My Family and Other Saints, by Kirin Narayan
University of Chicago Press, 2007 In 1969, young Kirin Narayan's older brother, Rahoul, announced that he was quitting school and leaving home to seek enlightenment with a guru. From boyhood, his restless creativity had continually surprised his family, but his departure shook up everyone-- especially Kirin, who adored her high-spirited, charismatic brother.
A touching, funny, and always affectionate memoir, My Family and Other Saints traces the reverberations of Rahoul's spiritual journey through the entire family. As their beachside Bombay home becomes a crossroads for Westerners seeking Eastern enlightenment, Kirin's sari-wearing American mother wholeheartedly embraces ashrams and gurus, adopting her son's spiritual quest as her own. Her Indian father, however, coins the term 'urug' -- guru spelled backward -- to mock these seekers, while young Kirin, surrounded by radiant holy men, parents drifting apart, and a motley of young, often eccentric Westerners, is left to find her own answers. Deftly re-creating the turbulent emotional world of her bicultural adolescence, but overlaying it with the hard-won understanding of adulthood, Narayan presents a large, rambunctious cast of quirky characters, from her grandmother Ba, who enjoys visits from Hindu deities, to such urugs as Bhagwan Dass and the Cupboard Swami. Throughout, she brings to life not just a family but also a time when just about everyone, it seemed, was consumed by some sort of spiritual quest.
Interweaving family stories and mythology, My Family and Other Saints is a poignant reminder that the stories we tell are at the heart of the bonds that tie a family together, no matter how far afield our journeys may take us.
Sawnet ReviewExcerpt from the book, at the University of Chicago website.
Review by William Grimes in the New York Times.
My Own Witness, by Mrinal Pande
An irreverent look behind
the facade of news reporting.
National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema: 1947-1987, by Sumita Chakravorty
Nationalism, democracy, and development : state and politics in India, by editors, Sugata Bose, Ayesha Jalal
1997.
Negotiating Ethnicity, by Bandana Purkayastha
Rutgers University Press, 2005 In the continuing debates on the topic of racial and ethnic identity in the United States, there are some that argue that ethnicity is an ascribed reality. To the contrary, others claim that individuals are becoming increasingly active in choosing and constructing their ethnic identities.
Focusing on second-generation South Asian Americans, Bandana Purkayastha offers fresh insights into the subjective experience of race, ethnicity, and social class in an increasingly diverse America. The young people of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Nepalese origin that are the subjects of the study grew up in mostly white middle class suburbs, and their linguistic skills, education, and occupation profiles are indistinguishable from their white peers. By many standards, their lifestyles mark them as members of mainstream American culture. But, as Purkayastha shows, their ethnic experiences are shaped by their racial status as neither "white" nor "wholly Asian," their continuing ties with family members across the world, and a global consumer industry, which targets them as ethnic consumers."
Drawing on information gathered from forty-eight in-depth interviews and years of research, this book illustrates how ethnic identity is negotiated by this group through choice-the adoption of ethnic labels, the invention of "traditions," the consumption of ethnic products, and participation in voluntary societies. The pan-ethnic identities that result demonstrate both a resilient attachment to heritage and a celebration of reinvention.
Lucidly written and enriched with vivid personal accounts, Negotiating Ethnicity is an important contribution to the literature on ethnicity and racialization in contemporary American culture.
Night of the New Moon, by Anees Jung
Penguin, New Delhi, 1993. Encounters with Muslim women in India.
No Shame for the Sun, by Shahla Haeri
Syracuse University Press, 2004. A collection of essays and interviews with six women in Pakistan, as well as an analysis of their lives.
Sawnet ReviewMore about Shahla Haeri
Interview at jazbah.org
Review by Laila Kazmi on chowk.com
Of Woman Caste: The Experience of Gender in Rural India, by Anjali Bagwe
Stree, Calcutta, 1995, and Zed books 1995.
Off the Beaten Track, by Madhu Kishwar
Oxford University Press, 2002. A collection of essays by Kishwar, in
which she "criticises the legislation enacted to prevent sati and
dowry, opposes co-ownership rights for wives, finds unexpected virtues in the
joint family and arranged marriage, and urges women to
exercise voluntary sexual restraint, even abstinence,
rather than explore their sexuality.
