Growing Up As A Woman Writer

Book Specification

Book Description

About the Book

The present volume brings to the reader the works of women writers in India across languages, regions, religions, socioeconomic structures, caste hierarchies and genres. In its wide-ranging presentation of creative writing, it also works across generations.

A product of the proceedings of two seminars on women writers organised by the Sahitya Akademi, the volume brings together debates on definitions of womens writing and feminism, personal narratives and recollections, poetry and short stories that reflect different hues of life. The insights the writers provide convey the Indian reality with all its immediacy, and in this lies the strength of these writings.

Writing, as it moves from the oral to the written text, simultaneously represents a sense of freedom, a discovery of the self and a reaching out to the other. The critical essays go on to interrogate literary canons, modes of representation, aesthetics, feminist positions and the question of readership. Ranging from the personal to the political, from the lyrical to the hard- core intellectual voice, the volume conveys the vibrancy of the writing of women in India today. Under the cover we have here, the making of a new literary tradition.

About the Author

Jasbir Jain is currently engaged in research on the indigenous roots of feminism. She has been working on literature across the different languages of India for more than two decades. Her major interest areas are critical theory and feminist and cultural issues. Amongst her recent publications are Beyond Postcolonialism: Dreams and Realities of a Nation (2006) and Reading Partition/Living Partition (2006).

Preface

The present volume is a collection of the proceedings of the two conferences of women writers organised by the Sahitya Akademi. The first of these Women Writing in India at the Turn of the Century was held in 2001, and the second All India Women Writers Conference in 2005. The writers and critics who participated in these came from different parts of the country, represented different languages and different genres. They also, in some measure, provided a cross-section of society. Yet, no matter how many conferences we may put together, none can be truly representative of the plurality, diversity and the experiential difference of circumstances. Many of us ran into each other at both the conferences. I happened to be one of those privileged ones.

In retrospect it is natural to ask the question what were the objectives and what the achievements of these two conferences. For the first time, a recognised and respected central academy took the initiative to explore the complexities of gender relations and their impact upon the creative mind. Another first was the intellectual sharing that went into the debates, discussions, breakfast sessions, walks, and the brushes we had with each other. A sharing, a bondedness, a friendliness – all these could be felt. We did feel pampered for a while. Insights into other worlds both frightened and inspired one. There was a freedom in being with each other.

One of the identified themes in the 2001 conference was Growing Up as a Woman Writer. In my subsequent researches, I found these essays very helpful and persisted in asking as to when they would be made available to a larger public. The natural fallout of this was that the proceedings of both the seminars were forwarded to me – some handwritten, some in Hindi, some faint copies of typescripts. It has been a long process getting them translated and ready for publication, contacting the authors for details and attending to other related tasks. But finally it seems to have acquired a semblance of some kind of order. As I put them together there were some problems that troubled me and these were (i) non-representation of certain sections and languages; (ii) more than one contribution by one author; (ill) non-representation of certain aspects of womens writing and life; (iv) and a need to balance the specific feminine concerns with an expansion of feminine interests. In addition there were the missing transcripts of Mahasweta Devis opening remarks at the 2001 conference, of the interventions that Qurrutulain Hyder and Krishna Sobti made thereafter, or the debate that followed the contrasting viewpoints of Mahasweta Devi and Nabaneeta Deb Sen. I mention these to help the reader recreate the dynamic atmosphere that actually enveloped all of us.

Some of the issues that I have identified above, apparently had no solutions. I simply had to accept them as unsolvable. But I decided to invite articles to fill up some major gaps, which incidentally would also provide more representation. Prabhjot, Krishna Sobti, Tutun Mukherjee, Bama, B. Chandrika, Esther David, Neelum Saran Gaur, Lakshmi Kannan, Surjit Sama, Dhanwant Kaur, Priya Sarukkai Chabria and Rachel Bari fall into this category. Each one of the above has been gracious and generous enough to let me have her poems, short stories, an autobiographical piece or a critical one. I