1st Edition

Understanding Women’s Experiences of Displacement Literature, Culture and Society in South Asia

Edited By Suranjana Choudhury, Nabanita Sengupta Copyright 2022
    238 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge India

    238 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge India

    238 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge India

    The South Asian region has been especially prone to mass displacement and relocations owing to its varied geographical settings as well as socio-political factors. This book examines the women’s perspective on issues related to displacement, loss, conflict, and rehabilitation.

    It maps the diverse engagements with women’s experiences of displacement in the South Asian region through a nuanced examination of unexplored literary narratives, life writing and memoirs, cultural discourses, and social practices. The book explores themes like sexuality and the female body, women and the national identity, violence against women in Indian Partition narratives, and stories of exile in real life and fairy tales. It also offers an understanding of the ruptures created by dislocation and exile in memory, identity, and culture by analyzing the spaces occupied by displaced women and their lived experiences. The volume looks at the multiplicity of reasons behind women’s displacement and offers a wider perspective on the intersections between gender, migration, and marginalization.

    This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of cultural studies, literature, gender studies, conflict studies, development studies, South Asian studies, refugee studies, diaspora studies, and sociology.

    Part I: Critical Essays 1. Interconnected Lives, Disrupted Realities: Revisiting Gendered Narratives from India’s Northeastern Partition, 1947 2. ‘A Language Without Words’: Remapping Women’s Displacements Through Transnationalism in Chandani Lokugé’s Fiction 3. Displacement, Family Sagas and a Feminist Gaze: Retelling Women’s Sexual History in Love Marriage and Bodies in Motion 4. Prison as a Paradigm of Displacement: Narratives of Female Prisoners in 1970s West Bengal 5. Negotiating the Trauma of Displacement in Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife and Jasmine 6. Post-Riot Narratives: Locating the Voices of "Displaced" Women? 7. Nation, Female Body and Sexuality: HansdaShekhar’s "November Is the Month of Migration" 8. When Home is a Glass Coffin: Women and Displacement in Some Indian Fairy Tales 9. Women, Violence, Displacement: Delineating the Abduction Motif in South Asian Partition Stories 10. Singing in Exile: Relocating the Notion of Displacement in Usha Kishore’s Immigrant 11. The Post-Independence Rehabilitation Displacement: The Birangona Case in Bangladesh 12. "Please, dear Zari, tell my story!": Reading Women’s Displacement in Zarghuna Kargar’s Dear Zari Part II: Life Writings and Memoirs 13. Among Her Own 14. Maps, Shapes and Women Breaking (Out of) Homes: A Memoir 15. "Reaching out to Grasp Roots…I Stand Uprooted" 16. Dreams, Displacement and a Garden 17. The Women in Chambal (Translated from Bengali by Sanghita Sanyal) 18. Women in Conflict.

    Biography

    Nabanita Sengupta is presently working as an assistant professor in English at Sarsuna College, affiliated to the University of Calcutta, India. Her areas of specialization are 19th-century travel writings, women's studies, and translation studies. She has participated as a translator in the workshops of Sahitya Akademi, Viswa-Bharati, and others. She has also presented papers in various national and international seminars in India and abroad and organized both national and international webinars and seminars for her college. Her recent publication is a translation of a 19th-century Bengali travel writing, Englandey Bangamahila (A Bengali Lady in England) with a critical introduction.

    Suranjana Choudhury teaches literature at North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India. She has published research articles in various national and international journals, as well as book chapters in a number of edited anthologies. She has presented research papers at different national and international conferences in India and abroad. Her areas of interest include Partition Studies, South Asian studies, women’s writing, and cultural studies. She is the author of the book, A Reading of Violence in Partition Stories from Bengal.