Teaching Anglophone South Asian Women Writers
- Editors: Deepika Bahri, Filippo Menozzi
- Pages: 392
- Published: Summer 2021
- ISBN: 9781603294904 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603294898 (Hardcover)
“This is an expansive volume that will be useful to teachers of South Asian studies, gender studies, and postcolonial literature. Covering both widely known and noncanonical texts, the essays offer an exciting array of methods for teaching anglophone South Asian women’s writing from a range of theoretical perspectives and cultural contexts.”
—Ulka Anjaria, Brandeis University
Global and cosmopolitan since the late nineteenth century, anglophone South Asian women’s writing has flourished in many genres and locations, encompassing diverse works linked by issues of language, geography, history, culture, gender, and literary tradition. Whether writing in the homeland or in the diaspora, authors offer representations of social struggle and inequality while articulating possibilities for resistance.
In this volume experienced instructors attend to the style and aesthetics of the texts as well as provide necessary background for students. Essays address historical and political contexts, including colonialism, partition, migration, ecological concerns, and evolving gender roles, and consider both traditional and contemporary genres such as graphic novels, chick lit, and Instapoetry. Presenting ideas for courses in Asian studies, women’s studies, postcolonial literature, and world literature, this book asks broadly what it means to study anglophone South Asian women’s writing in the United States, in Asia, and around the world.
Chronology (ix)
Map (xi)
Introduction (1)
Part I: Narrating History and Identity
History and Story in South Asian Women’s Writing (31)
Reframing Partition: Gender, Migration, and Storytelling in Postcolonial Conflict (41)
Gender, Caste, and Capital in The God of Small Things (52)
Small Remedies: Shashi Deshpande Treats Political Violence (61)
Teaching Parsi Women Writers in Mumbai (70)
Contemporary Anglophone Sri Lankan Women Authors (79)
War and Identity: Writing the Sri Lankan Ethnic Conflict (88)
Interior Spaces in Tahmima Anam’s A Golden Age (98)
Intimations of Modernity: The Legacy of Toru Dutt (107)
Part II: Language, Form, and Translation
(Re)membering the Past: Linguistic Dislocation in Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day (119)
Literature and Gender in Anita Desai’s In Custody (128)
Approaching the Unknowable: Teaching Mahasweta Devi in the United States (137)
Mira Nair’s Independence of Vision: Film Adaptations of The Namesake and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (146)
Graphic Novels in the Classroom: A Postcolonial, Queer Methodology (163)
Contemporary Chick Lit in Indian English (172)
Part III: Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality
Place and Gender in Pakistani Women’s Writing (185)
Dalit Feminism: Teaching Bama’s Karukku to American Undergraduates (194)
Intersections with Feminist Disability Theory in South Asian Women’s Writing (204)
Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream (213)
South Asian Feminisms and the Politics of Representation (222)
No Longer Just Victims: New Fiction and New Gender Roles (231)
South Asian Muslim Women’s Writing (241)
A Patchwork of Desire: Queering Translations of Ismat Chughtai’s “The Quilt” (249)
Teaching Suniti Namjoshi in Montana (258)
Part IV: Situated Pedagogy: The Text and the World
Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine: Unsettling Nation and Narration (269)
Anglophone South Asian Women’s Fiction: A Marxist, Intersectional Approach (276)
Teaching South Asian Women’s Writing in Finland (286)
Sujata Bhatt’s Poetry in a Cross-Cultural German Context (295)
Teaching South Asian Women’s Writing to South Asian Students (304)
Counter-Narratives of Liberal Multiculturalism in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake (313)
Arundhati Roy’s Nonfiction Writing (321)
Landscape and the Environmental Picturesque in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (330)
South Asian Women’s Poetry as World Literature (342)
Part V: Resources (353)
Notes on Contributors (373)
