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(Auto)Biographies

A Childhood in Malabar, by Kamala Das Penguin, India. 2005 A Childhood in Malabar brings together two volumes of Kamala Das's childhood memoirs originally published in Malayalam. It is the Second World War and Kamala and her brother are removed from their parents in Calcutta to the safer environs of their village in Kerala. At once a stranger and an integral part of her ancestral home, Kamala struggles to fathom the intricacies of class, caste and language. But Calcutta soon fades from her mind like an old dream and the thudding of the drums at the para festival, the roar of the velichappadu as he became possessed and the songs of the parayankaali dancers become the absolute realities of life.
Sawnet Review
A jigsaw of childhood memories. Review in The Hindu by Pratima Asher.
Read it like a child. Review in The Hindu by M. Mukundan.
A Princess Remembers: The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur, with Santha Rama Rau, by Gayatri Devi Rupa & Co, 1995 The autobiography of Maharani Gayatri Devi, daughter of the Maharaja of Cooch-Behar, wife and later the widow of the Maharaja of Jaipur. Raised in sprawling palaces, she shot her first panther when she was twelve. She was famous for her beauty, celebrated by Vogue, and won election with the largest majority ever recorded in a democracy. [Sawnet review]
Review in the Indian Express, comparing this memoir with that of the Maharani of Kapurthala.
Amrita Sher Gil - A Painted Life, by Geeta Doctor Rupa and Co. Excerpt.
An American in Khadi, by Asha Sharma Penguin, 1999. A warm and moving portrait of Samuel Evans (Satyanand) who made India his home.
An Indian Attachment, by Sarah Lloyd Eland. Life in a Punjabi plains village through the eyes of a young western woman, whose relationship with an opium-addicted Sikh forms the essence of this honest book.
An Unfinished Autobiography, by Indira Goswami translated by P. Kotoky with a foreword by Amrita Pritam. Sterline, 2002. AT a critical point in Goswami's life as a young widow, there are two options before her. She can go to London, "that land of ancient Western tradition and culture" (p.99), or she can go to Vrindaban, "the centre of ancient Hindu tradition and culture" (p.99), to do research on the Ramayana. Two different directions, and contradictory impulses.
Anandi Gopal, by S.J. Joshi Translated from Marathi and abridged by Asha Damle. K.V. Kothavle, 1968. Crown paperback, 1992. The story of India's first woman doctor.
Sawnet Review
Aruna's Story: The True Account of a Rape and its Aftermath, by Pinki Virani Viking Penguin, 1998. Recreates the real-life tragedy of a young woman who set out from her small village in Karnataka to be a nurse in Bombay. She was raped on the eve of her wedding to a doctor, and abandoned by her family thereafter. Utterly helpless, she was tossed between a convalescent home and the hospital where she once treated patients back to health and where she now lies, barely alive. The crowning tragedy: Aruna's rapist, a sweeper in the hospital, walked a free man after a mere seven years in prison for 'robbery and attempt to murder.
Virani asks that nurse Aruna Shanbag be re-examined. Indian Express, 24 Nov 1998.
Review in Frontline by Vasantha Surya.
Twilight zone. Article by Virani in Express India, 30 May 1998.
Beloved Witch, by Ipsita Roy Chakraverti Harper Collins, 2000. An account of the author's life as a Wiccan.
Bombay Time, by Thrity Umrigar Picador, June 2001.
Sawnet Review
Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India, by Madhur Jaffrey Knopf, 2006 Madhur Jaffrey grew up in a large family compound where her grandfather often presided over dinners at which forty or more members of his extended family would savor together the wonderfully flavorful dishes that were forever imprinted on Madhur’s palate.
Climbing mango trees in the orchard, armed with a mixture of salt, pepper, ground chilies, and roasted cumin; picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint and tucked into freshly fried pooris; sampling the heady flavors in the lunch boxes of Muslim friends; sneaking tastes of exotic street fare—these are the food memories Madhur Jaffrey draws on as a way of telling her story. Independent, sensitive, and ever curious, as a young girl she loved uncovering her family’s many-layered history, and she was deeply affected by their personal trials and by the devastating consequences of Partition, which ripped their world apart.
Climbing the Mango Trees is both an enormously appealing account of an unusual childhood and a testament to the power of food to evoke memory. And, at the end, this treasure of a book contains a secret ingredient—more than thirty family recipes recovered from Madhur’s childhood, which she now shares with us.
Sawnet Review
Review at A Full Belly (a foodie blog).
Review at boldtype.
Review at epicurious.
Interview at Food for Thought.
Dancing in the Family, by Sukanya Rahman Ragini Devi was an All-American woman who pioneered India's classical dance revival. Her daughter, Indira Rahman was one of India's most vibrant classical dancers. Indira's daughter, Sukanya, has written this 'remarkably honest' memoir of the three women lives, told with 'uncommon insight and vivid humour'.
Review at Outlook India
Review at narthaki.com
Interview with the author at Tehelka.com
Desert Places, by Robyn Davidson Robyn Davidson traveled through a year's migratory cycle with the Rabari, pastoral nomads of northwest India, whose grazing lands and trading and pilgrimage routes are quickly being destroyed by new political boundaries, atomic test sites, and irrigation. She "explores with ruthless honesty" her own desert places even as she immortalizes these "keepers of the way" and a culture about to die.
Sawnet Review
Review from Salon
Chasing after nomads. Review in the New York Times. (free subscription required).
Interview with Davidson, five years after Desert Places was published.
Fault Lines: A Memoir, by Meena Alexander 1993. Feminist Press, New York.
Getting There, by Manjula Padmanabhan Picador, 2000. A semi-autobiographical novel.
Sawnet Review
She walks the earth but does not quite touch the sky. Review in The Indian Express.
Her Own Medicine, A woman's journey from student to doctor, by Sayantani Dasgupta : . Ballantine, New York. Oct 99. An account of the trials and tribulations of becoming a doctor in the 1990s.
Review by Sandhya Nankani in Little India.
I Follow After, by Lakshmibai Tilak Translated by Josephine Inkster. Oxford University Press, 1950, 1998. The author was an illiterate Chitpavan Brahmin whose husband converted to Christianity in the late 19th century. She describes her struggle to cross caste and family barriers to join her husband, and to realize her own potential. A classic of modern Marathi literature.