Sawnet ReviewManushi web site
On the Edge of the Auspicious: Gender and Caste in Nepal., by Mary Cameron
University of Illinois Press, USA. 1998.
Once Was Bombay, by Pinki Virani
Viking Penguin, 1999.
Sawnet ReviewReview by
Parmesh Shahani.
Review by
Deepa Gahlot in The Rediff Reviewer.
Review by Man
from Matunga
Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, by Arundhati Roy
South End Press, 2004
Parama and other Outsiders, by Shoma A. Chatterji
Parumita Publications, Calcutta. An auteur critique covering the entire directorial oeuvre of Aparna Sen, from 36 Chowringhee Lane to Paromitaar Ek Din.
Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India, by Sooni Taraporevala
Overlook-Duckworth Press, 2004 A collection of exquisite photographs taken over a 20-year period, documenting the Parsi community in India. "Demographically, we are a dying community-our deaths outweigh our births. [..] Demographic trends project that by the year 2020, India will have achieved the dubious distinction of being the most populated country on earth with 1200 million people. At that point, Parsis who will number 23,000-0.0002 per cent of the population, will cease to be termed a community and will be labelled a 'tribe', as is any ethnic group below the 30,000 count. It is a fact that obsesses us..."
Sawnet ReviewPhoto collection tells stories of Parsis in India at NPR.
Rediff interview.
Passage from India - Asian Immigrant Experience in North America, by Joan Jensen
Politics of home: postcolonial relocations and twentieth-century fiction, by Rosemary Marangoly George
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Politics, People and Places: A Journalist's Diary, by Promilla Kalhan
Variety Book Depot, New Delhi.
Postcolonial perspectives on the Raj and its literature, by Vrinda Nabar
University of Bombay, Bombay, 1994.
Power Politics, by Arundhati Roy
South End Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002 In Power Politics, Arundhati Roy challenges the idea that only "experts" can speak out on such urgent matters as the globalization of the world economy, the privatization of India's power supply by U.S.-based energy companies, and the construction of monumental dams that will dislocate hundreds of thousands of people. Roy takes us to the frontlines of struggles for social justice and a humane, democratic future.
Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and
Society, by Ruth Vanita
NY: Routledge, 2002
Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid
Kali for Women /Rutgers University Press, 1989
Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from India's largest slum, by Kalpana Sharma
Penguin India, 2000.
Relative Merits: A Personal Memoir of the Bandaranaike family of Sri Lanka, by Yasmine Gooneratne
C. Hurst & Co., London, and St Martin's Press, New York, 1986.
Remix: Conversations with immigrant teenagers, by Marina Budhos
Henry Holt, New York. 1999.
Rewriting History, by Uma Chakravarti
Kali for Women, 2000.
Sawnet Review
Ritwik Ghatak: The Rebel, by Shoma A. Chatterji
Charitabali Series, Rupa & Co., Delhi. 2004
Sadak Chaap, by Meher Pestonji
Penguin India, 2006 The day ten-year-old Rahul, part-time rag-picker, pickpocket and petty thief living footloose on the streets of Bombay, finds an abandoned baby on a railway platform, his life changes forever. He quickly appoints himself the baby’s father, making her the emotional anchor that had been missing from his life. And, while he is treated as quite the hero within his street community, he wins the trust and affection of people who are willing to give him the opportunity to start afresh and work towards a better future. But the streets are mean, inescapable, and as Rahul indulges his paltry desires and shallow dreams, he finds himself spiralling, yet again, into a vortex of crime, abuse and loneliness. As horrific as it is heartbreaking, Sadak Chhaap evokes the brutal existence of street urchins with unrelenting realism and deep sympathy.
Review in the Daily Star.
Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Indian history and literature, by Ruth Vanita, Saleem Kidwai
St. Martin's Press, New York.
Same-Sex Love in India, by Ruth Vanita
Palgrave-St Martin's Press, 2000; New Delhi: Macmillan, 2002 Co-edited with Saleem Kidwai.
