Women on Women : A Reading of Commonwealth Women Writers
Contents: Introduction. 1. A thematic analysis of Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook/Gita Chaudhuri. 2. Margaret Atwood's Surfacing: The psychoprofiling of a nameless narrator/Asha Verma. 3. Identity of her own: Flora Nwapa's One is Enough/Rashmi Varma. 4. Kulsum: A silent rebel in Najma Jesmin Chowdhury's Time Ahead/Anila Dalal. 5. Reconstructing the Maori Ethos in Keri Hulme's The Bone People/V. Bharathi Harishankar. 6. A quest for a Utopia: Nadine Gordimer's A Sport of Nature/Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri. 7. Alternative histories in Kate Grenville's Joan Makes History/Nirzari Pandit. 8. Shama Futehally's Tara Lane: a Kaleidoscopic image of independent India/Trupti Vora. 9. Real and imagined memories in Michele Roberts's Daughters of the House/Jasbir Jain. 10. Sohaila Abdulali's The Mad Women of Jogare: Upholding the primacy of the soil/Minnie Mattheew. 11. Tehmina Durrani's Blasphemy: an outcry against evil Enshrined/Deepika Rupani. 12. Chandani Lokuge's If the Moon Smiled: a montage of memories/Amina Amin. 13. Shashi Deshpande's Small Remedies: a reading/Gitanjali Rampal. 14. Manju Kapur's Difficult Daughters: a study of her women characters/Manju Verma. 15. Monica Ali's Brick Lane: Nazneen's journey from a submissive teenager to a hesitatingly independent mother/Govindini Shah. Contributors.
"This volume highlights the movement from a shared past under the broad rubric of 'Commonwealth', to an individual assertion of separate identities. Although, of the writers included in the volume, some may have adopted western traditions of the novel, others have moved towards their own regional/local traditions of form and style. There is an unapologetic assertion of ethnic pride, a consciousness of the 'otherness' in their literary production at the same time that they appeal to a larger global readership. Although a distinct pattern may not emerge out of the novels discussed, a distinct voice does emerge out of the artistic expression of the writers which is at once assertive and subdued, subtle and belligerent, artistic and propagandist, regional and cosmopolitan, subjective as also preoccupied with the universal concerns of humanity. Of interest also is the way these writers reconstruct the complexities and multiplicities of their lives through the various literary techniques they employ.
The majority of the novelists included in this volume are those whose works have attracted critical attention not merely in their own countries but also internationally. Established writers like Margaret Atwood, Nadine Gordimer, Keri Hulme and Kate Grenville figure side by side with younger upcoming writers like Manju Kapoor, Monica Ali and Chandini Lokuge." (jacket)