In the Name of Honour, by Mukhtar Mai Atria, 2006. with Marie-Therese Cuny. Foreward by Nicholas Kristof.
The testimony of Mukhtar Mai, a 28-year old Pakistani woman. In 2002 she was sentenced by Meerwala?s tribal counsel to endure a collective rape in redress for an action committed by her 13-year old brother ?when in reality it was a show of power. After suffering nameless atrocities, Mai decides to forego the tradition of committing suicide to denounce the crime.
But Steel Shall not be Sullied. Review by Aruna Roy in Outlook.
Mukhtar Mai's ordinariness gives her story its poignancy. Review by Vrinda Nabar in dna sunday.
India Calling -- the memories of Cornelia Sorabji, India's first woman barrister, by Cornelia Sorabji Edited by Chandani Lokuge. Oxford University Press, 2001. Born into a Parsee family in Nasik in the Bombay Presidency in 1866, Cornelia Sorabji's identity was shaped by three streams of cultural influences - the British, the Indian and the Parsee. An immensely readable book, full of wry humor, at the same time addressing a turbulent period of British rule in India, it deals with issues of colonialism, and questions of identity arising out of a complex racial, religious and cultural hybridity.
India's Bandit Queen, by Mala Sen Pandora, 1993. See also Arundhati Roy's articles on Bandit Queen the movie.
Indira, by Katharine Frank Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Pritish Nandy's review in Rediff
Maneka Gandhi plans to sue Harper Collins over the book . Tehelka.com
The Indira Enigma. Review in Frontline.
Shashi Tharoor's review in the Washington Post.
Review by Khushwant Singh in Outlook.
Review in Salon.
Ismat, Her Life, Her Times. by Sukrita Paul Kumar, by Sukrita Paul Kumar . Katha, Delhi, 2000. Contains interesting photographs and mementoes, intimate essays and critical insights into the life and works of Ismat Chughtai.
Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames: Women's Narratives from a Diaspora of Hope, by Jael Silliman Brandeis University Press, 2002. A personal and social history of the author's foremothers-Baghdadi Jews who lived most of their lives in the Jewish community in Calcutta.
Sawnet Review
Kamala Markandaya, by Margaret Paul Joseph Arnold-Heinemann, New Delhi, 1980.
Maharani: Memoirs of a Rebellious Princess, by Brinda, Maharani of Kapurthala & Elaine Williams Rupa & Co, 2003 [Sawnet review]
Brief review in the Telegraph.
Review in the Sunday Tribune.
Review in the Indian Express.
Maharanis: The Lives and Times of Three Generations of Indian Princesses, by Lucy Moore Viking Penguin Educated, nationalist Chimnabai, born in 1871, in the wake of the "Indian Mutiny" of 1857, began her marriage in purdah but broke it in 1913, and spent the rest of her life campaigning tirelessly for women's rights. The comparatively demure Sunity Devi was a favorite of the British aristocracy and made Queen Victoria the godmother of her son, Victor. Her prim demeanor belied a passionate social activism on behalf of the poor and uneducated. Chimnabai's ravishing daughter, Indira, broke off an arranged marriage so she could marry Sunity Devi's dashing son, Jit. But when her beloved husband died young, far from committing sati, she became the regent of his state, a job she took on with gusto though she maintained a sybaritic life abroad. In fact, among the jet set in which she traveled-including Noel Coward, Douglas Fairbanks, Jimmy Stewart, and the Prince of Wales-she was known as the Maharani of Couche Partout because of her penchant for scandalous love affairs. Ayesha, Indira's equally fashionable daughter and friend to the Kennedys, was elected-with the greatest majority ever recorded-to the Parliament of an independent India in 1962. She remains a social activist and benefactress to this day.
Sawnet Review
Gayatri Devi (aka Ayesha), the Maharani of Jaipur.
Royal Women, a review of three books about Maharanis.
Marrying Anita, by Anita Jain Bloomsbury, 2008 Anita Jain was fed up with the New York singles scene. After three years of frustration and awkward dates, and under constant pressure from her Indian parents to find someone, she started to wonder: was looking for a husband in a bar any less barbaric than traditional arranged marriage? After all this effort, there had to be something easier.
After announcing in a much-discussed New York magazine article her intention to try arranged marriage, Jain moves back to India—the impoverished, backward land her parents fled—to find a husband. At age thirty-two, and well past the cultural deadline for starting a family, Jain subjects herself to a whole new onslaught of expectations. Marrying Anita is an account of romantic chance encounters, nosy relatives, and dozens of potential husbands. Will she find a suitable man? Will he please her parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins? Is the new urban Indian culture in which she’s searching really all that different from America?
With disarming candor, Jain tells her own romantic story even as it unfolds before her, and in the process sheds new light on a country modernizing at breakneck speed.
Is Arranged Marriage worse than Craigslist?. Anita Jain's original article in New York magazine, the spark for this book.
Ladies and Mental Men. Article by Anita Jain in Maxim India.
Mirror to the Blind, by Tehmina Durrani . Autobiography of Abdul Sattar Edhi, the renowned Pakistani social worker, as told to Durrani during the two years she followed him on his rounds and daily life. National Bureau of Publications, Islamabad, Pakistan, 1996.
Monsoons and Potholes, by Manuka Wijesinghe Perera Hussein Publishing House, Colombo, Sri Lanka. 2006 A mad, bad, humorous, irreverent and very personal, auto biographical account of growing up in Sri Lanka through the years of deprivation and plenty. The trials and tribulations, real and imagined of the heroine Manuka, in tandem with her view of the country's progress on the slippery road to democracy. Playwright Manuka Wijesinghe's first attempt at a novel is a saga that takes you through the first twenty years of her life, struggling with growing pains analogous to Sri Lanka's turbulent politics. A reality that may or may not have been shared by all, but one that many will relate to.
Motiba's Tattoos, by Mira Kamdar Public Affairs, 2000. A memoir and personal voyage of discovery about the author's family, who originally emigrated from Gujarat.
Review by Arthur Pais in India Today.
Review in Public Affairs.
Review by Elisa Patnaik in the Times of India.
