cover image Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present, V: The Twentieth Century

Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present, V: The Twentieth Century

. Feminist Press, $59.95 (688pp) ISBN 978-1-55861-028-6

Thorough and challenging, this collection of fiction, poetry, drama and autobiography examines both continuities and departures in the writing of India's expanding class of women of letters during the period 1905 to present. The editors also provide extensive background on this century's literary movements and political and social upheavals and developments and their impact on the evolution of the emerging Indian feminist literary voice. Hajira Shakoor's tale charts the recent changes in families that have resulted from the spread of ideas through the mass media, particularly movies. Women's yearning for growth as a part of and counterpart to India's flowering as an independent nation-state is demonstrated in a chapter from a novel by Kundanika Kapadia in which a young wife dreams of transcending the traditional barriers of distrust that divide her from her husband's aunt, who lives with the young couple. However, the plight of Indian women is succinctly stated by a character in a short story by Veena Shanteshwar: ``Our country has been free . . . yet we find ourselves bound in slavery. The causes: 25% tradition, another 25% circumstances, and the remaining 50% men.'' (Apr.)