to lose all
traces of manliness’ and thus, willing to do anything to embrace
wholeheartedly ‘. . . the sorority of transgenders’ (Vidya 69). So it
is part of the cooption into the larger community of transgenders.
As with nirvana, in the case of clothes as well, Laxmi prefers to
wear the casual uni-sex clothes other than when she is performing
her hijra act, whereas in the case of Vidya (as cited earlier) and
Revathi, it is unbearable to don the masculine attire. Here, one
should make a mention of cultural difference. Laxmi, hailing from
the metropolitan city of Mumbai, is hierarchically placed else
where in the spectrum in comparison to the Tamilian girls, both
coming from small sub-urban towns of Tamil Nadu. One would
find Revathi calling anything other than the female attire a dis
guise, a mere costume, but for Laxmi, the hijra-female costume is
a performance of her femininity. This brings us to the common
derivation that some of the members of the community prefer to
constantly play their part in gendering themselves and their body
politic whereas people like Laxmi would assume a cosmopolitan,
global trend based position here.
The notion of this assumed femininity in order to participate in
the greater question of the trans-life is part of the normative ritual
ism of the hijras. Vidya says it was an ecstatic experience to be even
a beggar when she had transformed into a woman. The first thing
she notices about the hijra community was that they were happy
living the kind of life they wanted to live, ‘. . . even if it was a
constant struggle to assert their femininity’ (Vidya 65). It is this
assertive femininity that we have been discussing all along: the
transgendered need to be a certain sort of female who transcends
while transgressing the status quo.
But this assumed position is not without its negatives. They
have to go through every sort of social discrimination (sexual harass
ment) that the woman has to put up with, and doubly or triply
so. Laxmi, for instance, says in her book, ‘Things got so bad, that
the mere touch of a man sent creeps down my flesh. I screamed if
a man tried to make any sort of physical contact with me’ (Tripathi
28). Revathi also has similar stories to narrate; like the incident
when she was coerced to have anal sex with a drunken thug just
because she was a hijra. This obtrusive grip of the male gaze vio
lates the transgender more forcibly, and audaciously than with
any other woman, especially because of a femininity which is not
accepted by the society per se. At this point, it becomes requisite
that one assesses the nature of the narrativity of this femininity, as
far as hijra autobiographies are concerned.
NARRATIVE (IN)EFFICACY: A GENRE

OF (IN)DIFFERENCE
What is an autobiography? Throughout history, there have been

several arguments, and even rhetoric regarding this question. Of
the many prominent lines of thought, a popular one would reso
nate ideas similar to what Robert F. Sayre discusses in his book
American Lives: An Antholog y of Autobiographical Writing. He
deliberates upon the role of autobiographies as ‘cultural documents’
in representing the audience, as well as the times (Sayre 13). Hijra
autobiographies are essentially the hallmark example of such a cul
tural documentation as they organize a varied expression in emo
tionally driven terms.
The polemic of the hijra autobiography is most often political
not just from a gender-perspective, but also from the very basic
humanitarian socio-political perspective as well. Arjun Appadurai
in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1988)
argues that ‘even though from a theoretical point of view human
actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point
of view it is the things-in motion that illuminates their human
and social context’ (5). Although the ‘thing’ he discusses here is
the material ‘thing’, Appadurai’s observation also expounds how
the concept of a hijra lifestyle highlights the quasi-normative bi
nary gender system and its flaws in execution. The lack of material
flow in a uniform, to-and-fro, systematic manner forms the hetero
normative fault-line—there is a resistance towards commodification
but sans representation otherwise. The commodification of the
hijra self by themselves on the contrary, enables them to be placed
firmly on their stances without unnecessary guilt-driven, pseudo-
ethical agendas. This new genre could be, thus, read as ‘a new
materialism that takes objects for granted only in order to grant
them their potency—to show how they organize our private and
public affection’ (Brown 7). Consequently, this taken-for-granted
ness is reflected in the erstwhile autobiographies we have been
talking about as well, resulting in a genuine recurrence of experi

ences which culminate in the superfluity of tangible experiences.
The primary problem faced by many of these writers is one of
translation, or rather, mistranslation. Many of these works seem to
have lost their cultural variegations owing to the transference of
language modes. The many experiences of the hijra life are largely
rooted in their language communities. Both Vidya and Revathi
are Tamil hijras, yet, we are able to derive at the idea that their
experiences are greatly dissimilar. But the language in which it is
written might lead us to assume otherwise. Moreover, the socio
politico-economic setting to which each of them belongs is also
important while studying these narratives. These problems can be
narrowed down further to the lack of an idiom, a lack of a particu
larly hijra idiom, at large.
The narratives of a varied self are always a difficult prospect to
come to terms with, most specifically in language. Such is the case
with these hijra autobiographies as the word refuses to be where it
ought to be, owing to the need to defy societal controls, many a
times. Therefore, these narratives suffer from the inability to break
free from a normative mode of trauma in literature, and so, they
are unable to portray the many intrinsic elements of the hijra life.
In short, they end up maiming their ability of doing a macro analysis
of the community. There is a repetitive feeling of insufficiency as
far as the colloquiums of these narratives are concerned; there is an
intense inability to be different. As we have discussed above, this
nature of the hijra community to be one is an infinite measure of
emancipation as a people, as a collective body of texts, but at the
same time, it has become a disproportionate estimate of their unique
identities as human beings. The genre’s lack of discursivity denies
narrative experimentation; or rather it is obsessed with this idea of
an over-emphasized trauma. This characteristic feature it shares
with its generic family tree of autobiographies as they defy the
contemporary literary tendencies of experimental aesthetics and
subsequent aesthetic subjectivities, subjective narratives. One does
not deny the pain, the suffering and the identity, but when taken
as a genre, as a text for itself, it lacks the ubiquity of narratives as
seen throughout the history of literatures.
As a companion to these struggles, one finds a deep engagement
with their dissension, and it is only imperative, then, to assume
the parent position and to urge the genre to dismantle all notions
of discursive shackles – ‘to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’
(Tennyson 1008). It is in the light of this awareness that the argu
ments of this paper, and the case for a diverse mode of life narra
tives for the hijra community should be taken into consideration.
NOTES
1. Initial and major writings in transgender literature and politics came largely
from the state of Tamil Nadu. Although in many regional languages like
Malayalam there were attempts to promote a discourse on the topic from
1990s onwards, I am Vidya: A Transgender’s Autobiography published in the
year 2007 is the first transwoman autobiography.
2. Interestingly, the word hijra in Urdu means someone who has left his tribe.
It is derived from the Arabic root word hijr which in Urdu means a separation
from one’s beloved.
3. Ibid., p. 35.
4. This is also the title of a much-controversial Sahitya Akademi award winning
novel by Perumal Murugan which is originally titled Mathorubhagan in
Tamil—it literally means one part man, and is a reference to Lord Shiva who,
in his Ardhanareeshwara avatar, is part woman.
5. The word nirvana in Hijra vocabulary stands for the ceremonial act of being
castrated. Although it represents a sort of transcendence, it is not the same as
the Buddhist concept of nirvana.
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Appadurai, Arjun, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective,

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Brown, Bill, ‘Thing Theory’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 28, no. 1, 2001, pp. 1- 22.
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Foucault, Michel, Language, Counter-memosry, Practice: Selected Essays and Inter
views, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, New York: Cornell University Press,
1977.
Heidegger, Martin, What is a Thing?, tr. W.B. Barton Jr. and Vera Deutsch,
Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967.
Menon, Shangunny P., History of Travancore: From the Earliest Times, New
Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1998.
Reddy, Gayatri, With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India,
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.
Revathi, A., The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story, New Delhi: Penguin Books
India, 2010.
Rilke, Rainer Maria, Rilke: Selected Poems. London: Penguin Books, 1964.
Sayre, Robert F., American Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Writing,
Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998.
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, ‘Ulysses’, English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman,
vol. XLII, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1909-14.
Tripathi, Laxminarayan, Me Hijra, Me Laxmi, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2015.
Vidya, Living Smile, I am Vidya: A Transgender’s Autobiography, 2007, New
Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2013.
C H A P T E R 19
Marginalized Sexual Identity: A Flash

Point of Body/Desire/Politics
D E E PI N D E R J E E T R A N D H AWA
The intention of this paper is to explore the marginalized sexual

