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

"When you read the riches within these covers, you'll know that a Western male bias has left all of us culturally deprived. No library or school or caring reader should be without this volume." --Gloria Steinem, author of My Life on the Road "This splendid anthology makes visible for the first time the contours of a veritable subcontinent of women writing. The selections are wise and revealing; the introduction, meticulous and seminal. It should establish once and for all that in the study of Indian cultural history the importance of gender, far from being marginal, is profoundly structural." --C.M. Naim, founding editor of Journal of South Asian Literature "This volume is remarkable for the extensive research that has unearthed hitherto unknown texts, the sensitive translations, and the informative, analytical, and elegantly written introductions to each section. Without simplifying the complexity and heterogeneity of India, this anthology makes its literature accessible even to those outside its culture. The rich and diverse material--mystical and earthy, joyous and sad, serious and funny--opens out a densely textured, vibrant world that does not always confirm Western notions of Indian women." --Meenakshi Mukherjee, author of The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English "This rich and various collection of women's voices from different South Asian eras, languages, and social conditions is much more than a dutiful supplement to an imaginary library of world literature. Responding to American feminist literary theory as well as the long history of British interpretations of Indian culture, Women Writing in India is a bold critical statement and a work of original and far-ranging discovery." --David Lelyveld, author of Aligarh's First Generation