My Feudal Lord, by Tehmina Durrani (nonfiction)
My Feudal Lord, by Tehmina Durrani . Lahore, 1991. The author is the former wife of Mustafa Khar, once a compatriot and fellow traveller of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She was born into one of Pakistan's most influential families and raised in the privileged strata of Lahore high society. She married one of Pakistan's most eminent political figures and continued to move in the best circles and learned how to keep up the public facade as a glamorous, cultivated wife and mother of four children. However in private the marriage was violent and abusive. Subsequently seeking divorce, she signed away all financial support, lost custody of her children and was alienated from her friends and parents.
My Friend My Enemy: Essays, Reminiscences, Portraits, by Ismat Chughtai , translated by Tahira Naqvi. Kali for Women, 2002.
Translator's note
Balance gone awry. Review of My Friend, My Enemy, in the Hindu.
My Girlhood: An Autobiography, by Taslima Nasrin : . Kali for Women press, 2001.
A chronicle of discrimination - Review in Parabaas
Review in Outlook India
Review in the Washington Post
Review in desijournal.com
My Story, by Kamala Das
No holds barred, by Amita Malik This book describes vividly Amita Malik's years with the media, first at Lucknow Raio and AIR Delhi where she worked with Melville de Mellow and A S Bokhari and conducted path-breaking interviews with luminaries like Satyajit Ray, Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, David Niven and John Masters. Her sojourn with the Indian press was as eventful. Her critical columns on TV and film were both heeded and feared.
On Balance, by Leila Seth Penguin India, 2003. The first woman Chief Justice of a High Court in India, the first woman Judge of the Delhi High Court, the first woman to top the Bar examinations in London: seventy-three-year-old Leila Seth has led a full life. In this autobiography, Leila talks about its joyous as well as its difficult moments. Figuring prominently are her early years of homelessness and struggle, her straying into law while in England with her husband Premo, and later practising in Patna, Calcutta and Delhi; and her happy marriage of over fifty years, including the experience of bringing up three remarkable children: writer Vikram, peace activist Shantum and film-maker Aradhana. Also dwelt upon are her views regarding corruption, discrimination and delay in the legal system; some judgements dealing with education and with inter-personal and constitutional law; and her experiences as a member of the 15th Law Commission. There are also delightful vignettes: Premo and her turning an old mansion into a splendid home in Patna, Vikram's writing of the novel A Suitable Boy, Shantum's ordination as a Buddhist teacher by Thich Nhat Hanh and Aradhana's marriage to Peter, an Austrian diplomat, and work as art director on films like Earth and Water.
Review in the South Asian
A woman of substance. In the Hindu
Mama strikes Balance. Indian Express.
A balanced diet. Nilanjana Roy interviews Leila Seth, in Business Standard.
A story of courage. Rediff.
A suitable girl who became a judge Hindustan Times.
A fine balance. Leila Seth writes about her writing, in The Tribune.
A suitable life. Indian Express.
Pilgrimage: One Woman's Return to a Changing India, by Pramila Jayapal
Sawnet Review
Review by Monica Mehta in Village Voice.
Review by Hema Nair in Ms.
Reviews on Amazon
Prison and Chocolate Cake, by Nayantara Sahgal
Saguna : The First Autobiographical Novel in English by an Indian Woman, by Krupabai Satthianadhan , edited by Krupabai Satthianadhan First published 1895. Oxford University Press, 1998 A pioneering nineteenth-century classic, describing an Indian woman's interrogation of her disturbing experience of religious and cultural hybridity, and of feminism in the colonial encounter.
Shards of Memory: Woven Lives in Four Generations, by Parita Mukta Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2002 A memoir of four generations of women, living in Gujarat, Nairobi, and Britain.
Umbilical cords and family ideologies. Review by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan in Himal.
Speedpost, by Shobha De . De's letters to her children.
Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam, by Asra Nomani Harper Collins, Feb 2005 Nomani, a journalist and single mother, determines to go on the hajj along with her infant son. She is following in the four-thousand-year-old footsteps of another single mother, Hajar (known in the West as Hagar), the original pilgrim to Mecca and mother of the Islamic nation. Each day of her hajj evokes for Nomani the history of a different Muslim matriarch: Eve, from whom she learns about sin and redemption; Hajar, the single mother abandoned in the desert who teaches her about courage; Khadijah, the first benefactor of Islam and trailblazer for a Muslim woman's right to self-determination; and Aisha, the favorite wife of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam's first female theologian. Inspired by these heroic Muslim women, Nomani returns to America to confront the sexism and intolerance in her local mosque and to fight for the rights of modern Muslim women who are tired of standing alone against the repressive rules and regulations imposed by reactionary fundamentalists.
Sawnet Review
Review in alt.muslim
Interview in onpointradio.org.
The Heart Divided, by Mumtaz Shah Nawaz ASR Publications, Lahore. The author was a prominent freedom fighter who became an ardent supporter of Pakistan.
The Shock of Arrival: Reflections on Postcolonial Experience, by Meena Alexander South End Press, Boston. 1996.
Sawnet Review
This Inscrutable Englishman: Sir John D'Oyly (1774-1824), by Brendon and Yasmine Gooneratne
Sawnet Review
Timepass: The Memoirs of Protima Bedi, by Protima Bedi and Pooja Bedi Ebrahim
Viramma: Life of an Untouchable, by Viramma, Josiane Racine, Jean-Luc Racine Viramma is an Untouchable/Dalit agricultural worker and midwife in Karani, a village near Pondicherry in southeast India. This is her autobiography, as told to two French researchers.
Voices from Within: Ear;y Personal Narratives of Bengali Women, by Malavika Karlekar Oxford University Press, 1993.
Sawnet Review
Wicked Women of the Raj, by Coralie Younger Harper Collins, 2003 A factual account of the zenana world of the rajas and sultans of India, concentrating on twenty firangi bahus and begums. [Sawnet review]
With Love from Britain, by Urmila Mahapatra Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1999. Letters from a US-based Indian woman to her children during her 3-month visit to the UK.
Sawnet Review

Nonfiction

A Foreign Visitor's Survival Guide in America, by Shauna Singh Baldwin John Muir Publications, 1992.
A Life Less Ordinary, by Baby Halder Penguin, India. 2006 The autobiography of a young woman and a domestic worker in a home in Gurgaon. Baby wrote this book in Bengali some years ago when, encouraged by her employer Dr Prabodh Kumar she began to read afresh, and then to write. Baby's life story is, in many ways, an "ordinary" one. From her difficult childhood, spent moving from place to place, coping with domestic responsibilities thrust upon her by an absentee father and a mother who abandoned the family when Baby was just a small child, to her marriage -- at the age of 13 to a man nearly twice her age -- and becoming a mother when she was still just a child herself.