Sappho and the Virgin Mary, by Ruth Vanita
Columbia University Press, 1996.
Sati: Widow Burning in India, by Sakuntala Narasimhan
Seasons of Splendour, by Madhur Jaffrey
Pavilion, London, 1985.
Self and sovereignty : individual and community in South Asian Islam since 1850., by Ayesha Jalal
2000.
Seven Sisters, by Anees Jung
Penguin, New Delhi. 1994.
Shabash!Artwallah, 2005 The Artwallah Organization commissioned 30 authors to cover the progressive South Asian scene in NY, LA, SF, DC, Toronto, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago -- music, art, film, dance, politics, religion, culture.
More info at the book's website.
Sawnet Review
Shadow Lives: Writings on Widowhood, by Uma Chakravarti & Preeti Gill
Kali for Women, 2002.
[Excerpt]
Shooting Water, by Devyani Saltzman
Newmarket Press, May 2006 Recounts Devyani Saltzman's remarkable story of reconnecting with her mother, international award-winning filmmaker Deepa Mehta. When Devyani was eleven, her parents divorced, and the courts required her to choose which parent to live with. She chose to live with her father in Toronto and then spent the next eight years navigating between two religions (Hinduism and Judaism), two cultures (Indian and Canadian), two traditions, and two people -- belonging to both and to neither at once.
In late 1999, at the age of nineteen, Devyani was invited by her mother to join her in the holy city of Benares, India, to work on Water, the final installment in Mehta's acclaimed Elements trilogy (which started with Fire and
Earth). After only a week of shooting, Water became the target of a series of politically motivated attacks. The movie was shut down. Devyani went off to Oxford and, three years later, rejoined her mother when production resumed in Sri Lanka. What began as a journey to heal deep wounds from the past turned into a five-year odyssey to complete the film.
Transformative and inspiring, Shooting Water chronicles Saltzman's life-changing experience in India, the struggle to produce a film, and, through that struggle, the emergence of a deeper love between mother and daughter.
Sawnet ReviewReview at curledup.com
Ram Subramaniam interviews Devyani Saltzman at curledup.com
Review by Sandip Roy-Choudhury in India Currents.
Review in the Toronto Observer.
Silence, Exile and Cunning, by Yasmine Gooneratne
Orient Longman Ltd., New Delhi. Sangam Press Ltd. London 1983. Second edition
1991.
Silence, exile and cunning: the fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
Orient Longman Ltd., New Delhi, and Sangam Press Ltd., London 1983
Single in the City, by Sunny Singh
Slivers of a Mirror, by Shama Futehally
Mapin Books, Bangalore. Fall 2004. This translation attempts to capture the best qualities of the ghazal in a contemporary voice. Many of the enduring names of the
ghazal are to be found here, from the early mystic Siraj Aurangabadi, whose language still has a touch of the Deccan, through
the great Ghalib to modern poets like Faiz and Sahir Ludhianvi. Urdu and Devanagiri renderings of the poems will ensure that the originals are also accessible to many readers.
Sole spokesman : Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the demand for Pakistan., by Ayesha Jalal
1985.
Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir, by Urvashi Butalia
Kali for Women, 2002.
Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence Among South Asian Immigrants in the United States, by Margaret Abraham
Rutgers University Press, 2000.
..Finally, a
friend, an article in the New York Times about Abraham and Sakhi.
Review
by Vandana Singh in SAWF
Spy Princess, by Shrabani Basu
Roli Books, Delhi. 2006 "On 13 September 1944, Noor Inayat Khan, the first female wireless operator to be flown into occupied France, was shot at Dachau. The descendant of Tipu Sultan, the tiger of Mysore, Noor was born in Moscow and raised in the Sufi style of Islam. From this unlikely background she became the only Asian secret agent in Europe in world war II, was one of three women in the SOE to be awarded the George Cross and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Shrabani Basu's new book tells the full story of this extraordinarily heroic woman.
Noor was brought up in France and Britain and joined the Red Cross when world war II broke out. But, though Sufi tradition preached non-violence, she felt that she had to do more to oppose the horrors of fascism. In Britain, Noor trained as a wireless operator before being recruited by the SOE.