identity as a flash point of body/desire/politics. The identity of
the deviant/marginalized/sexual bodies is not a linear narrative of
the binary division between the normal/abnormal; it is in fact a
social/cultural/religious/economic/political construct. The hege
monic hetero-sexual network of power structures pushes the desire/
performance of the homosexual/lesbian/trans-sexual/transgender
to the margins by labelling it as the ‘queer’ or ‘deviant’. These
deviant/other sexual identities actually put the established notions
of heterosexual normalcy into a flux. In recent times there has
been a shift in the way sexual/cultural identity is understood under
the influence of resistive gay and homosexual movements, feminist
theories and postmodern and post-structuralist ideas, sexual cul
tural identity today is understood to be a constellation of multiple
unstable positions. The marginalized deviant identity puts into
flux the fixed stable/heterosexual/normal concepts of sexual orien
tation. It pushes for a non-heteronormative negotiation of bodies/
desire/performance. The queer/the deviant is the other, the radical
otherness/strangeness that the hetero-normative gaze fails to recog
nize. The marginalized body/culture/language is to be negotiated
as the radical strangeness that disrupts totalitive narratives of sexual
performativity and cultures.
The term ‘queer’ was first introduced in 1990 by Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick in his work Epistemology of the Closet. It was used for
302 Deepinder Jeet Randhawa
coalition of sexual identities that are culturally marginalized. The
queer focuses on the mismatches between sex/gender/desire. It ex
amines socially constructed patterns of sexual acts and identity
where any deviance is labelled as abnormal or pathological. Anna
marie Sagose in Queer-Theory: An Introduction (1997) used it as a
slang, now it is used as an umbrella term for deviant sexual identi
ties that are mis-recognized because of the politics of shame. Queer
theory developed out of the recognition of perceived limitation in
the traditional identity politics of recognition and self-identity. The
hetero-sexual/normal dominance has been questioned rigorously
by the works of Lauren Beriant, Judith Butler, Lee Edelman, Jack
Halberstam, David Halperin, Jose Esteban Munoz and Eve Kosofsky
Sedgwick. Through their works they have challenged the hetero
normative discourses. Queer theory deconstructs the taboos/myths/
homophobia, and monolithic ideas of social norms and taxono
mies. It is however not merely an essentialist discourse, it studies
the multilayered network of power structures that shape identity,
whether sexual or cultural. Nor does the queer theory restrict
itself to the binary of homo/heterosexual; it also looks into the
factors of race/class/religion/capital being responsible in shaping
of identities. With the works of Clifford Geertz, Mark C. Taylor,
Stuart Hall, Derrida and Lyotard, the notion of stable, unified
integral totalitive cultural identities has collapsed. This understand
ing that identities are shaped by complex networks of power along
with local/native specificities, has supplemented the theories of
queer studies as well as gay/homosexual resistive movements. Plural
and variant cultural, gender and race ‘voices’ have brought the
Platonic idea of unified/rational/stable structures under erasure.
The flux and unstable position of desiring bodies cannot be con
structed as a monadic whole. The heterogeneous flux of gender
identities interrogates the myths and taboos surrounding what is
known as ‘straight’ or the normal within the socio/cultural/reli
gious parameters. The deviant/variant sexuality has emerged out
of the colliding socio-political structures and the surplus of the
body in Bataille’s sense. These sexually other and variant bodies
seek just and equal space to celebrate their differential otherness
that does not fit in the framework of heteronomative structures.
With the disruption of the heteronormative narratives, new forms
Marginalized Sexual Identity 303
of gendering have emerged that dismantle the established binaries
of masculine/feminine. The emergence of variant genders like the
transgenders, trans-sexuals and gay parenting the socio-cultural
constructs of heterosexual marriage/parenting has been put under
flux. The pure/normal/stable sexual identity is being questioned
by the variance of sexual performativity in Judith Butler’s sense.
Butler in her significant work, Gender Trouble attacks the essential
disclosure of feminists like Julia Kristeva and says that gender is to
be understood as ‘improvised performance’. According to her the
discourse built around the body is used to initiate taboo and is
hegemonic. She questions the categories of gender through the
concept of the ‘drag’/parody. Drag destabilizes exteriority and in
teriority. Butler questions the fixed meaning of gender and pushes
for non-normative sexual practices. Butler builds up her theoreti
cal ideas with insights from Foucault, Levi-Strauss, Lacan and
Kristeva. She questions the notion that the body is a natural entity
that admits no genealogy and is negotiated within the ‘virtue of
stable boundaries’.
Nancy Fraser in the essay ‘Heterosexism, Misrecognition, and
Capitalism’, responding to Judith Butler’s Justice Interrupts, sees
misrecognition as denying status of a ‘full partner in social interac
tive’. For Fraser this misrecognition is institutionalized and consti
tutes an ‘injustice’. The hetero-sexual misrecognition denies space
to the gays and lesbians. The need is to change the ‘relations of
recognition’, by disturbing the institutionalized patterns of recog
nition. Fraser suggests that in late capitalism the links between
sexualities and surplus value accumulation have further been re
duced. A new space of intimate relations, including sexuality, friend
ship and love has emerged that is free from the imperatives of
production and reproduction. Recognition of these new deviant
identities involves a de-institutionalized practice of justice that
would go beyond mechanical distribution of justice.
The strategy of drag unsettles these normative/fixed/stable iden
tities that are based on the essential nature of the body. For Butler
gender is ‘performative’ and she agrees that the traditional restrictive
meaning of gender is constructed by a network of power, social
and cultural structures.
The body as Foucault elaborates has always been legitimized by
structures of power. In the History of Sexuality Foucault stresses the
need to understand sexuality as a ‘historical apparatus’. The state/
church/institutions discipline the body as per their needs to govern
it. There is a fundamental link between power, knowledge and
sexuality. Any deviant sexual orientation is seen as a threat and
upsets established norms. The dominant power structures see the
heterosexual as the normal and the sexually deviant is pushed to
the margins of ‘taboo non-existence and silence’. The discursive
frameworks therefore view homosexuality as a pathological problem
that needs to be regulated. Michael Warner in Fear of A Queer
Planet Trouble with the Normal challenges the socio-political
institutions that fail to recognize the other-gender. The dominant
structures are always in a process to control the most personal
dimensions of pleasure/identity/practice. Warner says that the
dominant culture creates ‘inequalities of access and recognition
that produce . . . sense of shame’ (Warner, 2008). He also talks of
how sexual variance is not consistent with morality. A politics of
shame begins where the deviant sexual practices are shamed
to silence. Warner, however, also hints towards new spaces being
created due to ‘new freedom, new experiences, new pleasures, new
identities and new bodies’ (12).
Veronique Mottier in The Invention of Sexuality says that sexual
ity is neither natural, sociological nor universal experience, but is
related to relations of power, class, race, especially gender. For
Mottier the biological model saw the sexually other as abnormal
and in need of a cure. The body, under the moral and political
gaze was therefore to be pure/stable in fulfilling the roles assigned
to it by patriarchy/church/religion/capital. Jasbir K. Puar in her
significant work Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer
Times examines the interrelationship between biopower and necro
politics evident in the production of homonational subject that
simultaneously engenders and de-recognizes an entire population
of ‘sexual—racial others who need not apply’. Puar suggests that it
‘. . . is the biopolitics which determines which queer live and which
die’ (Puar, 2007, vii). Puar highlights how the connectivities that
generate the homosexual, the lesbian and the gay subjects simulta
neously also strategize to homogenize populations that are presumed
to be perverse. This disjunctive space of regulating the regulated
queers has produced an ambivalent flow of ‘new normativities’ (xiii).
Jefferey Weeks in Sexuality and its Discontents stresses the need
to recognize different beliefs, desires and moralities. Sexuality, he
believes remains a ‘contested zone’ (Weeks, 2002, 4) with the spon
taneous flow of desire being regulated by a dense web of beliefs.
Weeks, proposes an ‘alternative vision’ that would end sexual domi
nation and subordination. Such a vision would open space for new
sexual and social relations. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in Epistemology
of the Closet stresses the need for a decentred narrative for view
ing sexual identities away from homophobic determinations. Like
Foucault, Sedgwick sees an interrelation between constructs of
individual identity, truth and knowledge. Sedgwick feels that the
binary opposition limits freedom and sexuality. Sedgwick talks of
the two views that shape sexual identity; the minoritizing view
that maintains that certain individuals are born gay while the uni
versalizing view says that there is no such thing as stable erotic
identity, Sedgwick talks of the relations of the closet/many silences
that need to be given a voice/a coming out.
In Profit and Pleasure, Rose Mary Hennessy gives Marxist femi
nist analysis of the comodification of culture and sexual identities
under the global capitalism. For Hennessy the complex social/power
structures affect the lived reality of marginal sexualities. By claim
ing her lesbian identity Hennessy comes directly in conflict with
‘coherent sexual identities’. Sexual identity, she says is marked by
gender, race, nationality, ability and age. The desire for profit has
eroded traditional social relations. Many of the prevalent structures
of family/gender/sexual/national/identity stand altered under the
thrust of economy based on profit ‘unlike Bataille’s notion of “non-
expenditure” energy or what he calls the surplus energy without
calculation, the interplay of global homogenization and sub na
tional fragmentation’ (Hennessy, 2007) has led to new forms of
consciousness and transnational identities (7) that has created a
space for the queer to discard invisibility and become visible.
In Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability, Robert
McRuer combines queerness and disability as a sign of subversion
to recast both queerness and disability. He suggests how capitalism
and social constructs form the discourses of able bodies and hetero
sexuality. Sexual identities are shaped by neo-liberal capitalism
that fails to come face to face with the reality of fragmented nature
of embodied experience. Rather than obstructing or halting sig
nificance and meaning of life, the crip vocabulary reveals ‘another
world which is possible’ (xi). In the preface McRuer uses the term
‘Conjunctural analysis’ where multiple forms of identity come to
gether to disturb homogenized stereotype identities. McRuer, as
Beruke suggests, draws our attention to the tensions and tears/frag
mentation rather than the ‘final coherence of any identity’. McRuer
recognizes that disability and queerness are socially constructed
and ways should be found to recast it as potential others. Within
the totalitive narrative, a differential experiencing of the body was
not possible but a postmodern non-normative space has been
created for a more fluid heterogeneous subject. For McRuer, capi
talism provides the narrative of able-bodiedness and compulsory
heterosexuality. Within the rational/capitalist/social narrative the
queer/disabled are outsiders. However, McRuer, sees them as ‘epi
phanies of deviance’ that disrupt homogeneous notion of identities.
Within the Rational constructs, the eros of the body is pushed
to the margins of shame/sin/guilt. Institutionalized morality along
with socio-cultural codes—limit the flows of the erotic surplus.
The eros surplus energy of the body, as Bataille says, is a rationalist
framework that needs to be disrupted by the ‘excess’ of the libidi
nal. This ‘excess’ cuts through all oedepalizing agencies, rends the
ego and becomes celebrative. The queer/crip, therefore, pose a great
threat to the rationalist norms of a society. The queer, i.e. the homo
sexual/lesbian/transgender/transsexual for Eli Clare are lost bodies
to be reclaimed. Eli Clare in the essay ‘Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed
Bodies: Disability and Queerness’ suggests that the body needs to
be interpreted not as a metaphor or representation rather ‘simply
as body’ in all its ‘messiness’. Within the parameters of social in
justice the body of the queer/disabled has always been understood
as a deficit to be fulfilled by medical aid or charity and thus leading
to their oppression. Drawing from his own experience of being
disabled/queer, Clare, recounts how he heard ‘Wrong, broken, in
need of repair, unacceptably queer’ (361) Clare, stored the objection,
instead understood his body as ‘irrevocable different’. Negotiating
queerness as irrevocable difference signifies a dislocation, displace
ment of the master-narrative surrounding the able bodied/hetero
sexual normal/heteronormative disjunctions. However, Clare talks
of the retrieval of these object/crip/queer bodies that homogeneous
culture rejects. The reclaiming of these stolen bodies is possible
only when the irrevocable difference of each body that is pushed
to the margins is celebrated. In another essay entitled ‘Resisting
Shame: Making our Bodies Home’ that Clare wrote as a keynote
speech for Gender Odyssey Conference, he talks of how the queer/
crip come face to face with shame ‘. . . in the morning . . . to bed
at night . . . at the beach . . . medical exam room. . . .’ (456). It is
an ‘isolation that escapes language’. For Clare this isolation be
comes a home but longs for it to become a space of resistance.
Clare finds ‘naming’ them, i.e. the disabled or the homosexuals or
lesbians is to shame them. They are followed by shame everywhere.
The only way to resist this shame was to use ‘Other people’s out
rage to bolster my own . . . (to) unpack the lies that backed . . .
shame’. To make our bodies home is to ‘Challenge the transphobia
that frames the trans women as not real women . . . that does not
allow for third, fourth, fifth gender . . . of possibilities way too
many to name’ (464). In a flash, Eli Clare juxtaposes broken/frag
mented/deviant/messiness with otherness/celebration/difference.
It is the difference of performativity that is not recognized by the
heteronor-mative frameworks.
The queer identity is an assemblage of complex networks of
social/cultural/political/religious structures. The socio-cultural para
digms have propagated the idea of stable/unified/nation/family/
society/the heterosexual and the able-bodied which become signi
ficant instruments in carrying forward the idea of a homogeneous
society/nation. Here, the flux of the deviant is seen as an excess
that will unsettle stability. The queer/disabled displace the/ratio
nal/stable construct of social structures. The queer signifies flux/
instability/change that threatens the oedipalized/centralized politi
cal and social frameworks that refuse to open to the pluralities/
myriad ways of life and sexualities.
However, with the collapse of metanarrative, the differential
cultures have asserted their significance through their language/
rituals/gods/cultures. There have emerged new narratives of re
claiming socio-political and economic spaces of recognition. The
queer/disabled/prostitutes/prisoners have asserted their right to be
the other. The displacement of rational capitalist frameworks
through the surplus of local/friendship/eros has created new spaces
of co-existential pluralities that have led to the experiencing of
eros/libidinal in radically different ways. Sexual identity/gender is
no longer a closed monad, where heterosexualism is the only norm.
Normal has acquired a new meaning in the wake of alternative
ways of experiencing pleasure/jouissance. Otherness of body/cul
ture/language/sacred has put all unitive stable structures into flux.
The sexual identity that is intersected by heterogeneous socio/
religious/cultural structures is under pressure. It has become the
flash point between the body/desire/eros/politics that ruptures limit
to allow the flow of libidinal bodies and their difference.
David Ebershoff’s Danish Girl explores the complex journey of
alternative ‘performativity’. Einar’s desire to transform himself into
Lily is a flash point of desire/gender/love/body/politics. An acci
dental chance to wear a feminine dress pushed Einar to discover
ing the buried feminine instinctual energies. Married to Greta,
Einar has never fully experienced erotic fulfilment. Ebershoff flashes
on the mind of the reader Einar’s first homosexual experience with
his childhood friend Harris. When Einar first wears Anna’s dress, a
new world full of dreams opens to him, gradually Lily begins to
overtake. A complete metamorphosis begins. Greta saw in Einar’s
eyes a longing he wasn’t prepared to admit (Ebershoff 25). Greta
pushes Einar to become Lily, as Lily meets Henrik at the theatre,
she blooms, but is conscious of her not being normal. As Henrik
pulled her to himself, Lily felt the awkwardness of her ‘Oddly
shaped body, bony, breast less, with a painful swollen ache tucked
between her thighs’ (57). As Lily, Einar is beautiful and it be
comes an authentic space of self-realization just as painting Lily
for Greta becomes fulfilling her inner void. When Greta sees Lily
dressed in a Chiffon dress, she says, ‘You’re so beautiful I want to
kiss you’. The transformation of Einar to Lily involves confusion,
anxiety and pain. It is not merely a physical transformation but a
libidinal jouissance as Henrik holds her. Each rush of such emo
tions is followed by bleeding that later Dr. Blok says could be due
to the frozen ovaries. Lily goes through doubt/shame/guilt and
gives herself one year to realize herself as a woman or to commit
suicide. A series of operations lead to her transformation. When
Henrik proposes to Lily, Lily wants to take the risk. She tells Greta,
‘I want to have children with my husband’ (386). When Greta
stops Lily, she is adamant to fully affirm herself as a woman. How
ever, the transplant does not work. David Ebershoff metaphori
cally links Lily to the rite that flies high but the line snaps and
therefore gets lost. The transformation of Einar to Lily is a coming
together of art/love/identity socio-political structures. At one point
Lily is called a ‘whore’ but she is propelled by the desire to reclaim
her identity and goes to all extents to achieve it. Danish Girl brings
together the clashing signifies of performativity/body/culture/
politics/art/love/identity.
In Jamie O’Neill’s At Swim Two Boys, O’Neil brings together
homosexuality and Ireland’s freedom, signifying a cultural revolt
to regain Ireland’s identity, and a metaphoric space where Doyler
and Jim can negotiate their sexual freedom. Doyler is a cripple,
shabby and belongs to the economically lower strata, yet a friend
ship blossoms between Doyler and Jim, who is sophisticated and
socially well placed. In a flash, queerness/class/social formation/
sexuality come together. As Jim learns to swim with Doyler, an ease
of being comfortable with his body begins. As the two boys swim
to the Muglin Island and hoist the flag, it coincides with the Easter
rising, and Doyler says, ‘There is nothing to be scared now’. The
island metaphorically becomes a geo-libidinal space of exploring
freedom. Jim and Doyler are charged with desire and are able to
reclaim their bodies and the island, ‘They had this together now.
They had their island’ (534). They were at home. This space is
marked by no boundaries; it’s a space away from shame/control/
repression/guilt. It is here that a de-inscription begins that is
accompanied by a celebration of their bodies and eros that is irre
vocably different.
The marginalized sexual identities/the queer contest/resist/rup
ture the heteronormative/fixed/stable negotiation of bodies and
their performativity. A constant struggle is on to recognize them as
irrevocable difference that cannot be assimilated to a heterosexual/
heteronormative gaze. A complex network of power relations con
stantly shape/control/regulate the desire/bodies of the marginal.
The identity of the queer is therefore a flash point of various forces.
However, a robust resistive and disruptive discourse/practice is
making its visibility known around the world. The deviant/variant
sexual identities are altering the homophobic rigidities of cultural
religion/social formations. A new space of the differential other is
beginning to shape that hopefully will address the question of
how the I should be in generous hospitality to receive the radical
strangeness of the other.
REFERENCES
Clare, Eli, Public Culture: ‘Stolen Bodies, Reclaimed Bodies: Disability and
Queerness’, London: Duke University Press, 2001.
Ebershoff, David, The Danish Girl, London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 2015.
Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality, London: Penguin Books, 1981.
Fraser, Nancy, Social Text Vol./15, Fall/Winter Heterosexism, Misrecognition and
Capitalism, London: Duke University Press, 1997.
Hennessy, Rosemary, Profit and Pleasure, London: Routledge, 2000.
McRuer, Robert, Crip Theory, New York: New York University Press, 2006.
Neil, O, Jamie, At Swim Two Boys, London: Scribner, 2001.
Puar, Jasber K. Terrorist Assembglages, London: Duke University Press, 2007.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, Epistemology of the Closet, California: University of
California Press, 1990.
Warner, Michael, The Trouble with Normal, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1999.
Weeks, Jeffrey, Sexuality and Its Discontents, London: Routledge, 1985.
C H A P T E R 20
Self-Narratives of Working-class
Women: Voices from the
Global South
SHOMA SEN
Though Baby Haldar’s autobiographical work, A Life Less Ordinary

(2006) is given this name in its English version, it also evokes the
reader’s interest because it reflects the lives of those who are called
‘ordinary people’. Originally published as Aalo Aandhari (2002)
in Bengali and Hindi, which could be literally translated as Light
and Shadow, this self narrative of a domestic worker, writing an
autobiography at the young age of 30, depicts not only the social
reality of working-class women in India but also the struggle of a
remarkable woman, a mother of three. Domitila Barrios de Chungara’s
Let Me Speak (1976) is an oral autobiographical narrative quite
different in time and space: a woman from the mine-workers’ com
munity in Bolivia, a generation before Haldar, strung together by
the commonality of poverty, backwardness, pain and intense
struggle. Two narratives by sex workers: the autobiography of Somaly
Mam from Cambodia, The Road of Lost Innocence (2007) and Nalini
Jameela’s Autobiography of a Sex Worker (2007) from Kerala, India,
add to the discourse on how class, race, caste and religion intercept
patriarchy at different times, in different nations in the developing
countries in the world.
Feminist criticism or scholarship has re-written literary histories
to bring women into prominence. For instance, Elaine Showalter’s
seminal work, A Literature of Their Own (1977), rediscovered the
many forgotten women writers of the nineteenth century and her
312 Shoma Sen
Sister’s Choice (1989) revised the prevalent notions about Louisa
M. Alcott being a writer of children’s or popular literature. However,
she came in for sharp criticism from black critics and writers for
having ignored the black feminist/literary tradition in America.
Barbara Smith in her essay, ‘Toward a Black Feminist Criticism’,
(1977) expressed her bitterness over the fact that even in 1977,
when there had already been no dearth of published material on
women’s writing and on feminism and literature, there was still little
mention of black women’s creative writing or critical writing by
Showalter. She felt that there was need for white feminists to struggle
with the deep racism within them. Other works like Ellen Moers’
Literary Women: The Great Writers (1977) and Patricia Meyers Spacks’
The Female Imagination (1975), considered landmark books in
feminist criticism suffered from the same racist flaw, according to
Smith. She found that Black women’s writing was conspicuous by
its absence in their books something especially surprising since
Alice Walker and Spacks were employed in the same college at the
same time. Bell Hooks, another black American writer also
expressed her dissent by saying, ‘Every women’s movement in
America, from its earliest origin to the present day has been built
on a racist foundation. . . . White, middle and upper-class women
have dominated every women’s movement in the US’ (Hooks,
1981). Thus, feminists were not only re-reading the texts of the
past and revising the canon and making it more inclusive of women,
but within women writers and scholars there was also a revisionary
process taking place to be more inclusive. Within the category
‘women’, there exist layers of difference not only in the lives and
testimonies but also in the ideologies of emancipation. At the same
time gender cuts across class, race and caste to show that common
forms of violence and oppression brought women together to address
the feminist agenda. Thus the testimonies of marginalized women
strengthen the processes of democratic communication and help
to bridge gaps between communities.
The words of Domitila Barrios de Chungara, a mine worker’s
wife who wrote her life-narrative and attended the International
Women’s Year Tribunal organized by the United Nations in Mexico
in 1975 to the President of the Mexican Delegation, makes it
explicit,
Self-Narratives of Working-Class Women 313
Senora, I’ve known you for a week. Every morning you show up in a differ
ent outfit and on the other hand I don’t. Every day you show up all made up
and combed like someone who had time to spend in an elegant beauty
parlour and who had money to spend on that, and yet I don’t. I see that each
afternoon you have a chauffeur in a car waiting at the door of this place to
take you home, and yet I don’t. . . . Now, Senora, tell me: is your situation at
all similar to mine?. . . . So what equality are we going to speak of between the
two of us? (202-3)
The life narratives of working-class women defied the canonical

definition of autobiography as they were often the testimonies of
the experience of a community, race, caste or a group. They delved
less into the psyche and emotional angst of the protagonist but
rather the material circumstances, in which they were born, grew
up and survived. They are sociological testimonies to judge the
contemporary reality, the way in which patriarchy and class divi
sions operated and they generated hope about social mobility
through education and the right to work. Not intended to give
aesthetic pleasure, they were written with a purpose: to share, to
communicate, to make others feel and perhaps even to bring about
social change. Domitila Barrios and Somaly Mam made it clear
that they wrote because they wanted their voice to be the voice of
all other women suffering in similar circumstances:
I don’t want anyone at any moment to interpret the story I’m about to tell as
something that is only personal. Because I think that my life is related to my
people. What happened to me could have happened to hundreds of people in
my country. (Barrios, 1976: 15)
I’d like to say, in this book, that my story isn’t important. The point is not
what happened to me. I’m writing about it to make visible the lives of so many
thousand other women. They have no voice, so let this one life stand for their
story. (Mam, 2007: 207)
The selected life narratives from different regions of India,