However it is "less ordinary" in that she battled against the odds, left her violent and abusive husband, and determined to build a better life for herself and her children in an unknown city.
Baby's search for work led her finally to the home of Dr Prabodh Kumar, a retired professor and grandson of Premchand, the well-known Hindi and Urdu writer. With his encouragement and support she wrote her life story, which was published in Hindi and Bengali as Aalo Aandhari, and became a bestseller in both languages.
The Diary of Baby Halder. Article in Outlook.
From maid to bestselling author. BBC News.
Article in the Hindu.
Grime pays for servant who wrote a bestseller. Times Online.
In India, a maid becomes an unlikely literary star. New York Times, August 2006.
A Part, Yet Apart. South Asians in Asian America, by Lavina Dhingra Shankar and Rajini Srikanth (eds) :. Temple University Press.1998
A question of silence? The sexual economies of modern India, by Mary John & Janaki Nair (eds)
A Slice of Sheffield, edited by Sahitya Press, UK. 2005 This bilingual book of stories, memories, poetry and artwork inspired by cutlery, brings together the voices of 50 South Asian women and girls from in and around the 'steel city' of Sheffield. It celebrates Sheffield's famous cutlery heritage with its 'Made in Sheffield' stamp, and also the fascinating cutlery items from South Asian countries.
Affirmation and Denial, by Prabha Krishnan & Anita Dighe SAGE Publications, New Delhi, 1990. Surveys the nature and quality of the portrayal of women in various types of programmes on Indian television, finding that traditional values have a stranglehold over the manner in which women's images and issues are projected.
All the fishes come home to roost: An American Misfit in India, by Rachel Manija Brown Rodale Books, 2005 When I was seven years old, my post-hippie parents joined an ashram, or spiritual commune, in a cobra-ridden, drought-stricken, backwater town in India. The ashram was devoted to Meher Baba, best known for having been Pete Townshend's guru, for having kept a lifelong vow of silence, and for the slogan "Don't worry, be happy." I was the only foreign child within a hundred mile radius. All the Fishes Come Home to Roost is the true story of my childhood.
Author's website where you can read the first chapter.
Review on the VeryUnnecessary site
Review in the Telegraph (UK)
And Who Will Make the Chapatis?: A Study of All-Women Panchayats in Maharashtra, edited by Stree Publications, Kolkata. April 2001 This book is an in-depth study of some Indian rural women's attempts to carve out their own political space within an existing, male-dominated political system. 'If men and women are asked to devise programmes in panchayats, women will think of water and latrines, while men will talk of roads and buses.' This was observed by the authors when they went round twelve all-women panchayats in Maharashtra in order to understand the changing political experiences of rural women. The book has grown out of knowledge the village women shared with them.
Studying the history of women panchayats operating in nine villages in Maharashtra, this group of researchers examine how the larger society circumscribed these womens' work, and what strategies some of the women were able to devise to assert themselves against men trying to take over their power, confine them at home or keep them in ignorance about questions of administration and procedure.
If some stories are of women used as puppets by stronger (patriarchal) interests, others are accounts of women's clever manoeuvring to outwit the establishment. Still others show that political work can be as demanding and frustrating for women as for men. In all the accounts, the voices of women come through strongly. The authors used interview-based research methods, and preserved as far as possible the immediacy of oral communication in their work, as the title, a comment by a man when he heard that a woman wanted to attend a training camp
Sawnet Review
Barbed Lines, edited by Sahitya Press, UK. 1990 This bilingual anthology about the bitter-sweet experience of Bengali women in Britain won the first Raymond Williams Community Publishing Prize in 1990. 32 women and girls write about their sense of home and identity, friendships, family, work and education.
Between the Lines: South Asians and Postcoloniality, edited by : . Temple University Press 1996
Biodiversity : social & ecological perspectives, by Vandana Shiva 1991.
Biopolitics : a feminist and ecological reader on biotechnology, by Vandana Shiva 1995.
Bitter Chocolate, by Pinki Virani Viking Penguin, 2000.
Sawnet Review
Bitter message. News report, BBC News, 27 July 2000.
Review in womannova.com
Abusing a trust
The most abominable crime, says Khushwant Singh in Tribune India.
Review by Seema Kumar in the Hindustan Times.
Body Evidence: Intimate Violence Against South Asian Women in America, by Shamita Das Dasgupta Rutgers University Press When South Asians immigrated to the United States in great numbers in the 1970s, they were passionately driven to achieve economic stability and socialize the next generation to retain the traditions of their home culture. During these years, the immigrant community went to great lengths to project an impeccable public image by denying the existence of social problems such as domestic violence, sexual assault, child sexual abuse, mental illness, racism, and intergenerational conflict. It was not until recently that activist groups have worked to bring these issues out into the open.
In Body Evidence, more than twenty scholars and public health professionals uncover the unique challenges faced by victims of violence in intimate spaces . . . within families, communities and trusted relationships in South Asian American communities. Topics include cultural obsession with women's chastity and virginity; the continued silence surrounding intimate violence among women who identify themselves as lesbian, bisexual, or transgender; the consequences of refusing marriage proposals or failing to meet dowry demands; and, ultimately, the ways in which the United States courts often confuse and exacerbate the plights of these women.
Bombay Meri Jaan, edited by Penguin India, 2004. Bombay, Meri Jaan, comprising poems and prose pieces by some of the biggest names in literature, in addition to cartoons, photographs, a song and a Bombay Duck recipe, tries to capture the spirit of this great metropolis. Paromita Vohra writes about the quintessential Bombay problem; finding a place to live. Her essay is those by Salman Rushdie, Pico Iyer, Kiran Nagarkar, Dilip Chitre, Saadat Hasan Manto, V.S. Naipaul, Khushwant Singh and Busybee, who write about aspects of the city: the high-rise apartments and the slums; camaraderie and isolation in the crowded chawls; bhelpuri on the beach and cricket in the gully; the women's compartment of a local train; encounter cops who battle the underworld; the jazz culture of the sixties; the monsoon floods; the Shiv Sena; the cinema halls; the sea.
