The book examines contemporary Indian women writers working in the English language, namely Anita Nair, Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, and Meena Kandasamy, all of whom give a free expression to the idea of body and sexuality, and self and identity in their writings. It is a comparative study and looks at women’s literary work and its relationship to the body in third-world societies. The attempt is to examine their works from this corporeal as well as a socio-cultural phenomenon.
There are informative and comparative analyses that will be of immense use to students and scholars with an interest in body studies and women’s writing in India. The authors have taken a valid and fresh approach towards the interpretation and interrogation of body politics and female subjectivity. Divided in five chapters, through an interdisciplinary approach, the book successfully examines issues related to gender, sexuality, identity, and selfhood, drawing on the socio-cultural, historical, and psychological insights that the selected writers bring to the works chosen for study.
The subject matter is well-drafted and reflects extensive reading on the issues of gender and sexuality, and on which, not much work has been done in the current Indian context. The authors successfully establish body as a trope that can possess repressive, authoritative, as well as transformative potential. Overall, the choice of area is unique and offers much scope for future research.
Dr. Gunja Patni is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, JECRC University, Jaipur, having a teaching experience of more than twelve years in the areas of English Language and Literature. She has to her credit several research papers in national and international journals along with the publication of a few book chapters. She has also presented papers at numerous national and international conferences and seminars, and has been conferred with the “Vimal Sagar Vidvatta Puraskar” in 2014 for the English translation of a book based on Jain philosophy entitled Supreme Digambar Jain Saints: In View of Various Religions of the World. Her areas of interest include Women and Gender Studies, Indian Writing in English, Postcolonial Literature, Cultural Studies, Diaspora Writing, and Business Communication.
Dr. Rimika Singhvi is an Associate Professor and Head at the Department of English, IIS (Deemed to be University), Jaipur. Her teaching career spans nearly two decades and her areas of interest include Indian writing in English, especially women’s poetry; Diaspora and Young Adult Fiction; Partition and City Narratives; the modern Indian novel in English; and writings from the Middle East as well as South and Central Asia.
Dr. Singhvi has to her credit several research papers in national and international journals of repute along with book chapters in various reputed publications. She has also presented papers at national and international conferences. She has presented paper abroad at Oxford and London (UK), Vienna (Austria), Rome (Italy), Lublin (Poland), and Halle-Wittenberg (Germany). Additionally, she is a course-writer with the Indra Gandhi National Open University as well as Oral Examiner, Seminar-Presenter, and Exam-Inspector for the University of Cambridge, U.K.‘s suite of International Tests of Business English.