Bolivia, and Cambodia, all Third World countries, are like the
marginalized women writing back to their own empires who in
the so-called post-colonial conditions continued to exploit their own
people and allowed patriarchal and feudal cultural practices to
thrive in order to keep large sections of the population subservient.
From Somaly Mam’s account, male preference is so strong in
314 Shoma Sen
Cambodia that it is common for parents and relatives to sell their
daughters for a pittance. Due to deep agricultural crisis, poverty
and hunger, a girl child like Somaly was sold into prostitution.
With superstitious beliefs like having sex with a virgin cures AIDS
thriving, girls as young as six or seven are forced into prostitution.
Girls are seen as capital to ward off family debts and the payment
for sex work is appropriated by the debtor, leaving the child’s mind
and body simply as sites of brutality and violence. Though Mam
had hopes for the future, she pointed out that things had not changed
in the twenty-first century either. The growth of tourism in the era
of globalization had increased trafficking in children and women
further: brothels have turned into sex malls and the mafia that
runs the sex industry is too big for anyone to take on. In fact,
‘development’ seems only to have intensified sexual exploitation
in Southeast Asia (Mam, 192-9). Nalini Jameela, publishing in
2005, stated that she entered into sex work around the time of the
emergency (1975) after many attempts to work, marry or have a
long-term relationship with a man. Her attempts to bring up her
daughter, find food and shelter and her struggle for mere survival
exposed the patriarchal, feudal culture that denigrated women who
resisted exploitation. In spite of the so-called communist and pro
gressive beliefs of her father and others around her in Kerala, she
was neglected as a child and young woman, marriage led only to
one form of slavery or the other and finally she opted for this pro
fession. Baby Haldar, publishing in 2004 (Bengali) grew up in a
state ruled by ostensible communists and faced acute poverty and
hardship. Coming from a broken family, shunted from relative to
relative, her father married her off at twelve and she had her first
child at thirteen. Abused by her husband, she tolerantly bore three
children before walking out on him and migrating to Delhi in
search of domestic work.
Domitila narrates the lives of mine workers who chew coca mixed
with lye to raise their spirits and quell their hunger in the mines.
Their average life expectancy is thirty-five and their occupational
disease is called silicosis (Barrios, 27-8). Her narrative talks about
the struggle of the mine workers for their rights, their strikes and
agitations and the ways in which the families supported them.
Needless to say, brutal repression followed where leading activists
like her were tortured and imprisoned, so much so that when
she was kicked while pregnant, she delivered her child inside the
jail. However, being a seasoned political activist, she analyses the
situation thus:
Someone said: ‘Bolivia is immensely rich, but its inhabitants are beggars’. And
that’s the truth, because Bolivia is dominated by multinational corporations
that control my country’s economy. And a lot of Bolivians take advantage of
this and let themselves be bought off for a few dollars and they make politics
with the gringos and they back them up in their tricks. The problem, for
them, is only how much more they can get for themselves. The more they can
exploit the workers, the happier they are. Even if the worker collapses from
hunger, from sickness, that doesn’t bother them. (Barrios, 20)
However, it is due to whatever fruits of development that perco

lated down to these marginalized women that they could become
writers. In fact, wondering who to dedicate her book to and skim
ming over the idea of dedicating it to her mentors, Haldar finally
dedicated it to her primary school teachers who taught her to read
and write. Whether it be their mentors or their decision to join
public life, their interface with education, with activism and the
media enabled them to communicate their narratives to the rest
of the world. In Somaly’s case, the change happened when she
entered into prostitution with Europeans who treated her more
humanely. One of them even married her and helped her out of
sexual slavery and set up her institution that helped girls in similar
situations. Her experiences as a social worker made her brush shoul
ders with ministers and government officials as well as foreign dig
nitaries. Baby Haldar found employment in the house of a retired
professor, Prabodh Kumar, grandson of Premchand who treated
her like a daughter and encouraged her to write. He provided her
with a separate room and also her first notebook and pen for this
purpose. Kumar’s friends’ circle of writers and intellectuals in Kolkata
helped her to publish her story. Soon she found herself attending
seminars abroad. Nalini became active in organizations of sex
workers, attended conferences in Thailand and made friends
amongst intellectuals, getting to know their hypocrisies as well.
316 Shoma Sen
Domitila attended the International Women’s Year Tribunal in
Mexico City where she met the Brazilian journalist Moema Viezzer
who co-authored the book. Since Domitila was illiterate, she
narrated the book to Viezzer who wrote it.
Somaly Mam had no ideological understanding but it was out
of the goodness of her heart that she was bent on building a shelter
home for the girls she had rescued from sexual slavery. It was through
her experience that she comes to learn about the limitations of the
law, the role of the state that turns a blind eye to this brutality and
systemic violence. She discerned that decades of war and insur
gency had made brutes of their people. She was either unaware of
or chose not to discuss the debates amongst feminists about sex
workers and prostitution but her narrative itself gives the perspective
of a victim’s voice in this debate. Nalini Jameela came into contact
with various NGOs that work in India and abroad for the rights of
sex workers. She wrote about her experience that shows moral preju
dices against sex workers even among activists. When C.K. Janu
was leading the struggles of tribals in Muttanga for forest land,
Nalini Jameela supported the agitation. She reached their meeting
and was asked to speak. However, some people opposed this
saying that C.K. Janu and Jameela should not be seen speaking
from the same platform. Throughout this interaction she was against
the approach of middle-class morality that believes in rescuing sex
workers and rehabilitating them in society. Jameela believes that
decriminalizing sex workers is necessary rather than rehabilitation:
I want to ask these people whether they have ever tried to find out about sex
workers’ family ties, social ties. Is it possible to build afresh their domestic ties
and social ties through rehabilitation? Won’t this leave the sex worker all the
more isolated and helpless?
What’s meant by rehabilitation? Sex workers may be shifted to a different
place, but is it possible to keep sustaining them? (Jameela, 2007: 137)
Reading these texts in the light of feminist debates makes an

interesting discussion. First, there is the debate on sex work that
questions the nomenclature ‘prostitute’, sees this occupation as
legitimate work and demands its legalization. On the other hand,
are the feminists that believe in the abolition of prostitution and
see it as a form of violence against women. The latter argue that
this can hardly be called an occupation of choice as this choice is
not a free one. Juline A. Koken argues (2010) that there is a feeling
amongst researchers that Third World sex workers are ‘victims’ who
are ‘innocent’ because they were trafficked or forced by circum
stances to enter the profession, while those hailing from the First
World seem to be into it for money or by choice, implying that they
are immoral. But, she argues, the fact that there are large, active
sex workers’ organizations in Cambodia, Thailand and India go to
prove that those working in Third World countries are very aware
of the connotations of their profession and want to be recognized
as other citizens of the country with full rights. In a general sense,
there is the debate on who is the ‘enemy’, whether to ally with men
or not in the movement. These working-class women’s narratives,
similar to the perspective of some Black women writers see their
menfolk as part of the exploited people who have been turned into
brutes by the system. As Sheela Reddy wrote in the introduction to
Halder’s book, her father, who is the cause of her misery in most
instances is portrayed by the daughter as a complex character, ‘. . . a
man with a short temper, but sentimental and on occasion affect
ionate, and capable of unexpected tenderness’ (Halder, 2007:
p. xi).
‘I think the basic fight isn’t between the sexes; it’s a struggle of
the couple. And when I say couple, I also include children and
grandchildren, who have to join the struggle for liberation from a
class position. I think that’s fundamental now’ (Barrios, qtd. in
Cliff, 162). The common factor is that each book begins with a
narrative of a subject in the midst of personal misery, domestic
or sexual violence and exploitation but instead of searching for
personal fulfilment singularly, they turn outward towards society
and social change as the way forward.
Women’s writing that has now become part of the canon—the
writing of middle-class or privileged women, is strikingly different
in its ‘inward search for emotional fulfilment’. Most critical writing
and research is about the poetry and prose written by middle-class
women, their search for identity and sexual liberation. Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak observes this while analysing Margaret Drabble’s,
318 Shoma Sen
Waterfall, having read it at a time when concerns of race ‘had begun
to invade my (her) mind’. Drabble’s novel, which she sees as an
exploration of the question, ‘Why does love happen?’ makes her
wonder at the choice of subject. She sees that ‘the entire questioning
is carried out in what I can see only as a privileged atmosphere’,
and wonders why ‘Drabble considers the story of so privileged
a woman the most worth telling’ (qtd. in Spivak, Reader: Selected
Works 528). Writing usually begins with the known and searches
for the unknown. To privileged women, that is the world they are
familiar with and since most women writers belong to the privi
leged sections, there is immense repetition in their narratives of
personal angst. For working-class women, Dalit women and Black
women writers, the world that they know, that they begin writing
with, is so different for the middle-class reader and yet so real that
it immediately strikes a chord. In other words, for underprivileged
women, writing is different; the narrative is for social change.
REFERENCES
Barrios, Domitila de Chungara and Moema Viezzer, Let Me Speak, New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1975.
Cliff, Tony, Class Struggle and Women’s Liberation, Exeter, England: Wheaton
and Co., 1984.
Halder, Baby, A Life Less Ordinary, tr. Urvashi Butalia, New Delhi: Zubaan-
Penguin, 2006.
Hooks, Bell, Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism, London: South End
Press, 1981.
Jameela, Nalini, The Autobiography of a Sex Worker, tr. J. Devika, New Delhi:
Westland, 2007.
Koken, Juline A., ‘The Meaning of the “Whore”: How Feminist Theories on
Prostitution Shape Research on Female Sex Workers’, in Alys William Melissa,
Hope Ditmore, Antonia Levy, Sex Work Matters, Exploring Money, Power
and Intimacy in the Sex Industry, London: Zed Books, 2010.
Mam, Somaly, The Road of Lost Innocence, tr. Lisa Appignanesi, London: Virago,
2007.
Showalter, Elaine, A Literature of Their Own, British Women Novelists from Bronte
to Lessing, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977.
——, Sister’s Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women’s Writing,
Smith, Barbara, ‘Towards a Black Feminist Criticism’, The Radical Teacher, no. 7
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, March 1978, pp. 20-7.
Spivak, Gayatri C., ‘Feminism and Critical Theory’, in Modern Criticism and
Theory: A Reader, 2nd edn., ed. David Lodge, New Delhi: Pearsons
Educatioan, 2007, p. 504.
C H A P T E R 21
Of Being Ants amongst the Elephants:

Anecdotes and Antidotes
A PA R N A L A N J EWA R B O S E
The book Ants among Elephants (2017) by Sujatha Gidla is an