Sawnet Review
Boys Will Be Boys, by Sara Suleri University of Chicago Press, 2003. An elegy for her father, the prominent political journalist Z.A.Suleri. Combining memoir, history, and biography, Boys Will Be Boys offers a glimpse into a crosscontinental life and a story of family dynamics recognizable to anyone shaped by the extraordinary will of a parent. In inviting the reader into an intimacy shaped equally by history and intensely personal detail, Suleri Goodyear creates a powerful tribute to a man of force and contradiction.
Sawnet Review
Review by Anjum Niaz on jazbah.org.
Review in mshel.com
A daughter remembers. Muneeza Shamsie on Boys will be Boys, in Newsline.
Brand India: Master Images and Narratives in the Backdrop of Globalism, by Sunanda Mongia B.R Publishing Corporation, 2005 Being precisely located, no nation escapes positioning in the global order, and, a national inevitably sells itself before it sells its products. Brand India is about how India has marketed itself to the West / Rest. This begins with a process of self-definition, constructing accumulative narratives of images, origins and essences.
Sawnet Review
Breaking the Silence: Domestic Violence in the South Asian American Community, edited by Volcano Press, 2000. Brings together the voices of community activists, scholars, artists, and survivors to discuss the realities and effects of domestic violence on America4s South Asian community.
Sawnet Review
Burning down the house: recycling domesticity, by Rosemary Marangoly George Westview Press, Boulder Co. 1998.
Caliban in Exile: the outsider in Caribbean fiction, by Margaret Paul Joseph Greenwood Press, New York. 1992.
Caste as woman, by Vrinda Nabar Penguin, New Delhi, 1995.
Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism, edited by Seal Press, 2002 Ms. Magazine columnist Hernandez and former Muslim poet Rehman, both feminist activists, have assembled a broad collection of essays by young women writers, academics, and activists from a range of cultures and sexual orientations. One writer describes herself as a "mixed brown girl, Sri-Lankan and New England mill-town white trash," and clearly delineates the organizing differences between whites and women of color: "We do not kick ass the way the white girls do, in meetings of NOW or riot grrl. For us, it's all about family." A Korean-American woman struggles to create her own identity in a traditional community: "Yam-ja-neh means nice, sweet, compliant. I've heard it used many times by my parents' friends who don't know shit about me." An Arab-American feminist deconstructs the "quaint vision" of Middle-Eastern women with which most Americans feel comfortable. This impressive array of first-person accounts adds a much-needed fresh dimension to the ongoing dialogue between race and gender, and gives voice to the women who are creating and shaping the feminism of the future.
Critical Events, by Veena Dass , Oxford, 1998. Critical events in the history of contemporary India concern Partition, sati, minority rights, the Bhopal industrial disaster, the nature of the Indian state, and various socio-legal issues, which are analyzed here in the framework of anthropological knowledge.
Cultivating diversity : biodiversity conservation and the politics of the seed, by Vandana Shiva Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Natural Resource Policy, Dehra Dun, 1993
Dancing Round the Maypole, by Rani Sircar Rupa, New Delhi, 2003. A set of lighthearted, thought-provoking vignettes from the past. It holds up a mirror to a vanished milieu, that of a particular sort of anglicised Indian family, which was proudly Indian, proudly Christian and both directly influenced by and resisting the British customs of undivided India. This milieu took cultural hybridity unselfconsciously for granted. Indian schoolgirls learnt traditional English songs without realising at the time the incongruities in what they were learning. With anglicisation came inevitable conflicts --- for example, whether an Indian child joining the Bluebirds (the junior Girl Guides) should take an oath swearing loyalty to the English King. Images of school, home, and social life in pukka Colombo, fun-loving Lahore and changing Madras, of holidays across the country, flow by from before Independence till after 1947. Then we see the still largely white mercantile society of early post-Independence Clive Street, Calcutta, and the emerging breed of brown sahibs and the maintenance of the rarefied hothouse ambience of pomp and circumstance, which had traditionally marked British commercial life in Calcutta. But sola topi-ed sahibs and memsahibs, elaborate visiting-card rituals, club life and hard-drinking tea-planters vanish, and the ways of the early brown sahibs are succeeded by a new sort of cultural mixture in India.
Being Empire's Children. Mark Tully in the Telegraph.
Holding a mirror to a vanished milieu. Review in the Tribune.
Those were the days, my friend. Review in The Daily Pioneer.
A journey back in time. Review in Business Standard.
Daughters of a Riverine Land, edited by Sahitya Press, UK. 2003. Bengalis from Bangladesh & India hail from a riverine land, and in this bilingual book of stories, poems, letters and artwork, 33 women and girls write with passion of the age-old bond with rivers.
Daughters of Independence: Gender, Class and Caste in India, by Joanne Liddle and Rama Joshi 1986. Zed Books, London.
Death by Fire, by Mala Sen Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001.
Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial and Feminist World., by Narayan, Uma and Sandra Harding (editors) Indiana University Press. 2000
Democracy and authoritarianism in South Asia : a comparative and historical perspective., by Ayesha Jalal 1995.
Devi -- Tales of the Goddess in our time, by Mrinal Pande Viking/Penguin, 2000. Stories of strong, passionate women.
Dharma's Daughters, by Sara Mitter Penguin India
Sawnet Review
Diddi: My Mother's Voice, by Ira Pande Penguin, 2004. Attempting to unravel the enigma that was her mother, Ira Pande trawls through her writings to recall the life and times of a mother who was also a household name as Shivani, novelist, storyteller and columnist. In the process she discovers a rich and colourful cast ranging from family retainers, grandmothers and aunts to neighbours, friends and fictional characters. Built around the deep ties between mothers and daughters, Diddi salutes the often decadent but highly literate members of a family that produced both eccentrics and brilliant writers. Deftly dovetailing fiction and memoir, with brilliant translations of Shivani?s own stories taking the narrative forward in several places, the book is also a record of what happened to the proud Brahmin families of Kumaon when the old feudal order vanished and joint families broke up into nuclear units. A fascinating experiment in the genre of the biography-novel, Diddi blurs the boundaries between history and fiction to create an intensely personal work that has universal resonance.
Review by Gitanjali Sharma in the Sunday Tribune.
The authorized version, sort of. Nilanjana S Roy explores candour in biographies, and how Indians balance the privacy of the individual and the clan, with reference to Diddi and Pamuk's Istanbul. In Rediff.
Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminism, by Narayan, Uma Routledge 1997
Dreams, Questions, Struggles: South Asian Women in Britain, by Amrit Wilson Pluto Press, London. 2006 From schoolgirls to matriarchs, single mothers to extended families, and businesswomen to factory workers, the experience of Asian women in Britain today is polarised by class and religion. This book explores the lives and struggles of two generations of British Asian women to present a political account of their experiences: personal and public, individual and collective, their struggles take on power structures within the family, the community and, on occasion, the British state. Combining their personal testimony within a theoretical framework, Amrit Wilson locates their experiences in the wider context of global and regional politics. She examines the diverse issues that affect Asian women's lives, including: the impact of the feminist movement; domestic violence; marriage; representations of Asian women; and mental disturbance and suicide.
Sawnet Review
Ecological audit of eucalyptus cultivation, by Vandana Shiva 1987.
Ecology and the politics of survival : conflicts over natural resources in India, by Vandana Shiva 1991.
Emerging Voices, edited by Alta Mira Press, 1999.
Sawnet Review
En-gendering India: Woman and Nation in Colonial and Postcolonial Narratives, by Sangeeta Ray Duke University Press, 2000. Offers an innovative interpretation of the role that gender played in defining the Indian state during the colonial and postcolonial era.
Environment crisis & sustainable development, by Vandana Shiva 1992
Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship, by Sharmila Rudrappa Rutgers University Press, 2004. [publisher blurb].. examines the paths South Asian immigrants in Chicago take toward assimilation in the late twentieth-century United States, where deliberations on citizenship rights are replete with the politics of recognition. She takes us inside two ethnic institutions, a battered women's shelter, Apna Ghar, and a cultural organization, the Indo American Center, to show how immigrant activism, which brings cultural difference into public sphere debates, ironically abets these immigrants' assimilation. She interlaces ethnographic details with political-philosophical debates on the politics of recognition and redistribution. In this study on the under-researched topic of the incorporation of South Asian immigrants into the American polity, Sharmila Rudrappa compels us to rethink ethnic activism, participatory democracy, and nation-building processes.
Sawnet Review
Family Law in India, by Tandon, M.P. Year?. Allahabad Law Agency
Feminist Domains in Legal Terrains: Interdisciplinary Essays on Women and Law in India, by Ratna Kapur Kali for Women: New Delhi, 1996.
Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies and Democratic Futures, by Alexander, Jacqui M. and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (editors) Routledge. 1997
For the Love of a Begum: The Romantic Story of James Kirkpatrick, by Bilkiz Alladin Pub: Hyderabad 1989
Forest resources, crisis & management, by Vandana Shiva 1992.
Forestry crisis and forestry myths : a critical review of Tropical forests : a call for action, by Vandana Shiva 1987
Gender and Conflict, by Shoma A. Chatterji UBSPD, Delhi, 2006.
Giving Up Hope: A study of attempted suicide among Indian women, by Kalyani Mehta Singapore : Times Book International, c1990.
Sawnet Review
Giving up Hope: a study of attempted suicide amongst Indian women, by Kalyani Mehta Times Books International, Singapore, 1990.
Goa: A Daughter's Story, by Maria Aurora Couto Penguin India, 2004 In December 1961, Indian troops marched into Goa putting an end to over 450 years of Portuguese rule, the longest spell of colonialism on the subcontinent, and Goa became part of the Indian union. Maria Aurora Couto's unique blend of biography, memoir and social history brings us the Goa behind the beaches and booze culture that is projected for the tourist and which has unfortunately come to define Goa for the vast majority outside the state. Starting with an account of the immediate aftermath of Liberation, Couto goes back and forth in time to examine the fundamental transformations in Goan society from 1510, when Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa, up to the present. Drawing upon the experiences of her own family and those of others, both Hindu and Catholic, she writes of the influences that have touched all Goanbsthe Luso-Indian culture; conversion and the Inquisition; political and cultural changes in Europe such as the French Revolution and the ideals of republicanism; folk traditions, music and the Konkani language; and, ultimately, freedom and integration with India. In the process she reveals how Goa, which combines the best of traditional and cosmopolitan lifestyles, has evolved into India's twenty-first-century model of economic development and communal harmony. It is as much an appraisal of Goa's past as it is an examination of its present and a vision for its future.
Shores of Paradise. Review in the Deccan Herald.
Wonder and glory of Goa. Review in the Tribune.
Apparent divide, actual bridges. Review in the Hindu.
Lost in the fine print. The Telegraph.
Heads & Tails - A fresh deal for animals in the new millennium, by Maneka Gandhi In a frontal assault on the modern food complex of milk, meat and eggs, the author shows how it is raised on the foundations of unacceptable violence against animals.
History of Doing: The Women's Movement in India, by Radha Kumar 1993. Verso and Kali for Women.
Holy Cow!: An Indian Adventure, by Sarah MacDonald Bantam, 2004 Journalist Sarah Macdonald moves to India to follow her boyfriend. After a bout with pneumonia in Delhi, she "faces some serious questions about her own fragile mortality and inner spiritual void", and decides to explore the various religions of India in search of her own inner peace.
Sawnet Review
Review at desijournal
Review from ninemsn
Home Truths, by Deepti Priya Mehrotra Penguin India, 2003 Divided into three parts, Home Truths surveys the ground realities of single motherhood in India, tells 17 stories of single mothers, and examines these stories in the sociological context of gender, sexuality and rights.
Review from the Hindu
An ambitious book, says the Tribune.
Review in India Together
In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, by Mahasweta Devi Translated into English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak. Methuyen and Company, 1987. New York, London This one has "Draupadi" and "Stanodayani"
In Search of Answers: Women's Voices from Manushi, by Ruth Vanita with Madhu Kishwar. London: Zed Books, 1984; Delhi:Horizon, 1991
Indelible Imprints: Daughters Write on Fathers, edited by Stree Publishers, Calcutta, 2002.
Sawnet Review
India is For Sale, by Chitra Subramaniam New Delhi : UBS Publishers' Distributors Ltd., 1997. How our politicians, bureaucrats and other assorted varieties sell the country down the drain even as they claim to protect our economic and political interests.