Such was the urgent demand for radio operators that she was sent to France before her training was completed. Working under the code name of Madeleine, she joined a group that sabotaged communication lines. But disaster struck quickly and within days her circuit collapsed and her colleagues were arrested.
Though instructed by her controller, the famous Maurice Buckmaster, to return home, she refused to abandon her post as she was the last radio operator left in Paris. For a time she successfully dodged the Gestapo, but by late 1943 her luck had run out. She was betrayed, arrested and imprisoned at Avenue Foch. Undaunted, she made two dramatic escape attempts, but was recaptured and sent to Germany. Here she was interrogated and tortured and finally sent to Dachau, where she was shot. The Germans had learned nothing from her-not even her real name."
Sawnet ReviewThe truth about India's spy princess. Nilanjana Roy in Business Standard.
Review by Chris Coleman in RCPB.
A spark out of darkness Review in the Hindu.
Interview with the author in the BBC Woman's Hour.
The spy who wowed all. Review in the Hindu.
Princess who became a spy. Review in the Chandigarh Tribune.
State of martial rule : the origins of Pakistan's political economy of defence., by Ayesha Jalal
1990.
Staying alive : women, ecology, and survival in India, by Vandana Shiva
c1988
Story of Mohammed, the Prophet., by Bilkiz Alladin
Storylines: conversations with women writers, edited by Women's World (India) and Asmita Resource Center for Women, Hyderabad. A compilation of 17 interviews of writers and poets of eminence
writing in different languages, and includes, Ilampirai, Bama (Tamil),
Shafeeq Fatima Shera (Urdu), Sarup Dhruv, Dhiruben Patel (Gujarati),
Nayantara Sehgal (English), Nabaneeta Dev Sen (Bangla), Sara Aboobacker
(Kannada), Volga (Telugu), Rukmini Bhaya Nair (English), among
others.
Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels : Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching, by Kirin Narayan
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989
Subject: Cinema, Object: Woman, by Shoma A. Chatterji
Parumita Publications, Calcutta. A study of the portrayal of women in Indian cinema.
Suburban Sahibs, by S. Mitra Kalita
Rutgers University Press, 2003. traces the evolution of the suburb from a destination for new arrivals to a launching pad for them. She focuses on three waves of immigration in the post Civil Rights era through the stories of three families: the Kotharis, Patels
and Sarmas.
Sawnet Review
Subversive Sites: Feminist Engagement With Law in India, by Ratna Kapur & Brenda Cossman
Sage(New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London) 1996.
Suchitra Sen, by Shoma A. Chatterji
Charitabali Series, Rupa & Co., Delhi. 2002
Surviving Men, by Shobha De
Sweet and Sour, edited by Sahitya Press, UK. 1993 This bilingual book explores the subject of food. Through stories,
poems, letters, recipes and dialogue 30 Bengali women and girls comment
on the very important part that food plays in their lives.
Taking Charge of our Bodies, edited by Penguin, 2004 Why do women feel that doctors rarely pay attention to what they say? Why are so many women diagnosed as being depressed? Why does the medical system trivialize problems that many women experience as debilitating: back pain, chronic urinary tract infection and menstrual disorder? Is fat a feminist issue? These are among the hundreds of questions that surfaced as a group of women—medical professionals as well as laypersons—worked together on this handbook.
Taking Charge of Our Bodies draws on women's experiences to evaluate scientific information. It explores our feelings about menstruation, abortion, contraception and notes the way in which women are affected by AIDS, tuberculosis, cancer, mental distress, blood pressure and osteoporosis. It discusses problems affecting sexual relationships, confusions about same-sex love and singles.
Taking Precautions, by Shyama Perera
New Holland Publisher, 2004 A fascinating account of the often imaginative ways in which humans throughout history have tried to prevent themselves from propagating the race. These range from crocodile dung pessaries, diaphragms made from lemon halves and the linen condoms pioneered by the Italian anatomist Falloppio in the 16th century, through to the breakthrough of the Pill - and the women's liberation it represented - in the 1960s and beyond to the 21st century. Although the methods of today are relatively sophisticated, a foolproof form of contraception has yet to be found if the number of unplanned pregnancies each year is anything to go by. With fascinating illustrations, Taking Precautions is an engrossing, thorough, down-to-earth and amusing history of an often taboo subject.