addition to the repertoire of books speaking of caste. It dissects
the different warring factions of the left threadbare through the
perspectival bio-sketch of the Andhra revolutionary, S.M. Satya
murthy. His romance and divorce with the left parties form the
component of the narrative, retold by his Indian American niece,
Gidla. It’s a story of a cosmopolitan Dalit family who fought their
way up the repressive hierarchical caste order through conversion
to Christianity. They were lucky to escape poverty not because they
were smarter but they were there when opportunities came knock
ing. It was as if they were driving and all the traffic lights were
turning green, says the writer in one of her interviews. The book
takes us to the ancestors of the revolutionary, the confiscation of
their tribal land, livelihood, their forceful eviction in British India,
to being landless labourers and at the bottom of the pyramidal
Hindu social hierarchy, to their entry into the caste fold as un
touchables till SM, their grandson, realized that there was no space
for them still.
The narrative rests primarily on this man of the people who lived,
and dreamt revolution, resorted to arms and dared to challenge
the state that was unwilling to take note of the poor man’s plight.
It is not a fantasy fiction of middle-class aspirations nor does it
record the success of Indian democracy taking note of the lesser
ones. Its crux lies in the story of the co-founder of Peoples War
Group—a poet who wrote under the pseudonym Shivsagar; whose
poetry became part of the movement’s slogans inspiring succeed
ing revolutionaries. His transformation from a young leader of the
youth congress in his small village hometown, Gudivada, at the
brink of Indian Independence; to a college student forever goaded
by a sense of shame of his deprivations amidst the more privileged
students; to being a hopeless romantic who believed that love knew
no boundaries; to a communist fighting for an Andhra State, to
being a sympathizer of the Telangana movement; to finally, being
a disgruntled comrade joining the naxals. This book reflects his
multiple phases and the myriad facets of Indian politics.
Historically, there were two factions within the CPI (Communist
Party of India), one that believed in the electoral process, and the
other in armed struggle; but neither faction gave space to caste.
However, if caste issue was not to be addressed within a party of
the people there was no necessity for Dalits to join the revolutionary
movement. This then could not be any different from the other
upper caste parties indulging in tokenism and keeping the party
reigns in their hands. For an upper caste man, class might be a
comfort zone but without incorporating caste it was meaningless.
Just as mainstream left politics talks of declassing, of the capitalist
becoming a worker it is also important to de-caste and look at the
society from the untouchable’s eye. But this might not happen.
The upper caste does not really need a revolution the way the lower
caste does, and therefore, it is also pertinent that they lead. The
leaders should decide whether they ought to fight or not fight.
What the traditional communists failed to see was that class
oppression was at its worst at the lowest rung in caste hierarchy.
The early communists committed the blunder of internalizing the
European models and fit them into the social reality of India. They
followed classes conceived by Lenin in Russia. Had they not done
so caste would not have been excluded. This error committed needed
to be comprehended. But rallying around caste too cannot resolve
the issue. It may never possibly emancipate the oppressed from
either caste or non-caste oppression. Therefore, it’s important to
organize the movement around oppression. But without annihila
tion of caste no revolution can be realized in India. Therefore,
Of Being Ants amongst the Elephants 323
change in mental attitudes is imperative. And this is an uphill task
but not impossible. Like the way in which CPI splintered into
numerous factions, the militant movement too ruptured from PWG
to Samatha Volunteer Force. After SM got ostracized, he went under
ground and later on surfaced in the 1990s and travelled tirelessly.
Whether one subscribes to his Maoism or not is unimportant, but
he definitely emerges as a unique personality.
For the better part of his life, SM himself avoided identity poli
tics. But then he was expelled on charges of conspiring to divide
the party. It was said that important positions within the party
cadres went to the upper castes leaving the Dalit cadres to do
menial tasks. They were handed brooms instead of guns or some
members intentionally left money around to see if SM picked it
up, such instances do project the tragic and somehwat petty
trajectories of an organization, that stands on a definite ideology.
However, the reasons cited by different people are varied. While
SM maintained that he raised the caste issue, his detractors main
tain that he lacked organizational skill and was expelled when he
refused to hand over the party reigns, which were given to him
temporarily in the absence of Kondapalli Seetharamiah. How much
of this holds ground can also be contested. In the history of com
munism in India, it has always been about class. It is not until
recently, that some are accepting the historic gaffe of not address
ing caste.
While SM tried to bridge Marx and Ambedkar, towards his end,
the writer Gidla’s own political calling came pretty late when she
noticed that the difference between herself and other Christians,
lay in caste. She resorted to the same radical ideology as her uncle
and joined the students’ resistance group only to be imprisoned for
three months. She later went to America—the land of opportuni
ties, in 1992 and ended up taking unconventional jobs where women
were scarce. Her own part in the book is private and concurs only
to the point when she is released from the prison and leaves for the
US. Her memoir corresponds to her own time in India. While we
get a sneak peek into the political life of her family, her own struggles
remained largely invisible nor could one fathom why she dis
approved of Satyamurthy’s politics while elevating his persona.
Certainly, she relied on the memory of an old comrade shortly
before he died and published the book only after he passed away.
And then she possibly depended on her aged mother who after her
own marriage was somewhat distant to her brother. But it would
have been more interesting to know her brother first hand had he
published his own life history and his observations about events
and people.
II
The book is about the family of Kambhams, and centred around
three siblings Satyam, Carey and Manjula. The former two were
the author Sujatha Gidla’s maternal uncles and Manjula, her
mother. They were born to Prasantha Rao, a Dalit convert to Christ
ianity, who ‘transgressed’ from the ways of his tribes just to ensure
something different and worthwhile for himself and his children.
Tracing the history to her great grandparents, the book is dedi
cated to her great maternal grandmother Marthamma. While most
of the pages are occupied in documenting the communist politics
right from Satyam’s boyhood days, his persistent urge to be incor
porated in the radical uprisings in the 1950s and 1960s, his
associations and initiation into the militant factions of the com
munist party to being the co-founder of the guerilla group. It’s his
metamorphic journey from a callous street activist Satyam to a full
blooded leader S.M. Satyamurthy, from being a dreamer devouring
multiple books in the library to a realistic visionary leading from
the front, that forms the highlight of the book. The other charac
ters in fact are too puny to come close to his stature and seem to be
orbiting around him, to only project his story through their lived
lives, endorsing the impact and influence he commanded.
Gidla’s book succinctly mentions in the introduction that the
lives of these people were not merely stories but lives that were
lived. Only when she moved to the states, the kind of life lived by
her folks became stories worth narrativising. She does problemati
cally, present caste as racism, undermining the glaring difference
of visibility. But then especially in rural belts where people know
each other, it is something that can’t stay hidden for long for there
are boundaries marked for each, based on occupations. So indis
pensable is caste that curious upholders devise interesting means
to ferret information about someone’s caste. Christianity as a reli
gion considers everybody equal in the eyes of the Lord and yet
post-conversion, the ex-untouchables couldn’t escape its scourge
thus retaining the status quo of the Hindu religion.
The Prelude of the book goes back to the year 1800 in Khammam
district of Andhra Pradesh, with Venkataswami and Atchamma
living on forests produce only to be evicted by the British, then
establishing, settlements around a lake, to a place called Shankar
paduonly to be reduced later to serfdom on the lands tilled at the
cost of their sweat and blood. Canadian missionaries walked in to
bail them out of their misery with a return gratitude of conversion
to Christianity. Yet the antlike life continued, amidst poverty,
deprivation and squalor. This life may be seemingly uninteresting
or insignificant for the world yet it needed to be archived for the
other ants to understand how the anthills were built through
struggles and efforts.
Gidla brings to the fore the importance of land and its signifi
cance to the dispossessed. Her grandfather Prasanna Rao had
bought a small patch, tilled it endlessly only to see nature’s fury at
its worst. Forever dreaming a better life for his children, he sank
deeper into poverty and debts. Unable to face it all, one day he
simply abandoned all his motherless children, leaving them at the
mercy of their maternal grandmother. The punch of this poverty
was directly borne by the first-born Satyam, to whom poverty
amongst his own people was negligible as compared to the world
where he compelled himself to belong. The only solace during
such embarrassing trials of fate was perhaps the books he found in
the college library. He excelled with vengeance in oratory, poetry,
students rights, and knowledge of monarchy, Telangana history,
the vetti system1 and the rule of the dora.2
The colonial regime supported the Nizam that enabled him
to suppress the commoners and remain autocratic. The Andhra
Mahasabha was formed to promote Andhra Culture but they could
never achieve reforms on their own and hence had to ally with the
communists. It eventually transformed into a Hyderabad unit of
the party welcoming membership from the poorest of poor and
championing causes of social reforms including abolition of vetti
and ownership of land possessed by the dora. They had local chap
ters in every village but had no action plan. The sparks of rebellion
and resistance that later spread like bush fire were triggered by a
humble washerwoman, a vetti called Ailamma. Unprecedented and
unanticipated by the communists, it was the peasants embarking
on a mass struggle. They had to be mobilized into guerrilla units to
fight the dora of Doras—the Nizam3 who in turn let loose his
Razaakars,4 to slaughter the peasants. Refusing to budge even after
one year of Independence, the Indian army finally marched in to
put an end to the 224-year-old dynasty and the old feudal order.
While the guerillas put down their rifles, the Indian army now
pointed guns towards the peasants. The land seized by them from
the Doras had to be returned, a vicious repression went on, com
munists were outlawed, campuses were monitored, men mutilated
and women were raped, resulting in crushing the Telangana struggle
under the military and police.
Those were the days when everything exciting and progressive
in arts and society was connected to communism, whether Lenin
or poet Sri Sri, it was a phase of idolizations. A brave new world
opened up for Satyam and his friends Pitchayya, Manikya Rao,
Hanumaiyya. Their aspirations had soared high while the red
dragon made its way into the kingdom of Nizam. But now hear
ing of countless atrocities their blood boiled. Reservation5 for the
Christian converts too came up for discussion. Despite attempts
to put the discussion of caste behind him, Satyam found himself
confronting it more and more. The paradox of this was as a com
munist he was supposed to think only in terms of class and not
caste. Unable to finish what he came for, it was a chance visit to his
cousin when he came in contact with Flora, the daughter of a
Madiga convert Issac and a Brahmin widow. As child marriages
were rampant amongst Brahmins, so were girls getting widowed
and pregnant in their teens either through secret affairs or rapes by
relatives which was largely common. The offspring of such liaisons
were then left at the Christian orphanages to save themselves of
both pain and shame. Issac’s wife was one of those. Certain stereo
types are endorsed in individual observations. For instance, Issac
though an untouchable was light skinned, contrary to the infa
mous belief that they should be dark. The nose of Flora was a
lovely ‘caste nose’ unlike the snub noses of his people. Despite
being her saviour she put him in his untouchable place of the have-
not. What Prasanna Rao wanted to keep his children away from,
they faced it all through.
While being dependent on others to do his personal things
Satyam was, an independent minded person who read voraciously
wrote poetry, articles, and stories and raised consciousness amongst
the skeptic madiga6 agricultural workers, gained their confidence
and organized them into a union. He befriended many who were
later part of his movement. While some of the communists were
clueless, attempting to seek advice from Stalin after the ideological
split was over, whether to continue the armed struggle against the
government army. A quick learner that he was, he soon grappled
with the difference between privileged communists and non-privi
leged ones. During an election rally one of the landlord’s Paleru 7
left work to join, only to be told bluntly to seek his landlord’s
permission. When he said that his landlord would never permit,
he was simply pulled out and handed over to him, leaving Satyam
stunned and musing over the contradictions between what the
party said and what it did. His association with Guntur Bapanayya,
an MLA who served the poor or Nancharayya who later became a
staunch Ambedkarite, organizing the untouchables to form a sepa
rate party, demanding legal and social reforms, proved productive.
His description of the latter affirms a few stereotypes, ‘The moment
you looked at him you could see he was an untouchable and son of
illiterate coolies’ (112). But together they formed the cultural group
the people’s theatre christening it ‘Toilers Cultural Forum’ and
mobilized the Pakis8 to perform.
The communists were reluctant to associate themselves with
‘such dirty people’. Since the chasm within the party was palpable,
it needed to return to its proletarian tradition. It was during one
such performance that his significant meeting with Kondapalli
Seetharamayya changed the course of his life. KS as he was called,
like Sundarayya had discarded his caste name Reddy to exemplify
his rejection of caste feeling. Trained in firearm while his wife toured
with the People’s theatre group, he was a man with immense
following amongst the militant youth.
For Satyam the party became a refuge and party members his
family and it was with this very spirit that he opened his arms to
welcome and protect Manikya Rao and his Kapu9 wife when the
two eloped to marry and had an army of angry goons from the
girl’s side chasing them for their blood. However, he refused to be
a wholetimer for the party as he was well aware of the treatment
meted out to the cadres. Allowances were doled out infrequently
and grudgingly which could be degrading. On the Andhra Uni
versity campus, he could draw parallels with what was going on in
Russia. Like Khruschev some Indians like Dange and Rajeswara
Rao believed that socialism could be achieved peacefully, through
gradual societal transformation relying on election procedures and
rejected the idea of renewal of armed struggle. Yet SM being the
man he was, nothing could restrict him—neither marriage nor
fatherhood.
He aimed to train cadres and build an army of guerillas who
would go fighting to liberate from village to village, till they could
surround cities and capture state power. This was too idealistic a
dream but he dreamt it and ran into identifying people who could
assist him. At Vijayawada while on one hand he learnt the ungrate
fulness of some he had helped, he also recognized the rewarding
gratefulness of KS. His characteristic flaws were his eccentricities
and robust emotional decisions that affected people around him.
He wrote an open letter to the first president of Independent India
Rajendra Prasad telling him to get out of the way of Nehru when
the latter wanted to pass the Hindu Code Bill introduced by
Ambedkar. The Indo-China War divided communists yet again.
While SM’s stand was pro-China, there was tension brewing in the
catholic school where he taught when students complained about
homosexuality and sodomy, indulged in by some of the catholic
priests. Both SM and KS championed the students cause. Similarly,
he led the teachers protest against the mission school. Religiosity
had long rendered the people servile and incapable of confronting
corrupt religious authorities controlling public institutions.
The socio-political ethos of the 1960s made many educated
youngsters turn to Maoism. The CPI(M) became distinguishable
from the revisionist CPI which was mostly run by brahmins. It
was also a period when the ‘Separate Telangana’ cries reverberated
and the slogans ‘Andhras go back’ became louder. While SM vehe
mently took up the cause, he also reasoned with people to direct
their fight against the exploiters and not the exploited who had
come looking for jobs. In West Bengal, Charu Majumdar of CPI(M)
opposed revisionism of CPI. Internal disgust spread when the party
desisted from allying with the bourgeois parties. On one hand,
Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal led the Naxalbari10 movement,
when countless peasants were massacred, revolts were snuffed out
and young educated men, workers and peasants became Naxalites.11
In Srikakulam district of Andhra, the Naxalbari Solidarity com
mittee was formed to start an armed revolt. The party split into
two and SM became the leader of the CPI(ML) and Warangal
became the new Naxalbari. Along with other comrades, like
Panchadi, Nirmala, Koteswara Rao and Rama Rao he met Charu
Majumdar to discuss the future course of struggle with KS leading
it. The (mis)adventures of Adilabad jungles are detailed with a spate
of indiscriminate killings. Soon after this numerous encounter kill
ings took place. Many leaders were arrested, tortured and killed.
Two young men Bhoomaiya and Kista Goud were hanged.12 As in
Calcutta, the movement in Srikakulam was snuffed out. Both SM
and KS escaped to Hyderabad as survivors to launch the Peoples
War Group only to be later changed to the CPI(M) now shifting
focus to the tribals. SM went to jail but astonishingly for the
Telangana agitation. After coming out he continued to bamboozle
the police and prepare squads, to loot the rich for the poor. Being
constantly on the run, he was expelled from the party. He came to
attend a public meeting to tell people the reasons for his expul
sion. At the time, there appeared a deeper conflict between landed
castes and landless untouchables reducing the latter to mere wage
workers. While the former reacted with murderous violence, SM
continued to champion the untouchable cause. All through his
political stint he avoided talking about caste but after his expul
sion he vehemently lashed out against the casteist biases existing
in a so-called party of the people. He passed away in 2012.
III
In his personal life, SM’s decision to marry came, more out of the
situational irony of the dire necessity for the family to be taken
care of than his personal need to have a companion. He married his
cousin Maniamma, to whom all that he could talk to was the do’s
and dont’s in married life. She, on her part agreed unconditionally
to this conditional marriage for he was her hero and the hero of
many people she knew. The whole grotesque ritual of pig capture
for feeding the wedding guests is rendered in gory details by Gidla.
For an uninitiated reader it might seem subhuman while at the
same time also superscribes the typecasting of untouchables as
associated with either pigs or crows—the former for its foulness
and the latter for its blackness. SM himself breaks these stereo
types by serving vegetables and lentils and telling his caste friends
to stay away in good humour.
Maniamma was more interesting and appealing as a character.
She never questioned her husband’s moves, even when Carey was
violent enough to strike her with his foot. She dutifully set out to
do the tasks assigned to her, the first of them being to nurse the
old ailing grandmother Marthamma and care for her until her
death. With no money, except the overwhelming support from
SM’s supporters, her death marked the magnitude of things. ‘Who
could have imagined that the body of this diminutive black skinned
untouchable woman, a gleaner of fields, a singer of songs of toil, a
pounder of rice, a bible woman, the widow of a railway coolie, the
mother of plantation slave, a woman who’d never spend a single
moment of her life on herself, would be carried to her grave in a
procession of hundreds of men and women carrying red flags and
singing ‘The Internationale’? (159) The crazy beliefs amongst the
converts came to the forefront when relatives of SM at the funeral
questioned whether the old woman was made to confess her sins
before her death. This shows that adopting a religion of the colo
nial masters did not purge them of the insufficiencies of their own
beliefs. Mental progression was a far-fetched notion, which would
probably require another revolution on the part of SM for its real
ization.
Maniamma’s character is both likeable and relatable. She con
sidered herself lucky on seeing the railway workers, teachers,
engineering and medical students come to her house and talk to
her husband. Though illiterate, she was quick to grasp that her
man could be pleased only by allowing him to do what he loved
doing best—work for the party. To be satisfied with a decent com
fortable life was not to her husband’s liking. Unperturbed and
without turmoil, she accepted it when he told her that his time to
leave and lead the armed struggle had come. After his meetings in
Vizag when he arranged to see her one last time, she said nothing.
Gidla speaks on her behalf, as the one wronged in this marriage.
However, that was Gidla’s interpretation of her character. For Mani
amma knew precisely what she was getting into unlike Manjula.
Therefore, on SM’s asking ‘Do you want to come with me?’ Her
response was admirable, ‘The country and its problems your
responsibility . . . your children are my responsibility, you take
care of your business of liberating the country and I will raise your
children, protect them and educate them.’ Such grit and level
headedness from a so-called illiterate woman who saw him off at
the station with a smile forced SM to admit, ‘What courage what
strength, that woman has’. The remarkable resilience, with which
she bore SM’s children, and nurtured them ungrudgingly during
his frequent long absences with no surety of money coming, was
commendable and showed the multiple levels of her struggle. She
outshines the other women discussed in the book and brings one
to empathize with her rustic simplicity and world-view. For an
avid understanding reader, her struggles are rather piercing. Had
it not been for her intrepidity, SM’s political career could not have
got the needed impetus. Looking from her perspective, hers was a
marriage of conditions of no returns where she was meant only to
give and dispense without unsolicited questionings on her part.
She bore his children while he left on the call of activism. Un
educated, jobless, she still carves a place, for realizing that her man
was more at peace being away from home doing what he loved to
do best.
Manjula’s situation was quite different, she was educated, finan
cially independent and yet indecisive. Manjula is SM’s sister and
the writer Gidla’s mother. Gidla’s father’s depiction too is done in
a certain way possibly for narratorial purpose, leaving out his part
completely. He was that common intractable wife beater who ignored
his own mother, but derived sadistic pleasure in battering his wife
in order to please her. Sexism within the Dalit community is high
lighted. Throughout the pages, what emerges is her uncle, who
despite being a big revolutionary to the outside world, could not
set his own home in order. His attitude towards his own sister
(and his wife) was palpably manipulative aiming to drive her into
crazy dependency, whether it related to the choice of clothes, friends
or a life partner. Gender dynamics was definitely at play. SM’s
own account is interlaced with his sister’s account and his relation
with his wife. Women were supposed to clean, cook, care, comfort
and stay within the limits drawn by men.
The problems of Manjula, her poor health, her critical preg
nancies, her divided family life, bringing up kids single handedly,
etc., were problems faced and grappled with by many working
women who were away from home and husband. However, she
was both nurtured and taken for granted. Manjula was much more
privileged than many of her other contemporary Dalit women who
had absolutely no means, no source and guidance to fall back on.
The other uncle Carey is presented as too indulgent to only end
up fighting over trivialities and perhaps too impetuous and impa
tient to cause his grandmother’s fall that confined her to bed till
her end. Worshipping women under their petticoats, seducing
women and watching them succumb to him, necessitates his
misogyny to blanket them as loose and rebuilds his urge to control
the noose round his sister more tightly. He fell in love, eloped, and
was left heartbroken on finding her gone. He eventually settled
down to a married life.
Manjula’s side of the story appeared to be more personalized
and domesticated as compared to SM’s for all the obvious reasons
of proximity to the writer. She had been more than humanized to
hide her subtle characteristic flaws that despite conscious attempts
on the part of Gidla, still surface in the narrative. They do for SM
and others too. Manjula had nothing much of significance to say
about herself and her life besides talking about a bad marriage,
patriarchy, inconsiderate in-laws, battering husband, difficulties
of raising children as a working mother and sporadic instances of
humiliations based on caste. What was importantly missing all
along is Manjula’s lack of resilience to resist it all. Her compromises
and rationale despite her education leaves one baffled. Therefore,
she cannot be a prototype for countless other women struggling
through worse situations.
The problem with Manjula’s narrative was the thin line that trans
posed again to become SM’s narrative for all purposes because that
was where all the excitement came from. There was so much
happening at the other end that her problems especially those
related to adjustments wherever she went, might go wrong. But
the truth is that problems did exist in her life as they did in many
people’s lives. She was the one to make her father proud in studies.
Her numerous ordeals like that of all other Mala13 girls, be it in
college where they were given insulting caste nicknames or in the
ill-treatment meted out by the teachers and her total discomfort
to it all is well brought out. Besides her intense comfort bonding
with her brothers from whom she kept no secrets or the Brahmin
teacher Sambhasiva Rao who encouraged her, reveal the binaries of
the good and bad at work in her case.
Gidla presented her as a meek dutiful girl doing what she was
told to do. She was foolish enough not to hold on to herself or be
so meek as to get an innocent boy, recklessly bashed up by her
brothers and friends, signalling tensions to escalate further. The
result was that a group of fifty men barged in to attack her family
in SM’s absence, destroying everything in the house and leaving
permanent scars on her father Prasant Rao’s body. Thus, earning
for herself the reputation of a ‘girl who caused all violence’ and
more notoriously the ‘slayer of men’ from the narrowminded society.
She emerged more and more into her own later, one learns as one
reads the book. When SM’s marriage was fixed, a woman whom
she knew as a ‘wild girl’ would now usurp her place of attention
and all she could feel was a sense of betrayal.
Whether Gidla, in an attempt to immortalize her importance
in the narrative complicated her character further by forcing her
own personal likes and dislikes on Manjula, is not really clear,
especially in instances like, her being anti-Gandhi and admiring
Subhash Chandra Bose ‘for his baby face’ while she ‘hated Gandhi
for being old and ugly’. That she prayed ‘. . . before every maths
exam for Nehru’s death’ and other similar instances, seem more
imagined real. The reader is told that SM would often turn to her
and discuss various subjects. She and Carey would pick up books
brought home by SM and read. Both lacked his poetic genius.
However, both longed to do something exemplary under the impact
of Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s novels available in Telugu. The details
of her first menses, the celebration and fanfare associated with it,
her embarrassment in school where everyone knew ‘. . . why a girl
would spend 10 days absent from school’ (96) are brought out
synoptically.
She took part in the election campaign for an SFI candidate at
her brother’s bidding; This led to a friendship with the candidate
Vithaleshwar Rao and his friend Ashok. She was a victim of patri
archy as well as of manipulation. Her father seemed so protective
that he ensured she never interacted with the boys he tutored at
home. SM for all his public life and persona, was the same patriarch
at home, mindful and judgemental of his sister’s male friends. Her
sense of awe and respect was one thing but the same compounded
by extreme fear at what her brothers especially Carey was capable
of doing made her tremble like a leaf at the very thought. Quite
rightly, for her male friend, it was unimaginable to see that a girl
who could be poised and confident in class could be so scared of
her brother, who himself had a notorious reputation when it came
to girls.
She was equally presumptuous of her likes and dislikes. Her
attraction for people with upper caste bearings gave her a sense of
psychological elevation or of vindication over her own lowliness
but it also made her err on the side of caution. Another untouchable
classmate Chandraleela exposed her true self when she told her
that she had psychological problems and cared too much for high
caste friends and not much for her kind. She lacked wisdom to
understand the loaded meaning and could only tell herself ‘I don’t
like poverty. I like Kammas14 and I prefer their friendship’. Yet she
felt marrying for love with an upper caste was a taboo. She rejects
the advances made by someone seriously interested in her. At home,
she could not cope up with Maniamma and to ensure peace in the
household she was packed off to do another master’s programme
at the Banaras Hindu University. Here the regional and linguistic
divide became more evident. She was not much liked by her
professors; her isolation and lack of belongingness became more
pronounced and reversely made her work harder on her studies. It
is here that she understood newer facts about spinsterhood and
the notion of free will unlike thinking of it as a curse. The description
of the filth and stink of the city especially near the Ghats as
contrasted to cleanliness in Sarnath; her dilemma of whether she
should enter the temple or not reflected her mental conditioning,
her inferior internalizations, in short the tremendous monstrosity
of oppression and its impact on the human psyche. She went back
with lower scores, and applied for teaching positions but her atheist
