• ISBN13: 9788185604589
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: English Literature
• Publisher: Bhatkal&Sen Pub
• Publisher Imprint: BhatkalSen
• Publication Date: May 16, 2003
• Pages: 235
• Original Price: INR 450.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 384 grams

When you are trying to find a way out of the silence, you need words. I have this feeling when reading Indian women writers that they are as Rushdie puts it, reshaping English so that women could talk about what is never said. Thus Kuortti interviews Shashi Deshpande, trying to ascertain why women write and why they write in English. Writing in English cannot be neutral. As a colony, the language was inescapably associated with class, race and power; after independence it has grown in power and status, yet the problematic of English as the language of the hegemonic West remains. Even so, a new canon of women writing in English is being formed. Women writing in English in India do not form a coherent group. They come from various cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and do not share a single vision of India. Interviewing seven women writers, Shashi Deshpande, Shama Futehally, Githa Hariharan, Anuradha Marwah Roy, Mina Singh Lakshmi Kannan and Ana Sujatha Mathai, Kuortti also presents extracts from their writings. Kuortti elicits intriguing responses on why they choose to write in English, their views on the diasporic writings of Indians and the regional languages. They speak frankly about the womens movement and all assert that they support many of the goals of feminism. Aware of the changing status of English and of women writers within India, Kuortti ably analyses this new cultural phenomenon. About The Author: Joel Kuortti is Acting Professor of English at the Department of English, University of Tempere, Finland. Apart from Indian womens writings in English, he is interested in diasporic Indian literature and postcolonial and feminist literary theory.