Sawnet Review
Tantrika, by Asra Nomani
Harper Collins, 2003. Nomani, an Indian-born Muslim and a Wall Street Journal reporter,
writes about her investigation into her cross-cultural heritage
while reporting for Salon.com from Pakistan in the wake of 9/11.
Sawnet ReviewWall Street
Journal review
Review at Mantram
Zarqa
Javed's KitabKhana
Sharia,
the divine law of Islam Asra Nomani on NPR.
Technobrat, by Rukmini Bhaya Nair
Technobrat,
reviewed by Krishna Kumar in the Hindustan Times.
Tense Past, Tense Present, edited by Stree, Kolkata, 2003. Interviews with seven women writers -- Shashi Deshpande, Shama Futehally, Githa
Hariharan, Lakshmi Kannan, Sujatha
Mathai, Anuradha Marwah-Roy and
Mina Singh.
Storylines
reviewed in the Hindu by Uma Maheshwari.
A review of both these books by Meenakshi Mukherjee in Economic and
Political Weekly.
The Beauty Game, by Anita Anand
Penguin India, 2000 India's beauty queens did a hat trick in 2000, winning the
titles of Miss World, Miss Universe and Miss Asia-Pacific. Coincident was the leap in the cosmetics
industry, from Rs. 2,311 crore (1990) to Rs. 18,950 crore (2000).
The Book of Esther, by Esther David
Penguin, 2003 When Esther David set out to write a novel that was loosely based on family history, she did not know that uncovering the past would reveal such a treasure trove of stories, or that the process would cut so close to her own life.
Her story begins in the nineteenth century, with Bathsheba, as she waits for her husband to return from his long absence at their home in Danda village on the Konkan coast. A woman of great strength of character who disregards convention, she steers the family through difficult times, but is shattered by the combined weight of social ostracism and an aborted pregnancy. Her greatgrandson David inherits her sense of empathy for all things living, besides possessing a remarkable talent for healing. He acquires great respect as a doctor in Ahmedabad, but is unable to rein in his exuberant son Joshua, Esther's father, in whom the ability to heal will be directed towards a series of creatures large and small, among them lions, panthers and crocodiles. Joshua goes on to found a zoo, and the stories of the pets they raise form a heartbreaking accompaniment to the human drama.
At home in India Review in the Hindu. July 2003.
A woman's search
for her identity. Review in the Sunday Tribune.
My Family
and Other Stories. Review in the Telegraph.
The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile, by Arundhati Roy
with David Barsamian. South End Press, 2004. Four long conversations between Arundhati Roy and David Barsamian, cutting edge radio producer. Beginning in February 2001, the talks presage the September 2001 attack and trace the subsequent War on Terror to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Arundhati Roy eloquently represents the thoughts of people worldwide who are coming to know the United States through the machinations of multinational corporations and the military.
The Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual Among the Yakoba, by Susan Visvanathan
The Cost of Living, by Arundhati Roy
Random House, 1999 Roy's argument against the Narmada Dam. The second half of the book contains her essay on India's detonation of a nuclear bomb. She argues that rather than bringing power to India, the bomb is the "ultimate colonizer" -- "the most antihuman, outright evil thing."
The Dancing Girls of Lahore, by Louise Brown
Harper Collins, July 2005 The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha and her three girls. What they do is forbidden by Islam, though tolerated; but they are gandi, "unclean," and Maha's daughters, like her, are born into the business and will not leave it.
Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. With beautiful understatement, she turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more.
In shadows of a city of pleasure, courtesans grow old. Review by William Grimes in the New York Times.
Review in Ready Steady Book
The End of Imagination, by Arundhati Roy
1998.
The endless female hungers : a study of Kamala Das, by Vrinda Nabar
Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1994.
The Ethnic Strife: A Study of Asian Indian Women in the U.S., by Nita Shah
Pinkerton and Thomas Publications, New York. 1993
The Gift of a Daughter, by Subhadra Butalia
Penguin India, 2002.