communist background had a bearing on her prospects. She made
vain attempts to cultivate civil ways and appear more ludicrous.
She quit one job after another, took up ad hoc appointments,
recklessly borrowed from colleagues while the brothers were shown
as uselessly vegetating. The frustration of all this built up to create
space for entertaining thoughts of marriage and having her own
household. Being dark, poor, non-churchy and brothers who were
stand communists, the prospect seemed difficult.
When a tutor by the name of Prabhakar Rao was proposed as a
suitor, the whole process of showing the girl to the groom’s side for
scrutiny threw a light on the remnants of the pernicious Hindu
practices lingering as residual reminders of an unforsaken past even
amongst the converts. Manjula was also put through the scrutiny
of prejudiced prying eyes of Mr. Rao’s relatives who for vague reasons
called off the engagement. ‘Now there will be rumours. Manjula
was touched water. No one else would drink from the same glass.
Where before she had been hard to sell goods. She was now rejected
merchandise’ (207). These lines reflect her sad plight of being
thrown to the mercy and whims of strangers to be acceptable despite
her preliminary ordeal. A small letter of apology for his folk’s
behaviour is all that comes as compensation from her educated
suitor. Manjula for the first time took control of her life even if it
was for her own self and undertook the task of confronting Rao.
Her efforts paid off and after five months her family received a
telegram of the wedding fixed with no mention of the dowry but
leaving the family in a tizzy over the paucity of time for arrange
ments. At the time when she stepped out of the house as a bride
SM fell to his knees and cried inconsolably thinking of their
common struggles, growing up motherless, abandoned by father,
their efforts to get educated, the shameful way in which her match
had been arranged. ‘What was to become of Satyam-Carey-Manjula?’
(Gidla 223).
At her husband’s place, she gradually learnt the reasons for the
marriage and the internal family politics involved. Her dreams
were shattered when she learnt about other realities too. Yet as a
woman, her physical yearnings needed to be addressed and the
mad rhythm of deprivations kept the monotony of life going. Her
husband frequently transformed into a monster in the presence of
his mother. She came to Kazipet for her customary first delivery
when Sujatha was born. Her foray into motherhood, her switching
over from one job after job, her harassment both at home and at
work, the mounting debts of her husband, his costly habits took
toll on her health. Yet she suffered silently and never revealed any
of this to her brothers for the fear of breaking the marriage. By the
time the second child Babu was born, the husband was more erratic
and she was more delirious. For the third child Anitha, she came
to SM, who for his sister’s well-being signed in her husband’s
absence for the required tubectomy. Her limitation to confront
the man who ‘chased and beat his wife to champion his mother’,
shows the awkwardness and helplessness of her situation. She bore
her man’s breach of trust, when in her long absences he would
have relations with a maidservant. Her silly fancies, her fears and
sense of protection, her notion of health and well-being for her
children, make up for the character she is through the pages of the
book. Her only streak of happiness came when the mother-in-law
passes away and after twenty-one long years of marriage, she enjoyed
harmonious relations with her husband.
Interestingly, Sujatha Gidla appears only in the last few pages
in the Afterword. Her side of the family story was not adequately
dealt with, except for mentions of remote instances of her life. Her
molestation as a child or her acceptance to becoming an accomplice
of a neighbouring Akka’s15 transgressions are highlighted. Poverty
and misery continued to surround her too. It was only during
Christmas time that the family could afford apples. In one instance
when she was having one, a woman across the street stared at her
with a lustful grin salivating openly. She wished there were no
poor people in the world and she grew up with the stories of how
her uncle sacrificed all to live amongst the poor. SM was like a
celluloid hero, she wished to emulate. She practised sleeping on the
bare cement floor, to prepare her for the future. At fourteen, she
came across a group of teenagers singing about peasants and workers
to a small crowd. On inviting them home, she learnt they belonged
to a party founded by her uncle. That day she became a radical
and a member of the Radical students’ wing of PWG. Her initiation
at an early age, her enrolment for the master’s programme at REC
Warangal, her joining strikes only to be put in jail later, her contrac
tion of TB, the repercussions of her arrest, all followed sequentially.
The party distanced itself while she was under surveillance. Later
she heard about SM’s expulsion for turning a traitor and dividing
the party. She had a visitor who told her the reasons for SM’s
expulsion. While being second in command when he took over as
general secretary, a group of young untouchable members com
plained of casteist practices in the underground functioning of the
party. They wanted SM to raise this question, which he did. He was
expelled for conspiring to divide the party. The truth came out
later that casteism was indeed there within the communist party.
The last paragraph of the book takes the reader back to 1928 to
the strike in the textile mills in Bombay. It failed because the
workers were divided on caste lines. Caste workers under com
munists refused to work along with untouchables and wanted to
confine them to the lowest of jobs. Dr. Ambedkar had urged them
that they had nothing to gain but only lose. The union finally
agreed to include a demand to open a weaving department for the
untouchable workers. Nevertheless, had the union fought for the
rights of the untouchable workers from the beginning, the struggle
would have had a different dynamism.
IV
There are many Dalits well stationed in life and yet continue to go
through similar stories of humiliation and constant rebukes and
reminders of caste. There are a number of restrictions on untouch
ables mentioned by Gidla in her book, which are not different
from what one may encounter in several other narratives on caste
too. She brought to the forefront the struggles of women both within
patriarchy and caste and how they overcame these misogynistic
fetters and rose above caste to nurture and raise families. For an
uninitiated reader in Andhra or Telangana politics, the number of
names and events mentioned would be baffling but Gidla assumed
that her readers would keep pace with her narrations and character
delineations by zooming in and out to give us glimpses of the
times, people, views, villages, practices and beliefs.
Gidla maintained that ‘as long as India’s land is in the hands of
just a few, there will be caste system’ which is a rather an under
statement of the complex caste issue. Does it presuppose that those
who own lands do not suffer caste onslaught? The response would
be the more the Dalits demand their rights the greater violations
they face; the more politically aware they become, greater violence
is unleashed on them. Merely owning lands and becoming land
owners is not going to uproot the caste weeds, which are gone so
deep that an altogether different chemical would be needed to
destroy it. There are few Dalits who are well off economically, and
thanks to the reservation system that benefited them and yet who
continue to be targets of hatred and humiliations because they be
long to a certain caste. Their merit, calibre and their achievements
stand to nothing. Their movement towards economic stability is
like a splinter in the upper caste eye who are reacting more vigor
ously and committing greater crimes against the Dalits. At times
caste violence is engineered by the state machinery for whom it’s
inveterate to protect upper caste interests unapologetically. This
violence is embroidered in the very fabric of modern decolonized
manifestation. And therefore, caste system will remain as long as
the mindsets endorsing it continue to remain the same.
The Swacha Bharat (Clean India) Campaign may sound idealis
tic but has it seeped in the interiors? It has become misnomer.
Many Dalits still work under the most dangerous and hazardous
circumstances in the most unclean and unhealthy conditions
endangering their lives. Similarly, the ‘Beti Padhao Beti Bachao’
(save the girl child, educate the girl child) campaign seems inconse
quential when on daily basis women are lynched, paraded naked,
and young girls are raped while the huge backlog in child rape
trials continues. The malevolence for them is an ongoing patho
logical condition. Mere ordinances are not all and legislations are
not necessarily cemented by change of mindsets. Caste remains a
menacing impediment to a democratic ethos. We have proven that
the world’s greatest democracy is also the most hierarchical and
status quoist. Religious philosophical rationalizations were applied
to keep the Dalits assigned to lowliness. These imposed beliefs were
also in the end internalized by the Dalit victims enabling them to
inevitably, surrender themselves to the echelons of compliance.
This has promoted lack of solidarity amongst them, in turn inca
pacitating any retaliatory challenge to the malignant system.
With the advent of the RSS backed BJP government, the main
streaming of Brahmanism and Vedic (mal)practices is visible like
never before. These are repackaged as advanced for political pur
poses. The Manusmriti burnt, as a mark of symbolic protest, by
Ambedkar against Hinduism, is now being upheld by the Hindutva
forces as sacrosanct. This has also refocused attention on how the
oppression of the Dalits served to affirm the rights of poor Brah
mins thus playing into diversionary politics. Likewise, in the Trump
administration white supremacists and its mainstreaming is shift
ing focus from the African Americans and their degradation to the
rights and dignity of the poor white man.16 One evinces that the
focus is getting diverted from the real underprivileged to the poor
amongst the privileged. In India religion is ball-gamed on people’s
mind to incite native hatred. Ambedkar had rightly said that ‘there
is no such class as a completely unprivileged class except the one
which is at the base of the social pyramid’; ‘every class is interested
in maintaining the system and indeed does so by dominating or
degrading the one just below it’. The electoral politics plays on
parochial identity tactics and many such parties have emerged that
rally themselves around Dalit identity.
There is lot of disenchantment today amongst Dalits themselves
as their own self-seeking leaders are debilitating the Dalit political
parties. The violence against Dalits has increased manifold with
their assertion. They are exposed to lynching, rape, tortures and
murders. There are cow vigilantes who with full state support have
unleashed terror on the Dalits who are in the occupation of skin
ning dead cattle. There have been mass agitations and huge public
outcry against some Dalit being tied to a car and dragged to the
police station, where they were mercilessly flogged. Dalits have
renounced their degrading jobs reserved for low castes as a mark of
protest. In Maharashtra, the Bhima Koregaon17 assault was a me
ticulously planned attack on Dalit self-respect. The battle for free
dom and dignity is foremost for the Dalit, it’s not for wealth or
power.
Indian societal structure being largely multilayered, it is rather
complex and cannot be divided simplistically as blacks vs. whites
as in the US. It is more tangled and messily defined by graded
inequality. In this caste-class pyramidal set-up, the most under
privileged is the one at the lowest rung that is the Dalit and all the
ones above are those who degrade and dominate them. They keep
the system going by dominating the one below but not interested
in resisting domination nor do they refrain from dominating one
below them. So, if the Brahmin tops as the oppressor, the Dalit
stands at the receiving end from all the ones above them in the
social set up. The subordinate castes below the Brahmins and above
the Dalits have also been in recent times primarily responsible for
perpetrating some of the most heinous crimes against Dalits whether
it was the Marathwada18 episode, or the Khairlanji19 incident or
more recent attacks on Dalits. The present Hindutva regime com
prising largely of the upper castes poses as the benefactors of Dalits
and invokes Dr. Ambedkar on slightest pretext in an attempt to
appropriate him for vote bank politics. They are violating the
constitution outrightly and preaching their own brand of narrow
nationalism.
Gidla’s book is not just about life stories but combines many
genres together, ethnography, memoirs, anecdotes, history. As stated
earlier, her awareness of Ambedkar’s role in questioning the scrip
tures that sanctions caste system is doubtful. She was more inclined
to show how colonialism and capitalism in India turned the caste
system into a mere exploitative force. She rendered an oversimpli
fied and romanticized history of her great grandparents, how they
worshipped their tribal deities and livid a happy life having little
to do with the outside world. In a few lines, she compressed a
great movement of social and world history to show how people
were confined to subsistence levels in a world made up of colonialists,
and feudalists. She talked of the vetti system as a product of the
capitalist world market like the chattel slavery. She pinpointed the
idiosyncrasies of her characters and celebrated them. Even the mi
nor ones were commemorated for their creativity and repository of
memories and cultures. Tiny little detailing play around in the
book for instance the whole exercise of pig hunting and wedding
feasting was enumerated in gory specificities. The emotional core
of Gidla’s narrative was attributed to Manjula and her struggles against
patriarchy, misogyny and caste prejudices. A greater space was
occupied by her uncle S.M. Satyamurthy, the poet and revolu
tionary who organized a guerilla group in the 1970s that was a
doomed enterprise, given the might of the Indian state. Neverthe
less, losers they were not. Many Dalits were not enthusiastic for
freedom from British rule as they could see that it would be only a
substitution of colonial masters with the Brahmins. This was in
deed what happened.
From the numerous sources in Telangana it can be garnered that
Gidla was never really inclined towards acceptance of her Dalit
identity to be vocal about it even in her formative years as an activist.
Rather she remained a Christian basking in the minority status.
So what one can assume is, in the last few decades with the grow
ing popularity of Dalit writings and its greater consumption in the
West, even the uninitiated have started claiming their caste identi
ties. This is somewhat right but also a matter of concern. With the
media attention, each one wants to have a share of visibility even if
they have nothing significant to talk about their own selves or
sufferance. Keeping such designs in view only invalidates the na
ture and purpose of Dalit literary creation and it is then left at the
mercy of individual interpretations and dilutions that serve more
the individual/personal cause rather than the communal or soci
etal needs at large.
Gidla wrote that everything exciting and progressive in the 1950s
and 1960s was associated with communism, something rather a
bit unsettling. She mentioned how irresistible communism was to
Satyam and fellow Dalits because no other ideology including
nationalism, liberalism or Gandhism could match the combined
promise of communism. But an avid Dalit intellectual could justi
fiably argue that there were Ambedkar and Periyar and their ideo
logies too. Ambedkar had warned as late as 1951 that by leaving
inequalities between class and class, sex and sex, which was the
soul of Hindu society, and go on passing laws, related to economic
problems was making a farce of our constitution and was like
building palace on a dung heap. These ideas are applicable to Gidla’s
book and render a scathing critique of some of the leaders but also
the communist top brass who were mostly upper caste Brahmins
and totally reliant on Russia and China for guidance. These people
neglected the caste issue largely assuming it would disappear with
the transformations of socio-economic structures. That had been
the pathos of mechanical application of Marxist dogmas to the
Indian terrain for it failed miserably and the mainstream left failed
to garner support from the oppressed Dalits of India. Some who
felt it held promise made political activism their way of life for its
then manifestation of triumphing over adversity. It did not usher
change in status quo and these people were soon disenchanted
only to later organize themselves into guerilla groups. Thus for
SM the personal was always political.
Gidla’s family, right from her grandparents’ generation, was edu
cated and hence did not represent the countless Dalits who were
illiterate and working class. The fact that despite the special status
achieved, they continued to face humiliations, speak for many Dalits
who struggled relentlessly from just nothing to being something
and managed to rise in the economic ladder and yet continued to
be ill-treated because of their caste. Moreover, it also testifies to
the more complex problems an ordinary average uneducated Dalit
must be going through. In the World Conference Against Racism
2001 the existing Indian government sent representatives to refute
claims of various human rights groups on the existence of caste in
India. But over the years, many books have emerged dealing with
the caste problem and thus rebuffs those who feel caste is a thing
of the past and doesn’t exist any longer. It is a lived reality in the
realms of modern India that continues to haunt us even after de
cades of legislations and Independence.
To come back to Gidla, the story of how her ancestors entered
the fold of Christianity and enjoyed the benefit of having educa
tion in missionary schools parallels well with most of the Dalit
converts of those times. But despite conversion they continued to
remain socially and economically backward. Educationally they
had free access to the missionary schools, which was not the case
for other Dalits. Her narrative continued to focus on untouchability.
Her grandfather Prasanna Rao and his brothers were educated at
mission school to be teachers; her parents were college teachers. Her
uncle SM who was a leader of radical politics in AP and Telangana,
could not escape the looming question of caste. The hard life lived
by the uncle, who starved himself, wasted his time during college
days or her mother enduring cold in Benares or during a theft at
the hostel when her belongings were searched, the shock and dis
belief on the faces of others to see how little her trunk contained
because the family could not afford the basic necessities would
nevertheless continue to traumatize any sensitive reader.
The discrimination Dalits suffer because of their caste is the
focal point of her book. Her mother obtained poor grades from
Brahmin professors or suffered at various places of work and the
uncle being dumped by a girl for his caste, is not a new image yet
predictably foretells that life is far from movies. Anand Teltumde
in his review rightly observed 20 that even if Gidla’s experiential
accounts might sound authentic, contemporary castes manifested
in far more complex ways than she thought. These are not the
classical castes of pre-colonial times where their status was ritually
determined. The Dalit experience ranging from humiliation to a
gory atrocity can always be seen as the outcome, of the inseparable
interaction of both class and caste.
Regardless of all other flaws, that the revolution ignored and
barred many potent minds is a fact and this book is a gentle re
minder of their contribution. There are quite a many unknown
things about some of the characters. She paints her uncle as a hero
but presents caste as the only cause for his downfall. There are
people who are both caste blind and caste obsessed and both the
categories need to be condemned. As regards SM’s contribution to
the naxalite movement there is certainly no doubt but his conduct
post-expulsion has been questionable. After he came out of his
underground life he romanced with different political streams only
to get disillusioned. There was incoherence in both his ideology
and strategy. After leaving PWG he experimented with various
philosophies that came close to caste annihilation. The Marxist
Leninist Centre was started with U. Sambasiva Rao. He declared
he would form a new party CPI(ML) Bolshevik but joined CPI(ML)
Unity Centre. Then he joined the BSP and contested elections,
only to lose badly. His revolutionary politics was not welcome
there, so he moved out and launched Bahujan Republican Party.
The object was to bring together the SC/ST/Bahujans and mi
norities. It failed too. Later he left BSP to join CPI(ML) Praja
Pratighatana. His actions post-1980s need to be critiqued objec
tively.
Gidla failed to do any of that and idolized him by placing him
on a high pedestal. Lately, she has been extremely offensive and
critical about the followers of Ambedkar and the neo-Buddhists on
social media using the foulest language possible. Many reasoned
out with her and failed and one can only infer that she has a very
superficial understanding of the complexities of caste, sitting in
New York. The material she used in her book either came handy
to her or she exhausted all her borrowed resources. If she had re
served her criticism for her uncle in the book it would have been
more authentic and objective. She at best painted the picture of a
Dalit ‘middle class’ family who despite having troubled times were
still middle class as compared to the countless Dalits in other parts
of India who continued to live a dog’s life’s and for whom not
much had changed. Her episodic choices in presenting her family,
supplemented by the contemporary socio-political ethos and focus
on caste inequalities was all that the book achieves. She was dispas
sionate and detached wherever she could be. Her own short-lived
affair with naxalite politics was seemingly natural as the atmo
sphere in Warangal was quite fertile for that but her commitment
slowed down following her incarceration. The baggage of caste is
carried with the Dalits wherever they go because wherever caste
Hindus have gone they have carried castes and caste systems with
them.
V
A story is an account of real or imaginary people and events told
for entertainment. It is a particular person’s representation of the
facts of a matter or it could be an account of past events in someone’s
life or in the development of something. It could be a piece of
gossip or rumour. Whereas a memoir is a historical account or
biography written from personal knowledge, record, chronicle, com
mentary, narrative, personal recollections, stories and anecdotes.
Gidla’s book best fits the latter definition. However, she preferred
the term literary nonfiction and called her book not a memoir but
‘family stories’ because certainly they were far from entertainment
and dealt with a serious problem of caste.
Nevertheless, anecdotes are short, amusing or interesting stories
about real incident or person.They survive and have a certain power
in reshaping and rethinking post-colonial histories, therefore they
serve a definite political purpose. By using them, the teller of these
also claims some amount of legitimacy based on experiences. Such
self disclosures and anecdotes help the readers to connect and
empathize. Joel Fienman measures the significance of anecdote in
the study of historiography.21 And practitioners of new historicism
consider anecdotes as signature motifs of new historicism. New
historical readings embark on anecdotes which eventually unfold
historical circumstances, furnishing representational plenitudes.
Their roles are literary, referential and recreating history.22 However,
its context here would still be stories of her family. She unfolded
her family saga through multiple perspectives and therefore it is
subject to multiple lapses for its heavy reliance on the memory of
the two principle characters and their respective roles in progress
ing the anecdotal narratives.
Dalit scholarship and intelligentsia have repeatedly presented
the intricacies of Dalit experience in India. Many memoirs and
autobiographies both by men and by women have put on record
the lives and experiences of Dalits in pre and post-Independent
India, the changes wrought in Dalit lives post-conversion to Bud
dhism. Dalit poetry has been a significant voice for the voiceless
Dalits. Maharashtra is where the Ambedkar movement for Dalit
emancipation began and it has also lead the way in Dalit literary
and cultural productions. This literary cultural movement prolif
erated and spread to the whole of the country like a storm pum
melling the national conscience. Gidla’s book spanning almost a
century recorded albeit nostalgically, the life of a Dalit family in
Andhra Pradesh. A family where most were educated but none
knew or felt the need to understand Ambedkar’s principles of jus
tice and equality with the exception of her uncle. A family who
bore the brunt of caste but never fully articulated caste until Gidla
went to the US, observed caste movements, Dalit assertions, and
decided to become vocal and launch a study of her uncle’s life.
Whether this book significantly enriches the Dalit literary reper
toires and Dalit literary canon formations is best left unanswered.
Dalit literature is significantly born, keeping the entire Ambedkar
philosophy and movement for Dalit emancipation as its literary
touchstone and antidote for survival. The literature born out of
that philosophic sensibility and consciousness is marked as Dalit
literature. It isn’t some incoherent Babel or breeding ground for
conflicting opinions. Therefore, there is specificity about what and
how it should be. This book speaks about caste convincingly and
so do many books written by non-Dalit writers too. Therefore, it
is doubtful whether it should be classed in the Dalit literary canon.
But canons are also fluid. Also, every book that speaks about caste
is not Dalit literature and every writer writing about caste is not a
Dalit writer. This has to be kept in mind. All along through her
talks, interviews published, one cannot really miss out on the ap
parent shallow understanding she has about ideologies and people.
Sujatha Gidla seems rather allergic to be affiliated to Ambedkarites.
She associates some weird creepiness to the coinage for reasons better
known to her. Her confusion can be marked at numerous places
when she calls herself a Marxist and not an Ambedkarite. Possibly,
she had not read Ambedkar and Dalit literatures enough to ensure
herself some finality of a stand. This book therefore cannot be put
in the same elevated stratum as Daya Pawar’s Baluta, Omprakash
Valmiki’s Jhootan, Vasant Moon’s Growing up Untouchable in
India: A Dalit Autobiography or even a Baby Tai Kamble’s Jina Amucha
or Shantabai Kamble’s Majya Jalmachi Chittrakatha.
There have been serious objections raised by the leftists too who
were firsthand witness to the events narrated by her. The book in
many places degenerates to mere documentation and the reader
tends to get lost. The language employed is too sonorous and of
fensive at times. More importantly, it becomes problematic when
she makes sweeping statements such as caste has nothing to do
with religion because caste has its roots in the Hindu religion and
its Varna system. It was also this which necessitated Ambedkar to
get out of its fold and accept a scientific Dhamma. She talked of
herself as more of a Marxist than feminist and admitted it was
intentional on her part to write about her uncle as he was a well-
known person. Her personal dislike for Bahujan Samaj Party is
evident, but calling all the other followers of Ambedkar as creepy
is ad nauseam. 23 Her unreasonable take on caste issues is seen
through regional lenses. She spoke of the non-Indians in whose
eyes, people like her were just Indians and not untouchables but
what about those Indians who carried their caste baggage even to
the US? She called Trump an extension of Obama which may be
debatable and linked the US situation to India, where in the garb
of nationalism, the fascists are out to sell the country to corpora
tions and appropriately maintains that caste being the central thing
in India the Dalit struggle was of all the oppressed.
There are however, factual inaccuracies for which her own uncle’s
daughters have filed an injunction in the court. The granddaugh
ters of Kondapalli Seetharamaih have filed a case against her. The
revolutionary poet, Varavara Rao has pointed out numerous errors
in reportage and claims that the fact that SM was a founder member
of CPI(ML) PW and remained a leader till the end, is not true.
Gidla’s treatment of history was more a subjective admiration for
her uncle. Further it was not her uncle but Prahlad the state com
mittee secretary who organized the escape of KS from the prison
ward of Osmania hospital. He also objected to her character assas
sinations and mudslinging of some prominent people.24 Gidla on
her part felt the criticism did not undermine the story she was
trying to tell. But the truth is that one cannot write down historical
facts just because it happened to be an uncle’s perception about
himself and about certain people around him.
Gidla’s own perception too was highly localized rather unchar
acteristic of other parts of India except for the caste issue. Should
these memories garnered from multiple sources be tested with his
tory? Is it a painful initiation of a young girl towards existential
realities or is it an untouchable girl and her family’s personal his
tory? Is this a book about a girl gaining consciousness of being a
Dalit or about a girl regaining and addressing her Dalit subjectivity?
Is this at best a cosmopolitan Christian story of a family who hap
pened to be former untouchables? Is she implicating names, of
people she never spoke to, in the name of authenticity? Is hers, an
outsiders perspective catering more to the Western audience for
romanticized exoticism than for the average Indian? Besides this,
her uncle’s depiction seems flat at places whereas he was more
dynamic than her presentation of him. Why wasn’t the caste issue
brought in when he was a top leader? Shouldn’t one be historically
accurate while dealing with a historical personage? Should this
book be considered an important contribution in Dalit Literature
or is it just another book on caste? These and several more ques
tions can justifiably be asked about the book. Dalit Literature has
a defined sensibility, and consciousness as stated earlier but if Gidla
without reading and understanding Ambedkar, confidently posed
as a speaker on the intricacies of caste, then all the above questions
raised stand legal. What is also undeniable is the question SM
raises on that hopeful day of Indian Independence, which held
promise to many untouchables like him, but who were denied
opportunity to take centre stage ‘Who were they’? After seventy
years of Independence and legislations, the question raised, still
stands for his fellow Dalits.
The title is parabolically suggestive that caste has indeed re
duced Dalits to being ants amidst elephants that trample them
down. But on the positive note it can be interpreted that ants may
be tiny invisible creatures but have the capability to bring down
the giant elephants to their knees. Therefore, the ants together
symbolize power that the elephants should be afraid of because if
vexed they know to strike where it hurts most. The tender trunk
of elephants can also become the heel of Achilles when a swarm
enters and bites. And despite being vulnerable to the elephant
onslaught, they have learnt to defend their homes. So the ants
need not necessarily get associated with trivial insignia. This then
is the story of modern India where the ants continue to fight for
their existence negotiating spaces with the elephants.
NOTES
1. Vetti system—under this system every untouchable family had to part