INDIA: Rape for Profit, by Human Rights Watch Paperback, 96 pages. Hundreds of thousands of women and children are employed in Indian brothels. Rape for Profit focuses on the trafficking of girls and women from Nepal to brothels in Bombay, where they comprise up to half of the city's estimated 100,000 brothel workers.
Indira Gandhi's emergence and style, by Nayantara Sahgal
Intellectual piracy & the neem patents : The Neem campaign, by Vandana Shiva Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Natural Resource Policy ; New Delhi 1993
Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality, by Sudhir Kakar : . Year?
Kaleidoscope: South Asian Women in Britain, edited by South Asian Affairs, 2003. Profiles of 10 South Asian women in diverse fields from various parts of the Indian subcontinent living in present day Britain. They range from filmaker Gurinder Chadha, Kathak & Odissi dancer Priya Pawar, Urdu writer Shahida Ahmed, theatre artist Sudha Bhuchar, publisher Lucky Dissanayake, health promotion and social care specialists Jahanara Loqueman and Janaki Mahendran, media women Achala Sharma and Farah Durrani and freelance consultant Tanzeem Ahmed. Each of the women profiled speaks with frankness and passion as they unravel their background, experiences, work, trials and achievements in diverse fields.
Leaving Mother Lake, by Yang Erche Namu Little, Brown. 2003 In the remote Himalayas, on the shores of magnificent Lake Lugu, there is a place the Chinese call "the Country of Daughters." This is the home of the Moso, a remarkable society in which women rule men. In Moso tradition, marriage in considered a backward practice, and property is passed from mother to daughter. Every household has a matriarch who oversees the customs, rituals, and economy of the family. Daughters are prized above sons, and both live their entire lives in the house where they were born.
This is not specifically about South Asian women, but it is interesting to see an alternate model of society for women.
Sawnet Review
Chinese men threaten "Lake of free love" where women rule. An article from the London Telegraph, March 2001.
Review at USA Today
Review in the Seattle Times
Listen to the heron's words: reimagining gender and kinship in North India, by Gloria Goodwin Raheja 1994. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Lollipop Street, by Tavleen Singh Penguin. 1999.
Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Underprivileged India, by Maya Sharma Yoda Press, New Delhi. 2006 Documents the life-stories of ten working-class queer women living in north India. In doing so, it dispels the myth that lesbians in India are all urban, westernized and come from upper and middle classes. These real-life narratives create a space for voices with little or no privilege, providing these women with an opportunity to share their lived realities with one another and with others. The stories effectively challenge the notion of women as sexual beings without agency, and it is hoped, will influence the womenâ€™s movement towards an inclusion of lesbian women in the movement
Maharani's Misery: Narratives of a journey from India to the Caribbean, by Verene A. Shepherd University of the West Indies Press, 2002 Following the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean, a concerted effort was made to replace enslaved labor with indentured Indian labor, and this book recounts the story of one woman's tragic experience in trying to immigrate to the Caribbean in the nineteenth century. The book combines documentary evidence with a surrounding narrative interpretation in order to highlight the experiences of the young Indian woman, Maharani, who was allegedly raped and died subsequently on board the ship Allanshaw that sailed from Calcutta to colonial Guyana in 1885. The work sheds light on the general history of bonded labor migration as well as "sexploitation." Maharani's death gave rise to an extraordinary nine-day investigation involving some twenty-two witnesses, including some of the emigrants themselves. By making use of the emigrants' depositions, the book projects the voice of the indentured servants from India on their long voyage to the Caribbean. The events on this passage from India provide further evidence that 19th-century labor "migration" replicated several aspects of the middle passage of enslaved Africans, although it never reached slavery's brutal limits.
Sawnet Review
May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India, by Elizabeth Bumiller 1990. Random House, N.Y.
Sawnet Review
Review by Veena Oldenburg in Southern Asian Institute (Columbia U.)
Meatless Days, by Sara Suleri 1989, 1991. The University of Chicago Press.
From the Postcolonial Web.
A method to her madness. Natasha Bronn on Meatless Days.
Mirror to the blind, by Tehmina Durrani
Mondays on the Dark Night of the Moon, by Kirin Narayan Himalayan Foothill Folktales, in collaboration with Urmila Devi Sood. Oxford, 98.
A dull study of Himalayan region's oral traditions.
Monocultures of the mind : perspectives on biodiversity and biotechnology, by Vandana Shiva 1993
Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes, by Shoba Narayan Random House, 2003
Review in desijournal.com
Review by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post
Review in the Milwaukee Sentinal-Journal
Understanding the culture that made the cuisine possible. Vijaysree Venkataraman in India Currents.
Mrinal Sen; The Survivor, by Shoma A. Chatterji Charitabli Series, Rupa & Co., Delhi. 2003.
Mustang Bhot in Fragments, by Manjushree Thapa Kathmandu, 1992
My Family and Other Saints, by Kirin Narayan University of Chicago Press, 2007 In 1969, young Kirin Narayan's older brother, Rahoul, announced that he was quitting school and leaving home to seek enlightenment with a guru. From boyhood, his restless creativity had continually surprised his family, but his departure shook up everyone-- especially Kirin, who adored her high-spirited, charismatic brother.
A touching, funny, and always affectionate memoir, My Family and Other Saints traces the reverberations of Rahoul's spiritual journey through the entire family. As their beachside Bombay home becomes a crossroads for Westerners seeking Eastern enlightenment, Kirin's sari-wearing American mother wholeheartedly embraces ashrams and gurus, adopting her son's spiritual quest as her own. Her Indian father, however, coins the term 'urug' -- guru spelled backward -- to mock these seekers, while young Kirin, surrounded by radiant holy men, parents drifting apart, and a motley of young, often eccentric Westerners, is left to find her own answers. Deftly re-creating the turbulent emotional world of her bicultural adolescence, but overlaying it with the hard-won understanding of adulthood, Narayan presents a large, rambunctious cast of quirky characters, from her grandmother Ba, who enjoys visits from Hindu deities, to such urugs as Bhagwan Dass and the Cupboard Swami. Throughout, she brings to life not just a family but also a time when just about everyone, it seemed, was consumed by some sort of spiritual quest.
Interweaving family stories and mythology, My Family and Other Saints is a poignant reminder that the stories we tell are at the heart of the bonds that tie a family together, no matter how far afield our journeys may take us.
Sawnet Review
Excerpt from the book, at the University of Chicago website.
Review by William Grimes in the New York Times.
