Spoken In The First Person, These Reminiscences Of A Woman Whose Mother Was Rescued From A House Of Ill-Repute Construct A History Not Often Documented. A History That Runs Parallel To The Official Narrative Of India`S Modernism And Nationalism: That Of Women Outcast Because They Are `Fallen`. Starting From The Late Nineteenth Century, The Voice Of Bedanabala Bears Witness To The Experiences Of Many Women Who Find Themselves Outside The Safety Of Domestic Walls And Thereafter Make Their Lives In The Only Ways Open To Them In A Society Where Women Did Not Work Except As Domestic Servants-Entertaining Men, Developing Liaisons, Interwining Their Dreams And Passions With The Destiny Of A Country Struggling For Independence And Questioning Oppressive Time-Worn Social Custom. Bedanabala, Written In 1996, Seeks To Empathize With A Segment Of Society Condemned Even By Other Women As Beyond The Bounds Of Decency And Social Acceptance.

In the study, Literature as a Site of Activism: A Select Study of Women Writing in India, an attempt is made to bring the well known contemporary women writers who are very much part of the mainstream society. These women writers use their fictional as well as their non-fictional writings to exhibit their activist concern. They use their writings to criticize certain social happenings. Though the writers hail from different parts of our country, the issues raised by them in their writings unify them. Their concern over various issues is discussed in a particular sense here.

Introduction Social Activism: The Voices of Protest The Subalterns and Black Humour: A Discourse of Class Articulating Indian History Conclusion Bibliography

This compilation, Horizon Above and Beyond, is the outcome of the hard efforts of past two years. Unlike other projects or approaches that attempt to pool out literature and language from each other, the following text has attempted not to catalog either the text or the contents into any particular class of subjects of concern and, thus, keeping it broad and wide. It sheds the limelight onto the research works done by the scholars of various disciplines. The technical aspect of language, such as linguistics and translation, along with literary criticism and the researches on novels, poems, short stories, films, religion, etc., are brought under a single haven, thereby extending the subjectivity of research on language and literature. Similarly the rigidity, fluidity, and hypocrisy of the various social institutions are also put into scrutiny respectively in different areas. Therefore, instead of choosing the works that are purely literary, those tinted with the flavor of other styles and outlooks are muddled together here.

This cluster of short fiction has a common motif: the breast. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak points out in her introduction, the breast is far more than a symbol in these stories. It becomes the means of a harsh indictment of an exploitative social system. In Draupadi , the protagonist Dopdi Mejhen is a tribal revolutionary who, arrested and gang-raped in custody, turns the terrible wounds of her breasts into a counter-offensive. In Breast-Giver , a woman who becomes a professional wet-nurse to support her family dies of painful breast cancer, betrayed alike by the breasts that for years became her chief identity and the dozens of sons she suckled. In Behind the Bodice , migrant labourer Gangor s statuesque breasts excite the attention of ace photographer Upin Puri, triggering off a train of violence that ends in tragedy. Mahasweta Devi is one of India s foremost writers. Her powerful fiction has won her recognition in the form of the Sahitya Akademi (1979), Jnanpith (1996) and Ramon Magsaysay (1996) awards, amongst several other literary honours. She was also awarded the Padmasree in 1986, the title of Officier del Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres (2003) and the Nonino Prize (2005) for her activist work among dispossessed tribal communities. Translator, critic and scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, introduces this cycle of breast stories with thought-provoking essays which probe the texts of the stories, opening them up to a complex of interpretation and meaning.