with their first born child to be given as slave to work for the Dora.
2. Dora were the landlords and their house stood as a symbol of tyranny and
torture. They maintained troops for the Nizam who in turn gifted lands.
3. Nizam—The erstwhile ruler and the prince of India since 1724 belonging
to the Asaf Jah Dynasty of Hyderabad State presently divided into
Telangana, North-East Karnataka and Marathwada region.
4. Razakaars were pro nizam Militia who terrorized and slaughtered not just
the Hindus but secular Muslims thus making Telangana a death camp.
5. Reservation—Affirmative action to counter the evil effects of centuries of
caste oppression for which Dr. Ambedkar had fought to include in the
constitution.
6. Madiga—low caste untouchables.
7. Paleru—bonded labourer.
8. Pakis—The manual scavengers, also called the potters of the night soil in
coastal Andhra. Some areas now use pushcarts but even today the tradi
tional methods of loading it on the head prevails endangering their lives.
9. Kapu—considered to be a Shudra caste in the Hindu varna ladder. But
primarily an agrarian community, forming a heterogeneous peasant caste in
coastal Andhra and Telangana.
10. Naxalbari—It’s the name of a village in West Bengal which became famous
for the naxalite maoist insurgency in the 1960s. Though the movement
was crushed its ideology continues to this day.
11. Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal were considered the original leaders and
mass mobilizers, Charu Majumdar joined later but the three together were
considered the trinity of the Naxalite movement. Sanyal committed suicide
in 2007. Santhal contested elections, found himself isolated and died in
1988.Charu Majumdar was tortured and killed in Lal Bazaar police lockup,
Calcutta in 1972.
12. The book wrongly mentions them as belonging to the Lambada tribes. See
p. 272.
13. Untouchable caste in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
14. It is a forward caste from south India who append the title of Naidu as well.
15. Elder sister.
16. See also Pankaj Mishra’s review of the book in The New York Review,
21 December 2017.
17. Bhima Koregaon-riots broke out on 1 January 2018 when the saffron
brigade disrupted and vandalized a Dalit gathering that had come from all
over to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the historic victory at Bhima
Koregaon battle fought along with the British against the Peshwa rulers.
Most of the soldiers belonged to the Mahar Regiment and it is particularly
significant for the Dalits as it symbolizes Dalit pride and courage.
18. Reference is to the violence during the renaming of Marathwada Uni
versity in the name of Dr. Ambedkar. This violence was orchestrated by
members of the Shiv Sena and Maratha community. It took many forms,
including killings, molestation and rape of Dalit women, burning of houses
and huts, pillaging of Dalit colonies, forcing them out of villages, polluting
drinking water wells, destruction of cattle and refusal to employ them. It
continued for sixty-seven days.
19. Reference is to the 2006 massacre in a small village called Khairlanji in
Maharashtra of four members of a Dalit family, including two women,
carried out by the powerful Kunbi community. They were dragged out,
paraded naked, sexually abused and hacked to death. The mainstream
media did not cover it till riots broke out in Nagpur.
20. See Anand Teltumde, ‘Searching for Caste Bugs in the Radical Naxal Move
ment’, National Herald, Web. 18 March 2018.
21. See Joel Fineman, ‘The History of the Anecdote: Fiction and Fiction’, in
Aram. H. Veeser (ed.), The New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 1989,
pp. 49-76.
22. See Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing New Histori
cism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp. 50-1.
23. Interview of ‘Sujatha Gidla author of Ants among Elephants: My Book
Wouldn’t Stand a Chance in India’ by Ranjitha Gunasekaran, Indian
Express, Web 11 February 2018. Also see the interview by Oindrila Lahiri
‘Story of India is Also the Story of Caste’ wire.in. N.P., n.d., 29 November
2017.
24. Varvara Rao letter to the publishers Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
REFERENCE
Gidla, Sujatha, Ants among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making
of Modern India, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2017.
Contributors
APARNA LANJEWAR BOSE is a trilingual writer, poet, critic and translator.

