Indira Goswami: Margins and Beyond

Description

This book engages with the life and works of Indira Goswami, the first Assamese woman writer to win the highest national literary award, the Jnanpith, in 2001. From sociological treatises to a springboard of a socio-political milieu, Goswami’s texts are intersections of the local and the global, the popular and the canonical. The writer’s penchant for transcending boundaries gives a new contour and shape to the social and cultural domains in her texts. That every character is a representative of the society, that the context comes alive in every evocation of class struggle, power play, caste discrimination and gendered narratives add an interesting semantic load to her texts. While tracing the trajectories discussed above, this book foregrounds Goswami’s act of going beyond the margins of varied kinds, both abstract and concrete, in search of egalitarian and democratic spaces of life. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of Photographs Preface to the Series Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: A Life Made of Thousand Broken Pieces: The Many Margins of Indira Goswami Section I The Fiction of Indira Goswami a. Extracts from Novels Chapter 1 The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker Chapter 2 In the Shadow of the Divine Flute Player Chapter 3 Pages Stained with Blood Chapter 4 Ahiran b. Extracts from Short Stories Chapter 5 Jatra Chapter 6 Pashu Chapter 7 Sanskar Chapter 8 Parashu Patarar Naad Section II The Non-Fictional Works of Indira Goswami Chapter 9 An Unfinished Autobiography Chapter 10 Border Conflict, Love from Pakistan and a Poem Chapter 11 The Last Meeting of Indira Gandhi and Amrita Pritam Chapter 12 Burning Chapter 13 The Immortality of the Assamese Language Chapter 14 At the Hunger Strike of Harijan Workers in Raebareli Chapter 15 Chandni Chowk Chapter 16 Days at Vrindavan Chapter 17 G.B. Road’s Prohibited Neighbourhood Section III Reading Indira Goswami: Literary Reception Chapter 18 Accounts of Inferno: A Reading of Indira Goswami’s Select Novels Chapter 19 Why Is Indira Goswami Great? Chapter 20 The Notion of Love in Indira Goswami’s Writings Section IV Spaces to Inhabit: Private, Public and In-Between Chapter 21 Manavmurti: Amplitude and Entangled Spatio-Temporalities in ‘Jatra’ Chapter 22 The Story of Rama in the Critical-Intellectual Imagination of Indira Goswami Chapter 23 Ramayana Revisited: A Reading of the Socio-cultural Life in Indira Goswami’s Ramayana from Ganga to Brahmaputra Chapter 24 Perception of Places and Locations in Indira Goswami’s Select Novels Chapter 25 Of Spaces and Margins: Reading Gender and Domesticity in The Moth-Eaten Howdah of the Tusker Section V Many Margins of Indira Goswami: Flesh, Blood, Spirit Chapter 26 The Divine and the Mundane: Ritual Sacrifice, Blood and the Feminine Principle in Indira Goswami’s Under the Shadow of Kamakhya and The Man from Chinnamasta Chapter 27 Alternative Masculinities in Indira Goswami’s Fiction Chapter 28 Patriarchy and Resistance in Indira Goswami’s Short Story ‘The Offspring’ Chapter 29 Contesting Margins and Gendered Subalternity: Women in Indira Goswami and Mahasweta Devi’s Short Stories Chapter 30 Trauma and Therapy: A Study of Depression Narratives in Indira Goswami’s Autobiographical Writings Chapter 31 Women and Films: A Critique of ‘Adajya’ (The Flight) Chapter 32 Blood That Is Shed in Indira Goswami’s Writings Section VI Indira Goswami in Conversation Chapter 33 The Journey of a Writer: Indira Goswami in Conversation with Subhajit Bhadra Chapter 34 Stitching Peace Together: An Interview of Indira Goswami Chapter 35 ‘From the creative point of view, I differ completely from others’ Section VII Writing as Translation On Language and Craft Chapter 36 The Story behind My Writing Chapter 37 Translating an Axamiya Saga: Towards a New Translationese Chapter 38 Finding What May Be Lost: Translating Indira Goswami Chapter 39 Cultural Practices in Translation: Translating The Bronze Sword of Thengphakri Tehsildar Section VIII From the Archives of Indira Goswami Letters and Reminiscences Chapter 40 A Sister’s Confession Chapter 41 Letters of Indira Goswami Section IX Gathering the Pieces Chronology and Bibliography Indira Goswami: A Biographical Chronology A Life in Pictures Biographical Notes Indira Goswami: Select Bibliography Index