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Lifescapes: Interviews with Contemporary Women Writers from Tamil Nadu
K. Srilata & Swarnalatha Rangarajan
Rs 375 Pb 2019
978-,93-85606-19-9
(All rights available.)
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This unique anthology presents the experiences and views of seventeen contemporary Tamil women writers whose works explore the implications of being female in Tamil Nadu today, in serious and playful ways. Challenging the rigid, polarising binaries of the ‘inner feminine’, or aham, and the ‘outer masculine’, or puram, prevalent in classical Sangam literature, the writers in this volume draw attention to the inseparability of issues like gender, body politics, caste hegemony, mythopoesis and environmental justice, in their writing.
The candid interviews attempt to not just chart the complex factors that influence their writing lives—economic necessity, familial politics or the pressures of domesticity—but also identify the diverse contexts that frame their literary works. These firebrand women reveal their poetic, poignant, passionate selves as they speak about finding their own voice and place in a male-dominated, and largely male-defined, literary landscape.
Featured Writers • Bama • Brindha Sethu • Ilampirai • Kavin Malar • Kutti Revathi • Malathi Maithri • Manushi Bharathi • R. Meenakshi • Thi. Parameshwari • Perundevi • Sakthi Arulanandam • Sakthi Jothi • Salma • P. Sivakami • Sukirtharani • Thamizhachi Thangapandian • R. Vatsala |
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K. Srilata
is a poet, fiction writer, translator and Professor of English at IIT Madras. Her books include four poetry collections,Bookmarking the Oasis; Writing Octopus; Arriving Shortly; and Seablue Child, and a novel, Table for Four. She has co-edited three anthologies, The Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry; Short Fiction from South India; and All the Worlds Between, a Indo-Irish collaborative poetry project. She has translated R. Vatsala’s Tamil novel, Once There was a Girl (Vattathul) and The Other Half of the Coconut: Women Writing Self-Respect History, a book of women’s writing from the Self-Respect movement. |
Swarnalatha Rangarajan
is professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras, and is passionate about environmental humanities. She is the founding editor of the Indian Journal of Ecocriticism (IJE). Her academic publications include Ecocriticism: Big Ideas and Practical Strategies. She has co-edited Ecoambiguity, Community, and Development; Ecocriticism of the Global South; and the forthcoming Routledge Book of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication. Her debut novel, Final Instructions was published in 2015.
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