She taught at the University of Nagpur (1995-2001), the Depart
ment of English, Mumbai University (2001-10) before joining
English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad in 2010 as
an Associate Professor. She specializes in American literature,
African American literature, revolutionary/marginal literatures and
contemporary women’s writings. Her areas of interest and research
include Comparitive literatures, Indian literatures, translation, folk
literature and poetry. She has been a resource person in several ma
jor national and international platforms both in India and abroad
and has spoken in literary as well as social issues. Besides publish
ing several articles, reviews and translations in peer reviewed jour
nals she has published two books of poetry, a book of translations,
besides compiling and editing two books on Marathi short stories
and poetry respectively.
A RCHANA GUPTA is at the Department of English and Modern

European Languages, University of Lucknow, Lucknow. She has
worked on South Asian Women Writers’ Autobiographies.
BALJEET KAUR is Assistant Professor in the Department of English,

in Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University Punjab. She special
izes in gender, womens studies and life writings.
BOOPATHI PALANISAMY is an Assistant Professor in the Department

of English, Aligarh Muslim University. He completed his PhD
on the Palestinian Life Narratives from the English and Foreign
Languages University, Hyderabad. His areas of interest include
Disability Studies, Palestine and West Asian Literature, post
colonial and resistance literature, and Life Writing Studies.
354 Contributors
DEEPINDERJEET RANDHAWA is Associate Professor and Head at the
Department of English at Khalsa College, Patiala. She has pub
lished several scholarly articles and papers in the areas of feminist
and contemporary critical theories and culture studies. She has
edited two books Literature of Small Culture: An Assertion of Differ
ence (2010) and Crossing the Borders: Multicultural Dialogue in
Literature (2015). She has presented papers on several platforms.
She is presently the Dean of the Post Graduate Department of
English, Cultural Studies and Foreign Languages.
DEEPSHIKHA MINZ has completed her PhD in the Department of

English Literature at The English and Foreign Languages Univer
sity, Hyderabad. For her doctoral degree she was looking at popular
fiction in the post-colonial global context. Her areas of research are
popular culture, popular fiction, feminist comedy, post colonial
ism and media studies.
E.V. RAMAKRISHNAN is a bilingual writer and translator who has

published poetry and literary criticism, in Malayalam and
English. His critical works in English include Indigenous Imagi
naries: Literature, Region, Modernity (2017), Locating Indian
Literature: Texts, Traditions and Translations (2011) and Making It
New: Modernism in Malayalam, Marathi and Hindi Poetry (1995).
He has published three volumes of poetry in English. Among his
edited volumes are Indian Short Story 1900-2000 (2001), Tree of
Tongues: An Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry (1999) and Trees of
Kochi and Other Poems by K.G. Sankara Pillai (2016). He has pub
lished seven critical books in Malayalam, including Anubhavangale
Aarkkanu Peti? (2013), Malayala Novelinte Deshakalangal (2017)
and Aksharavum Aadhunikatayum (1994) for which he was awarded
Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award. He retired from the Central Uni
versity of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, in 2015 as Professor and Dean of
School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies. Subsequently,
he has been Professor Emeritus at the same University.
GOURI KAPOOR has completed her PhD in the Department of English

Literature, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hydera
Contributors 355
bad. For her doctoral degree, she was looking at representations of
the female body in Margaret Atwood’s selected novels. Her
research interests include women’s studies, body and sexuality
studies, Canadian literature and post-colonial literature.
HATEM MOHAMMED HATEM AL-SHAMEA is a scholar from Yemen. He

has completed his PhD in the Department of English Literature,
The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. For
his doctoral degree he was looking at the Spiritual and Social
Taboos in the writings of Wajdi al-Ahdal. His research includes
Arabic Literature and post-colonial literature. He has presented
papers in international conferences.
MUNIRA T. is Associate Professor, in the Department of English,

Aligarh Muslim University. Her areas of specialization are American
literature, English Language Teaching and Translation Studies.
NANDINI PRADEEP J. is a research scholar in the Department of

English Literature at the English and Foreign Languages Univer
sity, Hyderabad. Her areas of interests are gender studies, contem
porary Indian literature, queer studies and mythology.
NILAKSHI GOSWAMI is Assistant Professor at the Assam Royal Global

University. She completed her PhD on the graphic memoirs of
Marjane Satrapi from The English and Foreign Languages Univer
sity, Hyderabad. Her research interests are comics and graphic
novels, visual arts and multimedia, and Middle Eastern and South
Asian Studies.
RUBINA IQBAL is an Associate Professor of English at Women’s College,

AMU, Aligarh. At present, she is actively engaged in research
works and guiding Indian and foreign scholars. Her papers have
been published in various international and national journals of
repute.
SANDHYA DEEPTHI completed her PhD in the Department of English

Literature, at the English and Foreign Languages University,
356 Contributors
Hyderabad. She worked on the dialectical accounts of self in the
Image and textual modes of Frida Kahlo And Sylvia Plath. The
ideas of time, self, death, creativity, criticism, binaries and struc
tures are of interest in her study and exploration.
SASWATA KUSARI is an Assistant Professor of English at Tehatta Gov

ernment College at West Bengal in India. Saswata has interests in
contemporary critical theory, fan fiction and film studies and has
published papers in various national and international journals.
S HAISTA M ANSOOR is a Research scholar in the Department of

English, Aligarh Muslim University. Her area of academic interest
is studies related to marginality, with special focus on study of
Muslim women in English literature. At present she is working on
her doctoral thesis on hybridity and contemporary Muslim iden
tity in Muslim women writings in English.
SHOMA SEN is a Professor and Head, Department of English, Nagpur

University. She has published several scholarly research papers in
the areas of women’s studies, literature and cultural studies. She is
also an activist who is associated with movements related to women
and human rights.
SHYAMA SAJEEV is currently Head, Department of English at Govern

ment Sanskrit College, University of Kerala. Her research interests
include post-colonial literature and postmodern narrative & nar
rative theory. She is currently working on a project engaging with
the works of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai.
VINITA CHATURVEDI is Associate Professor in the Department of

English at Delhi College of Arts & Commerce, University of Delhi.
Her areas of interest are culture studies and gender studies. She
has presented papers at various national and international confer
ences. In 2012-13 she was a co-recipient of the Innovations Project
Grant given by the University of Delhi to work for one year on the
Folksongs of Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab.
Index
Aaidan 59 Arab women autobiography 153-63

Aalo Aandhari 311 ars erotica 234
Abramovic, Marina 41, 146, 147, 148, Art: image and self in, 142-7; time and
149, 150 death in 147-50
Adams, Timothy Dow 187-8 Asaduddin, M. 229
Adharmik 250 ashrams 249, 251
Adorno, Theodor 121 Autobiography, 25-9; Arab women,
Ailamma 326 153-63; black women writing 63
Alcott, Louisa M. 312 72; and concept of ‘otherness’
Al-Hassan, Nawar 155, 157, 158, 159 52-5; Dalit women’s writing and
al-Kawkabani, Nadia 42, 257-63 55-62; definition of 25-6; feminist
al-Khateeb, Shatha 42, 257-63 critics writing about 26-7; Fun
al-Mutawakliah monarchy 259 Home: A Family Tragicomic 101
Al Qassem, Sameeh 157 18; gained currency and access
Al-Shamea, Hatem Mohammed 28; Leaving Home with Half a
Hatem 42 Fridge 87-97; radical uses of 26;
Amar Meyebela 190 self-narratives of working-class
Ambedkar B.R. 56, 58, 59, 60, 323, women 311-18; self-revealing
328, 337, 339, 340, 342, 346, and self-assertive 166; transgender
347 43
Anandmath 243 Ayenger, Madhavan Raisom, 245
Anderson, Linda 97
Andhra Culture 325 Badran, Margot 162
Andhra Mahasabha 325 Baker, Houston 71
Angelou, Maya 39, 69 Bakhtin, Mikhail 49, 80-1, 141
Ants among Elephants 321-48; caste Bandopadhyay, Kiran Chandra 243
system 338-45; communists 325 Barbie, Caribou 124
8; conversion to Christianity 325 Barlas, Asma 156
7; cousin Maniamma 330-1; Barnett, Ida Wells 67
CPI(M) 329; family of Kambhams Beals, Melba Pattillo 41, 166, 169-71,
324-9; Manjula’s situation 331-6; 175
Maoism 328-9; socio-political Bechdel, Alison 40, 101-18
ethos of 1960s 328-9 Behisti Zevar 239
Anzaldua, Gloria 34, 54, 81 Berger, John 142
Appadurai, Arjun 296 Beriant, Lauren 302
Arab feminism 154-5, 156, 158, 162, Bhakti movement 50
163 Bharat Gan 243
358 Index
Bharat Mata 243 Bunting, Mary 184

Bhutto, Benazir 41, 177-88 Butler, Judith 35, 198, 302, 303
Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali 177, 179, 181
Binns, William 207 Cahun, Claude 40, 101-18
Black aesthetics 72 Carby, Hazel 66
Black Arts movement 72 Carlson, Susan 131
Black Panther movement 56, 77 Cartier-Bresson, Henri 107
Black separatism and self-sufficiency caste, speaking against 321-49
68 caste and gender 38
Black women: autobiography 63-72; caste system 55-6, 58-60
and feminism 79; feminist Catholicism 206-7
aesthetical discourse 63-72; Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra 243
national and cultural identity Chatterjee, Sarat Chandra 334
formulations 80; repressive and Chaturvedi, Vinita Gupta 41
suppressive histories 79; state of Chinese Cultural Revolution. See
triple jeopardy 78; vs. Dalit Cultural Revolution
women 73-8 Chodorow, Nancy 33
Black women writing: autobiography Christianity 343
and feminist aesthetical discourse Chughtai, Ismat 42, 229-39
63-72; Black separatism and self- Chute, Hillary 108
sufficiency 68; criticism 72; Clare, Eli 306-7
Crusade for Justice: The Clinton, Hillary 124
Autobiography of Ida Wells 67; Collins, Patricia Hill 71
cultural assessment and Communism 326, 342
intellectual history 66-7; Dust compulsory heterosexuality 198
Tracks on a Road 68; Gemini: An conjunctural analysis 306
Extended Autobiographical Connell, Raewyn 212
Statement on My First Twenty-Five Cooper, Anna Julia 39, 66, 67
Years of Being a Black Poet 68-9; Coser, Ruth 129
hegemonic oppressions 67; Critical Inquiry 289
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Cultural identity 301, 302
Written by Herself 65-6; narratorial Cultural Revolution 133, 134, 137,
discourse 65; In Search of our 138
Mother’s Gardens 71; A Voice from
the South by a Black Woman of Dahl, Robert 137
the South 66; Western feminism Dalit feminism, 38; and consciousness
69-71 61
Blinde, Patricia 216 Dalit Panther movement 77
body, desire and politics 301-10 Dalits, 321-48; discrimination 343;
Bose, Subhash Chandra 334 emancipation 346, 347;
Bossypants 40, 122 emancipatory movement 60;
Brodszki, Bella 32 family 321, 347; identity 56-7,
Brown, Bill 289 339 341; literary 346; literature
Brownmiller, Susan 196 50-1, 346-7; ‘middle class’ family,
Index 359
344; patriarchy 59, 75, 77; de Chungara, Domitila Barrios 311,

poetry 347; scholarship and 312, 313, 314, 316
intelligentsia 346 Deepthi, Sandhya 40
Dalit women: autobiography and Derrida, Jacques 25, 26
feminism 55-62; and feminism 79; Descartes, Rene 141
identity of 56-7, 75; images of Deviant sexuality 302
75-6; literacy 58; national and Dialogism 36
cultural identity formulations 80; Drabble, Margaret 317-18
religious codifications 58-60; Dualism 141
repressive and suppressive Dubois, W.E.B. 66
histories 79; state of triple Durrani, Tehmina 42-3, 265-75
jeopardy 78; victimization of 76;
victims of exploitation 57-8; vs. Ebershoff, David 308-9
Black women 73-8 Eddouada, Souad 162
Dalit women’s writing 51, 55-62; Edelman, Lee 302
Aaidan 59; aesthetics and El Saadawi, Nawal 162
myths 61-2; Antaspot 60; el-Sadawi, Navel 156
autobiographical world and English education 93-4
feminist standpoint 55-62; caste Entertainment industry 121-32
system 55-6, 58-60; Dalit identity
and politics 56-7; feminist Fabula 108
consciousness 61; inspiration from Felman, Shoshana 27-8, 52
Black Panther movement 56; Feminism: Arab 154-5, 156, 158, 162,
Jeena Amuche 58; lack of critical 163; contemporary 79; Dalit 38;
apparatus in 57-8; Majya Jalmachi inclusivity within 39; postcolonial
Chitarkatha 59; Mitleli Kawade 38; Third World 163; Western
59; Ratradin Amha 60 69-71, 154-5
Dani, Shantabai 39, 60 Feminist humour 121-32
Darwish, Mahmoud 157 Ferenzi, Sandor 141-2
Das, Kamala 41, 166, 167-9, 175 Fey, Tina 40, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128,
Daughter of the East 41, 177-88; 129, 130, 131
adulthood and education 183-4; Fienman, Joel 345
Benazir’s role as feminist 182; ‘Fluid boundaries’ 30
collapses the boundaries of diary, Foucault, Michel 33, 141, 233, 235-6,
memoir and reminiscences 180-1; 303-4, 305
little recollection of childhood Fraser, Nancy 303
183; marriage 184-5; Freud, S. 147, 148, 150
melodramatic deification of Friedman, Susan 30, 52
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto 179; narrative Fromm, Erich 134
scheme of 181; political career Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic 101
185-6; victim of patriarchy 182-3 18; Bechdel’s graphic narrative
Davis, Angela 30 114-17; comics and graphic
Death in Art 147-50 narratives 108-12; conceptual
de Beauvoir, Simone 204 narratives 114; gender identity,
360 Index
107-8; performative functions of homosexuality 133-8, 209, 235, 236

