1st Edition
Female Narratives of Protest Literary and Cultural Representations from South Asia
This book explores the complex assemblage of biopolitics, citizenship, ethics and human rights concerns in South Asia focusing specifically on women poets, writers and artists and their explorations on marginalisation, violence and protest.
The book traces the origins, varied historiographies and socio-political consequences of women’s protests and feminist discourses. Bringing together narratives of the Landais from Afghanistan, voices from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Miya women poets writing from Assam, and stories of Dalit and queer women across the region, it analyses the diverse modes of women’s protests and their ethical and humanitarian cartographies. The volume highlights the reconfiguration of female voices of protest in contemporary literature and popular culture in South Asia and the formation of closely-knit female communities of solidarity, cooperation and collective political action.
The book will be of interest to students and researchers of gender studies, literature, cultural studies, sociology, minority and indigenous studies, and South Asian studies.
List of contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Introduction by Nabanita Sengupta and Samrita Sengupta Sinha
Part I: Literary Voices of Protest
- Poetry and Dissent: Afghan Women’s Poetry
- Mapping Shrines of Memory – Aspiration, Repression and Articulation in Contemporary Kashmiri Poetry
- Piro Prenam – A Voice of Dissent in Kafi Tradition
- Protest in the Poems of Unish: A Study of Women’s Poetry from Barak Valley
- Homes and Warzones in Sri Lanka: Reading Resistance and Protest in Nayomi Munaweera’s Island of aThousand Mirrors
- "Fairy Tales" and "Crystal Palaces": Negotiating with the Hegemonic images of Gender and Identity in Amruta Patil’s ‘Kari’
- Mokashi - Problematising the Political Identity of a Bodo Woman Protestor as Depicted in Mamoni Raisom Goswami’s The Bronze Sword of Thengphakhri Tehsildar (2009)
- Religious Fanaticism and the Advent of Protest Narrative: A Study of Asia Bibi’s Blasphemy
- Negotiating Peace and Protest through Conflictual Terrains: A thematic study of Temsula Ao’s short stories
- Aesthetics of Protest: A Study of Select Dalit Women’s Life-Writings in English
- Centering the Woman Victim’s Conscience in Southern Sri Lanka: Three Recent Interventions as Case Studies
- Malady of the Skin and the Construction of Disabled Female Bodies: A Reading through Indian Narratives
- Memorialising Gender Violence in south Asia through Contemporary Digital Art
- Phallic Vigilantes and OTT Platforms: Urban Female Angst in South Asian Cinema
- The Other Side of Nostalgia: Dalit Women’s Narratives From the Diaspora
- Rape, Restriction and Protest: A Critical Analysis of the Bangladeshi Female Student Movement.
- The Quest for Dignity, Identity & Equality through Protest Poetry: A case of Miya Women Poets in Assam, India
- Samrita Sengupta Sinha in conversation with Dr Anita Sharma
- Nabanita Sengupta in conversation with Ms Renju Renjimar
Nishi Pulugurtha
Huzaifa Pandit
Ayesha Ramzan
Debashree Chakraborty and Panna Paul
Aditi Upmanyu
Nishtha Dev
Snigdha Deka and Rohini Punekar
Uma Pal
Rashmi Lee George
Roopa Philip
Vihanga Perera
Part II: Socio-Cultural and Performative spaces of protest
Elwin Susan John
Isha Yadav
Umar Nizaruddeen
Dhrupadi Chattopadhayay
Part III: Lived experiences as protest
Shafinur Nahar and Taniah Mahmuda Tinni
Wahida Parveez
Index
Biography
Nabanita Sengupta is a translator, creative writer and academician. She teaches in an undergraduate college in Kolkata. Her recent published works include, Understanding Women's Experiences of Displacement, Chambal Revisited and A Bengali Lady in England.
Samrita Sinha is Assistant Professor of English, Sophia College (Autonomous). Her Doctoral thesis is in the domain of Anglophone Women’s literature from the Northeastern Borderlands of India. She is the recipient of Charles Wallace Doctoral Grant for the year 2022-23.