Sawnet ReviewReview by Shauna Singh Baldwin in Manushi
They still burn brides. Article in the Hindu.
Dying for dowry. Review in the Hindu.
The Girl from Foreign, by Sadia Shepard
Penguin USA, 2008 Sadia Shepard grew up in a joyful, chaotic home just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where cultures intertwined, her father a white Protestant from Colorado and her mother a Muslim from Pakistan. Her childhood was spent in a house full of stories and storytellers, where the customs and religions of both of her parents were celebrated and cherished with equal enthusiasm. But Sadia’s cultural legacy grew more complex when she discovered that there was one story she had never been told. Her beloved maternal grandmother was not a Muslim like the rest of her Pakistani family, but in fact had begun her life as Rachel Jacobs, a descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny Jewish community whose members believe that they are one of the lost tribes of Israel, shipwrecked in India two thousand years ago. This new knowledge complicated Sadia's cultural inheritance even further, intimately linking her to the faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and to the customs of India, the United States, and Pakistan.
At her grandmother's deathbed, Sadia makes a promise to begin the process of filling in the missing pieces of her family's fractured mosaic. With the help of a Fulbright Scholarship and armed with a suitcase of camera equipment, she arrives in Bombay, where she finds herself struggling to document a community in transition. Her search to connect with the Bene Israel community and understand its unique traditions brings her into contact with a cast of remarkable characters, tests her sense of self, and forces her to examine what it means to lose and seek one’s place, one’s homelands, and one’s history. In the process, she unearths long-lost family secrets, confronts her fears of failure, and finds love in places that surprise her.
"So are you Muslim or are you Jewish?" Review in the Christian Science Monitor.
Review in the Asian Review of Books.
Brief review in the New Yorker.
The Goddess Kali and Kolkata, by Shoma A. Chatterji
UBSPD, Delhi, 2006
The Greater Common Good, by Arundhati Roy
1999.
Available online at Outlook. 24 Mar 99. [Poetic
Licence, B.G. Verghese's rejoinder to this essay]
The
Greater Common Good II, a response by Roy.
Friends of the River Narmada, an
anti-dam organization
Indian Supreme Court unhappy with NBA leaders and Arundhati Roy.
Hindu, 16 Oct 99.
Can
Medha Patkar win the Booker? Mahesh Nair criticizes Roy's social
activism, in Rediff.
Novelist
turned social activist. Christian Science Monitor, 17 Aug 99.
Indian Booker Prize winner turns
eco-warrior. AFP, 29 Jul 99.
Threat to burn copies of Roy's
article.
Gujarat bans Arundhati, other's entry. Hindustan Times, 2 Aug 99.
Roy
is in court facing charges of contempt and inciting violence. BBC.
The Indian Woman, by Shoma A. Chatterji
Vikas Publishing House, Delhi. 1988, 1989, 1997
The Indian Woman in Perspective, by Shoma A. Chatterji
Ajanta International, Delhi, 1993
The invisibles : a tale of the eunuchs of India, by Zia Jaffrey
Pantheon Books, New York, 1996. Zia Jaffrey's own hybrid Indian-American culture led her to
empathize with the sense of otherness felt by the hijras, or eunuchs, of
India. She pursued the story of
their semi-secret existence.
The hijras have a long tradition in India, yet are regarded with
great ambiguity.
The book and Ms
Jaffrey's own web site.
Review
by Richard Bernstein in the NYT
UD Review
The Power of Women's Informal Networks, by Bandana Purkayastha
, edited by Bandana Purkayastha Lantham, MD: Lexington Books. In contemporary discussions of gender relations around the world, a gap often exists between theory--which overemphasizes generalized units such as international or developing"--and the complex ways that global and local forces interact to structure women's lives in specific countries and regions. Analyses of movement dynamics on the global level contribute to our understanding of women's activism across borders but do not highlight localized politics spearheaded by poor women. Too often, editors Bandana Purkayastha and Mangala Subramaniam have found, marginalized groups in rural or impoverished areas are overlooked by the international economy of knowledge. The Power of Women's Informal Networks describes and evaluates social organization among poor women in South Asia and West Africa. The contributors to this important new collection of essays draw our attention to these small-scale but politically and socially significant networks as they focus on both agency and the situated contexts within which women work together to improve their lives.