self-reflections 103-4; self- Hooks, Bell 68, 71, 312
portrait, 104-8, 112; ‘tragicomic’, Horkheimer, Max 121
108 Howarth, William 64
Furneaux, Holly 235 Huntley, E.D. 216
Hurston, Zora Neale 68
Gagnier, Regenia 97 Hyder, Qurratulain 232
Gariola, Rahul 246, 248
Gayles, Gloria Wades 72 identity 189-200; Dalit 56-7; queer
Geertz, Clifford 302 307; sexual 209, 301-10; of
gender hierarchies 246 women, myths surrounding 204
gender identity: heterogeneous flux of, identity of women, myths surrounding
302; ‘performative’ 303 204
Gidla, Sujatha 44, 321, 323-5, 330-3, iliad 141
336, 338, 340-8 Institution of family 92-3
Giovanni, Nikki 68-9 Institution of marriage 90-1
Gohain, Hiren 254 Internet dating 94
Golley, Nawar Al-Hassan 155 Iqbal, Rubina 42
Goswami, Indira 42, 241-54
Goswami, Mamoni Raisom 242 Jacobs, Harriet 65-6, 67
Goswami, Nilakshi 40, 42 Jahan, Rashid 232
Grafly, Dorothy 101 Jameela, Nalini 43, 311, 314, 316
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution Janu, C.K. 316
40 Jeena Amuche 58
Green, Carol 30 Jelenik, Estelle 30, 31
Greer, Germaine 29 Jhootan 347
Gupta, Archana 41 Jina Amucha 347
Gupta, Hit Kumar 253 Joseph, Gloria 71
Gusdorf, Georges 25 Jugal Upasana 252
Justice Interrupts 303
Hadith 263
Halberstam, Jack 302 Kaling, Mindy 40, 122, 123, 125, 126,
Haldar, Baby 311, 314, 315, 317 128, 130, 131
Hall, Stuart 302 Kamasutra 233
Halperin, David 302 Kamble, Baby Tai 39, 58, 347
harem 159, 162, 163 Kamble, Shantabai 39, 347
Harlow, Barbara 32 Kapoor, Gouri 39
Heidegger, Martin 149, 290 Kardashian, Kim 124
Heilbrun, Caroline Gold 258 Kaur, Baljeet 41
Henderson, Mae 36 Kazin, Alfred 64
Hennessy, Rose Mary 305 Khuhro, Hamida 180, 182
Hindu Code Bill 328 Kidwai, Saleem 232
Hirsch, Marianne 34 King Jr., Martin Luther 68
holocaust 28 Kingston, Earll 215
Index 361
Kingston, Maxine Hong 42, 215-27 Mathews, William 277

Klein, Melaine 141 McPherson, Dolly 69
Koken, Juline A. 317 McRuer, Robert 305-6
Kristeva, Julia 143-4, 303 Menon, Aarathi 39; Leaving Home with
Kumar, Prabodh 315 Half a Fridge 87-97
Kusari, Saswata 42 Menon, Nivedita 93
Menon, Sadanand 106, 107, 109
Leaving Home with Half a Fridge 39, Mernissi, Fatima 162
87-97; act of naming 93; city Merrill, Lisa 122
spaces 95-6; construction of self, Millet, Kate 30
96; depression and emotional Min, Anchee 133-8
hurt, 95; institution of family 92 Minz, Deepshikha 40
3; institution of marriage in India Moers, Ellen 312
90-1; love and sexual relationship Mohanty, Chandra Talpade 34,
91-2; mangalsutra 94-5; practice 38, 70
of internet dating 93-4; sense of Moon, Vasant 347
self 89 Moraga, Cherrie 34
LeBesco, Katherine 211 Moral policing 238
Lejeune, Philppe 25 Morgan, Sally 41, 166, 171-4, 175
Lenin V.I. 326 Mottier, Veronique 304
Lesbianism 208 Munira, T. 42
Lewis, Jill 71 Munoz, Jose Esteban 302
Lionnet, Francoise 31, 32, 36 My Girlhood 41, 189-200; account of
Little Red Book 133 religious hypocrisy and
Loomba, Ania 251 domination 196-8; contempt for
Lopez, Jennifer 124 patriarchal system 191-2; fear of
Lorde, Audre 63, 70 being stripped naked 193-4;
feminine rebellion 198; gender
Mahabharata 293 subordination in patriarchal
Majumdar, Charu 329 society 190-1; horror of rape by
Majya Jalmachi Chittrakatha 59, 347 Pakistani soldiers 195-6;
Mangalsutra 94-5 individual independent space
Mansoor, Shaista 43 189-90; interrogated herself,
Manusmriti 339 194-5; raped by uncle 192-3;
Maoism 323, 328-9 relationship with Runi and Moni
Marathi Dalit writing 56 198-200; sexual assault with
Marcus, Steven 235 mother 194; silence about sexual
Marginalized sexual identity 301-10 assault 195
Marital sexuality 89
Marriage normativity 198 Nablus 159, 161
Martin, Biddy 199 Nafisi, Azar 43, 277-85
Marx, Karl 323 Nandy, Ashish 248
Marxism 247 Narrativization 78, 79, 288
Mason, Mary G. 30, 33 Nasreen, Taslima 41, 189-200
362 Index
Nasser, Abdul 154 Pradeep J., Nandini 43

Nauman, Bruce 146 Prasad, Rajendra 328
Nazism 134 Puar, Jasbir K. 304
Nin, Anais 54
nirvana, 294-5 queer 301-2
object: gendered, 287-98; thing vs. Racism 69-70

288-91 Radheswamis 243, 244, 245
O’Dell, Kathy 149 Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur 190
Odyssey 141 Randhawa, Deepinderjeet 43
Oliver, Kelly 54 Rao, Prasantha 324
Olney, James 25 Rao, Varavara 347
O’Neill, Jamie 309 Rajan, Rajeswari Sunder, 38
Ono, Yoko 145 Rational femininity 293-6
‘Otherness’ 52-5 Ratradin Amha 60
Ouddha dehik 252 Razaakars 326
Red Azalea 133-8; Mao’s death, 138;
Palanisamy, Boopathi 41 mass psychosis, 138
Palestinian Resistance Movement 161 Reddy, Sheela 317
Palestinian War of 1967 161, 162 Resistance Literature 32
Palin, Sarah 124 Revathi, A. 43, 288
Pan-Arabist movement 154 Rhythm 0 146, 147, 148
Paper Houses 41, 203-13; art of Rhythm 10 149
dressing, 210; attitude of men Rich, Adrienne 193, 198
towards women 206; depiction of Richards, Rebecca S. 186-7
elaborate meals 210-11; Rilke, Rainer Maria 289
description of promiscuity 207; Roberts, Michele 41
‘Holloway’ chapter 206; life-story Roberts, Michèle 203-13; Catholicism,
of assertive woman 205-6; ‘Myth 206-7; as committed feminist,
and Reality’, 207, 208 205; indulged in sexual activity,
Parekh, Bhiku 55 207-8; and lesbianism 208; myths
Pascal, Roy 25, 53, 177, 187 surrounding identity of women,
Patmore, Coventry 234 204; obsession with food 212;
Pattanaik, Devdutt 234-5 personal and political life of
Pavloff, Franck 135 women 205; portrayal of women’s
Pawar, Daya 347 struggle 212; served as activist
Pawar, Urmila 39, 59 206; sex with women 208;
Pawde, Kumud 60 view of women’s body as
Peoples War Group 321-2 taboo 210; view on body
‘performativity’ 37 and exploration of sexuality
performativity, sexual 301, 303, 307, 208-9; views contradicted
308, 309, 310 Beauvoir’s 209-10
Phule, Jyotiba 38 Rubin, Gayle 248-9
Pradeep, Nandini 40 Ruskin, John 234
Index 363
Sajeev, Shyama 41 Swacha Bharat (Clean India) Campaign

Samatha Volunteer Force 323 338-9
Sartre, Jean-Paul 290 Swindells, Julia 26
Sarvagod, Mukta 39, 59
Satchidanandan, K. 62 Tabassum, Wajeda 232
Sati 247-9 Talleyrand-Perigord, M. 230
Satyamurthy, S.M., 44, 321, 323, 324, Tashkent Agreement 179
328-34, 336, 337, 341, 342, 343 Tawil, Raymonda 156
Sayre, Robert F. 53, 296 Taylor, Mark C. 302
Scargill, W.P. 165 Teltumde, Anand 343
Scharfman, Ronnie 32 Third World women 70
Schenck, Celeste 32 Time in Art 147-50
Schwob, Maurice 117 transgender autobiographies 287-98; ‘I’
Schwol, Marcel 117 vs. ‘we’ 291-3; long-winded
Scott, Joan W. 33 travelogues 291; narrative
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 301, 302, 305 inefficacy 296-8; problems
Seetharamiah, Kondapalli 323, 327 researcher face in 288; rational
self in art 142-7 femininity 293-6; thing vs. object
self-portrait 104-7 288-91
self-portraitures 103 Tripathi, Laxminarayan 43, 288, 293
sex/gender system 249 Tuqan, Fadwa 41, 153-63
sexism, 123-4; within Dalit community Tuqan, Ibrahim 156
332
sexual identity, 209 301-10; Unfinished Autobiography, An, 241
marginalized 301-10
sex workers, Third World 317 Valmiki, Omprakash 347
Shastri, Lal Bahadur 180 Vanita, Ruth 232, 234
Sherman, Cindy 143 variant sexuality 302
Shilling, Chris 212 veiled voices 257-63
Shimla Pact 179 Vidya, Living Smile 288
Showalter, Elaine 165, 166, 169, 311 Viezzer, Moema 316
Singh, Santosh 248
sjuzet 108 Walker, Alice 39, 71, 312
Slatman, Jenny 144 Warner, Michael 304
Smith, Barbara 312 Watson, Julia 29, 32, 37
Smith, Sidonie 29, 31, 32 Weaver, Mary Anne 178, 181
Spacks, Patricia Meyers 312 Weeks, Jefferey 305
Spivak, Gayatri Chakraborty 34, 38, Weintraub, Karl 25
60, 317 Wells, Ida 39
Strachey, Lytton 235 Western feminism 154-5
Subjective idealism 28 Wisdom, John Oulton 148
Suciu, Andreia-Irina 216 Wollstonecraft, Mary 230
Su Kyi Aung San 185 Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a
364 Index
Girlhood Among Ghosts, The 42, Blinde on 216; ‘White Tigers’

215-27; ‘A Song for a Barbarian 218, 221
Reed Pipe’, 225-6; ‘At the Women writers: Marathi Dalit 39;
Western Palace’, 223-5; aunt’s multicultural practices 30;
memory 220-1; chapters of 218; traditional cultural practices 30
Chinese folklore fantasy in 216 Woolf, Virginia 235
17; Chinese myths 219; working-class women, self-narratives of
experience of Chinese-American 311-18
child 217-18; lack of World Conference Against Racism 342
chronological order 217; ‘No
Name Woman’, 218; ‘Shaman’ Yemeni writers semi-autobiographies
219, 221-3; types of women 257-63
220; veiw of Andreia-Irina
Suciu on 216; veiw of Patricia Zayyad, Tawfiq 157

Writing Gender Writing Self Memory, Memoir and Autobiography (Aparna Lanjewar Bose

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Writing Gender Writing Self Memory, Memoir and Autobiography (Aparna Lanjewar Bose

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WRITING GENDER WRITING SELF

Life Writings/Narratives and studies in gender have been posing critical

Aparna Lanjewar Bose is a writer, poet, critic and translator. She is

Edited and Introduced by

1. (Re)Positioning the ‘Other’: Perspectives on

Autobiography as a genre has been grudgingly given a place in the

questions. We will try to answer these questions with some ex­

How do I not acknowledge. . . ?

Autobiography has been at the centre of debates, which, drawing

II: THE SELF, SUBJECTIVITY, SEXUALITY, TEXTUALITY,

Women’s autobiographies are now a privileged site for rethinking

1. Georges Gusdorf, in James Olney, ed., Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and

Anderson, Linda, Autobiography, London & N.Y.: Routledge, 2001.

(Re)Positioning the ‘Other’:

As we are marching ahead to greater avenues of establishing bonds

II. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND THE CONCEPT

Post-structuralists began to transform feminist thinking and auto­

III. DALIT WOMEN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

Bhiku Parekh opines:

But since caste system in India is a bitter truth, it can be clearly

Autobiographies have been a commonly used genre by African

Black women have been writing autobiographies since the eigh­

Maya Angelou’s serial autobiography is intrinsically linked from

A comparative analysis of disparate cultures can be more enterprising

Critical and theoretical interest in historically situating American

1. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Litera­

Anderson, Linda, Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century, Harvester

What the Text Does not Say:

The theoretical turn towards post-structuralism has made it im­

The sentiments that Menon expresses in these lines indicate the

1. Sally Morgan’s My Place can be a good example to illustrate this point.

Anderson, Linda, Autobiography, London: Routledge, 2001.

Retracing the Discourse of Referential

Artists, whatever their chosen medium, delight in drawing them­

The statement by Grafly (167) illustrates the significance of self-

Source: Lens Blog, The New York Times, 21 July 2014.

Figure 3.1: Self-portrait, 1928

Source: Lens Blog, The New York Times, 21 July 2014.

Figure 3.2: Self-portrait, 1932

The self-portrait of the artist un/easily poised in the cupboard

Source : Lens Blog, The New York Times, 21 July 2014.

Figure 3.3: Self-portrait, 1947

‘The Burden of Representation’, an article by Sadanand Menon

Whether concealed or flagrant, Cahun’s photography defies

Figure 3.5: Fun Home (18), 2006

Hatfield, in the mentioned excerpt, claims how visual narratives

Figure 3.7: Fun Home 17, 2006

Figure 3.8: Fun Home (86), 2006

Figure 3.9: Self Portrait, Claude Cahun

Bechdel, Alison, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Boston: Houghton Mifflin,

Humorous Women’s Memoirs in the

Women have been objectified and fetishized for ages. Feminist

Our society has set certain expectations, be it physical or men­

Ultimately hard work and confidence is the key to success in

This thereby justifies the action of the audience.

Parents often keep their children protected, especially when it

With this statement one understands that in a work environ­

Barreca, Regina, New Perspectives on Women and Comedy, Philadelphia: Gordon

A Case for Homosexuality: Reading

In the 1960s, when the slogan ‘personal is political’1 was gaining

1. Of an uncertain origin, the phrase was popularized by Carol Hanisch’s essay

Self, Time and Death as

As Berger exemplifies in his book, most of the renaissance paint­

IMAGE AND SELF IN ART

questions. We will try to answer these questions with some ex

Post-structuralists began to transform feminist thinking and auto

Black women have been writing autobiographies since the eigh

1. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Litera

The theoretical turn towards post-structuralism has made it im

Artists, whatever their chosen medium, delight in drawing them

Our society has set certain expectations, be it physical or men

With this statement one understands that in a work environ

As Berger exemplifies in his book, most of the renaissance paint

The ‘image’ in art is a process of self-construction and self

The movement ‘Arab feminism’ spearheads Arab women’s re

In fact, she herself talks of the cathartic effect of writing auto

Bhutto’s autobiography fails on this account for there is an un

Ismat Chughtai, often considered to be one of South-Asia’s fore

The description of Vanita pointed to an extremely liberal, sub

Manto’s happiness at being summoned by the court was per

In ‘The Traffic in Women’, Gayle Rubin analyses the relation

This excerpt, taken from Rilke’s poem titled ‘A Feminine Des

talking about as well, resulting in a genuine recurrence of experi