Contemporary Fiction: an Anthology of Female Writers

288 Pages·2008·1.12 MB·English

by  Vandana Pathak

CONTEMPORARY
FICTION:
An Anthology of Female
Writers
Edited by
Vandana Pathak
Urmi la Dabir
Shubha Mishra

Sarup & Sons
Contemporary FiCtion:
an anthology of Female Writers

Contemporary FiCtion:
an anthology of Female Writers
edited by
Vandana Pathak
Urmila dabir
ShUbha miShra
Sarup & SonS
new Delhi - 110002
Published by
Sarup & SonS
4740/23, Ansari Road
Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110002
Tel. : [phone]
Fax : [phone]
E-mail : [email protected].
Contemporary FiCtion:
an anthology of Female Writers
© editors
1st Edition - 2008
ISBN 978-81-7625-835-7
Views and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the
contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
editors.
PRINTED IN INDIA
Published by Prabhat Kumar Sharma for Sarup & Sons,
Laser Typesetting at Chitra Computers and Printed
at Mehra Offset Printers, Delhi.
to
all our Family members with
Love and Gratitude…
…Don’t write in english, they said,
english is not your mother tongue. Why not leave
me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
everyone of you? Why not let me speak in
any language i like? the language i speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
all mine, mine alone. it is half english, half
indian, funny perhaps but it is honest,
it is as human as i am human, don’t you
see ? it voices my joys, my longings, my
Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing
is to crows or roaring to the lions...(Kamla Das)

preface
“Literature can not be the business of a woman’s life and
it ought not to be”, declared robert Southey in a letter
written to Charlotte Bronte. yet Women’s literary voices
successfully marginalized and trivialized by the dominant
male establishment, nevertheless survived. indian writing
in english brings out the veracity of this statement. Last few
decades have been catalytic for the growth of indian writing
in english. a new galaxy of writers has been witnessed. that
Women are no longer ‘others ‘in the indian english literary
scenario and that indian english female fiction writers
have created a space for themselves is crystal clear from
the distinguished awards they have bagged in the recent
times and by the way in which their names figure in any
anthology on fiction. in india, many female fiction writers
like Kamala Das, Kamala markandaya, nayantara Sahgal,
rama mehta, ruth prawer Jhabvala, Shobha De, Shashi
Deshpande, manju Kapur, neelum Saran Gaur, Bharati
mukherjee, indira Goswami, arundhati roy, Jai nimkar,
Gouri Deshpande, and Susan Viswanathan, arundhati
roy, eunice De Souza, Jaishree misra, anita nair, Suniti
namjoshi, mrunal pande, namita Gokhale, Githa Hariharan,
arundhati roy, manjula padmanabhan, Jhumpa Lahiri,
anjali Banerjee, Sonia Singh, Kavita Daswani, Sabrina
Saleem, Santha rama rau, Basanti Karmarkar, etc. have
contributed to this genre immensely. Female writers of the
indian Diaspora too have carved a niche for themselves.
they include writers like anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Gita
mehta anjana appachana, abha Dawesar, Chitra Banerjee
Divakaruni, Bharati mukherjee, Shauna Singh Baldwin,
viii
ann Bhalla, Kaavya Vishwanathan, Bapsi Sidhwa, Bharti
Kirchner, Sujata massey, indira Ganesan, Shani muthoo,
marina Budhos, anuradha marwah-roy, rani Dharker,
meera Syal, anita rau Badami, Uma parameswaran, and
ameena meer, etc. Female fiction writers from other asian
countries like pakistan and Bangla Desh too have expressed
themselves in english. Some such well known writers are
Bapsi Sidhwa, Uzma aslam Khan and Kamila Shamsie,
rukshana ahmad, taslima nasreen, monica ali, etc. all
women novelists are the unacknowledged sociologists of the
world. the famous historian Gerda Lerner is quite sure of the
“evil conspiracies of men” and feels that women have been
left out of history. She stresses the need to “rectify this” by
conducting a “women centered inquiry” to see “what would
history be like if it were seen though the eye of the women
and ordered by the values they define.”
Literature by women presents an “imaginative
continuum”. in women novelists, a commonality of motifs
is observed. they deal with gender issues and roles, female
subjectivity, exploitation and oppression, the concept of being
‘other’ in a patriarchal society, the theme of growing up from
childhood to womanhood, that is, the Bildungsroman, self
liberation via self quest, sexual deviance and sexual autonomy,
human relationships, realism, magic realism, fantasy
and surrealism, the image of the new Woman, traditional
indian culture, image of ‘exotic india’, globalization,
migration, expatriation, diasporic consciousness, east-West
confrontation, the clash between tradition and modernity,
socio-psychological aspect, independence struggle, and
partition, etc. the articles in the present anthology highlight
some of these significant themes.
narrative Strategies and the invisible in neelum Saran
Gour’s Sikandar Chowk park: re-Constructing identities and
(inter-) religious Confrontation by Ludmila Volna analyses
the so called ‘backstage’ of a militant’s explosion in allahabad
park where 57 people died. the paper analyzes what is behind
the explosion and is interested in the author’s questioning
to each individual’s part in a religion-related confrontation
ix
displayed on the ‘scene’.
ana Garcia-arroyo in her piece of writing From the
Sandal trees to Facing the mirror: a Herstorical overview
of Same-Sex Love in india discusses very less anthologized
and in the typical indian aspect considered a taboo subject
of lesbian relationships. it voices a silence and depicts the
invisibility of such relationhips as an urge to create space for
themselves in their quest for identity.
prem Srivastava in her brilliant exposition Literature
Still matters! the namesake: Woman reads Woman studies
the dynamics of Jhumpa Lahiri’s the namesake and mira
nair’s depiction of the same on the celluloid. the aspect of
how one woman reads the other woman constitutes another
touchstone of this enquiry.
Leela Kanals’ in the Celebration of acculturation in
monica ali’s Brick Lane celebrates acculturation leading
away from stereotyped self pity at the loss of identity exposing
problems of exiles in england. it applauds the ability of
human kind to be transplanted from one environ to another
and turn it into an adopted home.
Vaishali naik explores various metaphors and aspects
of space related to discourse of protest, hegemony, and
hierarchies in her intellectual scrutiny a Socio-Cultural
Feminist Critique of inside the Haveli within the Frame of
the marginal.
Supriya Sahasrabuddhe’s scholarly article on reason
and rebellion in Feminism: Shashi Deshpande and Bharati
mukherjee is a comparative study focusing on the women
centered approach. Her analysis of women as beings, not as
gender specific beings is applaudable dealing with quest for
identity.
p.D. nimsarkar in his in depth analysis of History and
politics, in Bapsi Sidhwa’s ice Candy man sheds light on
history especially the aftermath of partition caused in the
lives of people in pakistan. it describes an amalgamation
of the parsi community and the deep undertones of racial
politics have been perceptively dealt with.