List of Contributors:
Alayne M. Adams, Bianca Ambrose-Oji, Kumkum Bhattacharya, Lucy Creevey, Kathleen Fallon, Shobha Hamal Gurung, Shahanara Husain, Sangeetha Madhavan, Simone Purohit, Sangeetha Purishothaman, Bandana Purkayastha, Dominique Simon, Mangala Subramaniam
The Professional Woman's Dreams, by Sagari Chhabra
Review in Tribune India
The Rhetoric of English India, by Sara Suleri
Beyond Alterity: The English and Otherness in India. Review by Vinay Lal of The Rhetoric of English India
The Silken Swing: Cultural Universe of Dalit Women, by Fernando Franco, Jyotsna Macwan and Suguna Ramanathan (eds.)
Stree, Calcutta, 2000.
[Short review in Outlook]
The Song of India, by Anees Jung
Himalayan books, New Delhi. 1990.
The Sorrow and the Terror, by Bharati Mukherjee and Clarke Blaise
About the explosion of Air India 182 on June 23, 1985.
The Trouble with Islam, by Irshad Manji
Random House, Canada, 2003. In this book, Irshad Manji, a journalist, author, TV personality and media
entrepreneur, eflects on the most fundamentalist aspects of Islam, her personal journey to arrive at this insider/outsider position, and the reprisals (including death threats) she is getting from people within her faith for being so outspoken.
Sawnet ReviewInterview at beliefnet.com
A multifaceted fraud. Justin Podur in muslimwakeup.com.
Review in barficulture.com
Review by Andrew Sullivan in racematters.org.
Manji's trouble. Review in Now Toronto.
Review by Harry Rosenberg in roadtopeace.org
Review at atheism.org
Review by Lisa Belanger.
The violence of the Green Revolution : Third World agriculture, ecology, and politics, by Vandana Shiva
1991.
The Woman that I am: The Literature and Culture of Contemporary Women of Color, by D. Soyini Madison
St. Martin's Press, New York. 1994
To the Other Shore: Lalla's Life and Poetry, by Jaishree Odin
A feminist analysis of the verses of the 14th century poet Lalleshwari.
Towards hope : an ecological approach to the future, by Vandana Shiva
1992.
Trade Liberalization: Challenges and opportunities for women in Southeast Asia and Beyond, by Vandana Shiva and Jayati Ghosh
Engender Press, Singapore.
Tremors of Violence, by Rowena Robinson
Sage Publications, Sep 2005 An ethnographic study of Muslim survivors of ethnic strife in Mumbai and two major cities of Gujarat. Based on narratives of and interviews with Muslim men and women, it tries to understand the world and worldview of those who have seen and lived through one or several violent confrontations and episodes in their lives.
Review at the Hindu.
Review in the Telegraph.
Review at the deshcalling blog.
Uncertain Liason, by Shobha De
Penguin, New Delhi. 1993.
Uncertain Liason, by Vandana Shiva
New Delhi : Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, c1994.
Under Her Skin, edited by Seal Press, 2004. An anthology of essays by women that explore through a child's lens the sometimes savage, sometimes innocent, and always complex ways in which race shapes American lives and families.
Sawnet Review
Unruly Immigrants, by Monisha Das Gupta
Duke University Press, 2006 Explores the innovative strategies that South Asian feminist, queer, and labor organizations in the United States have developed to assert claims to rights?such as fair wages or protection from violence?for immigrants without the privileges or security of citizenship. Since the 1980s, many South Asian immigrants have found the India-centered, ?model minority? politics of previous generations inadequate to the task of redressing problems such as violence against women, homophobia, racism, and poverty. Thus they have developed new models of immigrant advocacy. They have sought rights that are mobile rather than rooted in national membership; they have advanced their claims as migrants rather than as citizens-to-be. Creating social justice organizations, they have inventively constructed a transnational complex of rights by drawing on local, national, and international laws to seek entitlements for their constituencies.
Das Gupta offers an ethnography of seven South Asian organizations in the northeastern United States, looking at how these groups developed, how they envisioned their politics, and the conflicts that emerged within the groups over questions of sexual, class, and political identities. She explores the ways that women?s organizations defined and responded to questions of domestic violence as they related to women?s immigration status, the construction of a transnational South Asian queer identity and culture by people who found themselves marginalized by both mainstream South Asian and queer communities in the United States, and the efforts of labor groups who sought economic justice for taxi drivers and domestic workers by confronting local policies that exploited cheap immigrant labor. Creatively responding to the shortcomings of the state, their communities, and the larger social movements of which they are a part, these groups challenge the assumption that citizenship is the necessary basis of rights claims.
Violence Against Women: New Movements and New Theories in India, by Gail Omveldt
Kali for Women, New Delhi. 1990
Virtual Equality: The mainstreaming of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement, by Urvashi Vaid
Anchor Bks. 1995 [The gay community] must
wake up and face
the forces that divide it: the current leadership crisis, the lack of
a
coherent agenda, the new gay conservaties, the threat of anti-gay
legislation,
and the gay ghetto.
Voices of Sanity - Reaching out for Peace, by Kamla Bhasin, Smitu Kothari, Bindia Thapar
War Talk, by Arundhati Roy
South End Press, 2003 War Talk highlights the global rise of militarism and religious and racial violence. Against the backdrop of nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan, the horrific massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, and U.S. demands for an ever-expanding war on terror, she calls into question the equation of nation and ethnicity.
When a place becomes a person, by Anees Jung
Vikas, New Delhi, 1977.
Where Women are Leaders: The Sewa Movement in India, by Kalima Rose
Zed Books. 1993
Why I Am A Muslim, by Asma Gull Hasan
Element Books, 2004. The author, a South-Asian-American, California attorney, and practicing Muslim, writes with the hope of modifying common American stereotypes about Muslims: that they approved of 9/11, that they pray to a different God, and that Islam oppresses women. Her writing encompasses her knowledge of her culture and religion, and her own experiences.
Sawnet ReviewReview from Pakistan Link
Women & the nation's narrative, by Neloufer de Mel
Kali for Women, 2003.
Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories, by Nita Kumar
University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville. 1994
Women for Afghan Women, edited by St. Martin's Press, 2002. Traces the history of women's rights and roles in
Afghanistan over the past 30 years; it examines the current human
rights crisis, and
suggests realistic solutions for post-war Afghanistan.
Sawnet Review[Review
in the Washington Post]
Women in Black, White and Technicolour, by Shoma A. Chatterji
Rupa & Co., Delhi. 2004
Women in India and Pakistan : The Struggle for Independence from British Rule, by Rozina Visram
1993. An historical account of the evolving roles of
Indian and Pakistani women in their struggle for
independence from the British as well as equal rights follows them
from traditional roles
through social and political awakening.
Women in Romanticism, by Meena Alexander
Barnes & Noble, Md. 1989.
Women in Society -- India, by Vijaya Ghose
Singapore: Times Books International, 1994.
Sawnet Review
Writing the Women's Movement, by Mala Khullar
Zubaan Books, Delhi This collection seeks to provide a synoptic representation of women's studies in India as it has developed since the late nineteen-seventies and early-eighties. Following the women's movement, there has been a virtual information explosion in this field, which has expanded enormously, within the academic framework of the social sciences as well as the spheres of policy making and advocacy. Writing The Women's Movement aims at consolidating some of this knowledge and the research and policy perspectives offered, into a curriculum not only for teaching of women's studies, but also as an introductory text for the interested reader. It represents the work of several women's studies scholars such as Vina Mazumdar, Lotika Sarkar, Devaki Jain, Nirmala Banerjee, Patricia Uberoi, Bina Agarwal, FlaviaAgnes, Shohoni Ghosh, Zoya Hassan, Ratna Sudarshan, Ratna Kapur and others. The themes covered include the women's movement in India, the legal framework, women in politics, educational intervention, women's encounter with violence, women in the family, women's sexuality and women's work.