My Own Witness, by Mrinal Pande An irreverent look behind the facade of news reporting.
National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema: 1947-1987, by Sumita Chakravorty Year?
Nationalism, democracy, and development : state and politics in India, by editors, Sugata Bose, Ayesha Jalal 1997.
Negotiating Ethnicity: Second Generation South Asian Americans Traverse a Transnational World, by Bandana Purkayastha Rutgers University Press, 2005 In the continuing debates on the topic of racial and ethnic identity in the United States, there are some that argue that ethnicity is an ascribed reality. To the contrary, others claim that individuals are becoming increasingly active in choosing and constructing their ethnic identities. Focusing on second-generation South Asian Americans, Bandana Purkayastha offers fresh insights into the subjective experience of race, ethnicity, and social class in an increasingly diverse America. The young people of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Nepalese origin that are the subjects of the study grew up in mostly white middle class suburbs, and their linguistic skills, education, and occupation profiles are indistinguishable from their white peers. By many standards, their lifestyles mark them as members of mainstream American culture. But, as Purkayastha shows, their ethnic experiences are shaped by their racial status as neither "white" nor "wholly Asian," their continuing ties with family members across the world, and a global consumer industry, which targets them as ethnic consumers."
Drawing on information gathered from forty-eight in-depth interviews and years of research, this book illustrates how ethnic identity is negotiated by this group through choice-the adoption of ethnic labels, the invention of "traditions," the consumption of ethnic products, and participation in voluntary societies. The pan-ethnic identities that result demonstrate both a resilient attachment to heritage and a celebration of reinvention. Lucidly written and enriched with vivid personal accounts, Negotiating Ethnicity is an important contribution to the literature on ethnicity and racialization in contemporary American culture.
Night of the New Moon, by Anees Jung : encounters with Muslim women in India. Penguin, New Delhi, 1993.
No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women, by Shahla Haeri Syracuse University Press, 2004. A collection of essays and interviews with six women in Pakistan, as well as an analysis of their lives.
Sawnet Review
More about Shahla Haeri

Interview at jazbah.org
Review by Laila Kazmi on chowk.com
Of Woman Caste: The Experience of Gender in Rural India, by Anjali Bagwe : . Stree, Calcutta, 1995, and Zed books 1995.
Off the Beaten Track, by Madhu Kishwar Oxford University Press, 2002. A collection of essays by Kishwar, in which she "criticises the legislation enacted to prevent sati and dowry, opposes co-ownership rights for wives, finds unexpected virtues in the joint family and arranged marriage, and urges women to exercise voluntary sexual restraint, even abstinence, rather than explore their sexuality.
Sawnet Review
Manushi web site
On the Edge of the Auspicious: Gender and Caste in Nepal., by Mary Cameron University of Illinois Press, USA. 1998.
Once Was Bombay, by Pinki Virani Viking Penguin, 1999.
Sawnet Review
Review by Parmesh Shahani.
Review by Deepa Gahlot in The Rediff Reviewer.
Review by Man from Matunga
Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, by Arundhati Roy South End Press, 2004
Parama and other Outsiders: The Cinema of Aparna Sen, by Shoma A. Chatterji Parumita Publications, Calcutta. An auteur critique covering the entire directorial oeuvre of Aparna Sen, from 36 Chowringhee Lane to Paromitaar Ek Din.
Parsis: The Zoroastrians of India: A Photographic Journey, by Sooni Taraporevala Overlook-Duckworth Press, 2004 A collection of exquisite photographs taken over a 20-year period, documenting the Parsi community in India. "Demographically, we are a dying community-our deaths outweigh our births. [..] Demographic trends project that by the year 2020, India will have achieved the dubious distinction of being the most populated country on earth with 1200 million people. At that point, Parsis who will number 23,000-0.0002 per cent of the population, will cease to be termed a community and will be labelled a 'tribe', as is any ethnic group below the 30,000 count. It is a fact that obsesses us..."
Sawnet Review
Photo collection tells stories of Parsis in India at NPR.
Rediff interview.
Passage from India - Asian Immigrant Experience in North America, by Joan Jensen Year?
Politics of home: postcolonial relocations and twentieth-century fiction, by Rosemary Marangoly George Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Politics, People and Places: A Journalist's Diary, by Promilla Kalhan Variety Book Depot, New Delhi.
Postcolonial perspectives on the Raj and its literature, by Vrinda Nabar University of Bombay, Bombay, 1994.
Power Politics, by Arundhati Roy South End Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002 In Power Politics, Arundhati Roy challenges the idea that only "experts" can speak out on such urgent matters as the globalization of the world economy, the privatization of India's power supply by U.S.-based energy companies, and the construction of monumental dams that will dislocate hundreds of thousands of people. Roy takes us to the frontlines of struggles for social justice and a humane, democratic future.
Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society, by Ruth Vanita NY: Routledge, 2002
Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial History, by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid 1989. Kali for Women /Rutgers University Press
Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from India's largest slum, by Kalpana Sharma Penguin India, 2000.
Relative Merits: A Personal Memoir of the Bandaranaike family of Sri Lanka, by Yasmine Gooneratne C. Hurst & Co., London, and St Martin's Press, New York, 1986.
Remix: Conversations with immigrant teenagers, by Marina Budhos Henry Holt, New York. 1999.
Rewriting History, by Uma Chakravarti Kali for Women, 2000.
Sawnet Review
Ritwik Ghatak: The Rebel, by Shoma A. Chatterji Charitabali Series, Rupa & Co., Delhi. 2004
Sadak Chaap, by Meher Pestonji Penguin India, 2006 The day ten-year-old Rahul, part-time rag-picker, pickpocket and petty thief living footloose on the streets of Bombay, finds an abandoned baby on a railway platform, his life changes forever. He quickly appoints himself the baby’s father, making her the emotional anchor that had been missing from his life. And, while he is treated as quite the hero within his street community, he wins the trust and affection of people who are willing to give him the opportunity to start afresh and work towards a better future. But the streets are mean, inescapable, and as Rahul indulges his paltry desires and shallow dreams, he finds himself spiralling, yet again, into a vortex of crime, abuse and loneliness. As horrific as it is heartbreaking, Sadak Chhaap evokes the brutal existence of street urchins with unrelenting realism and deep sympathy.
Review in the Daily Star.
Same Sex Love in India: Readings from Indian history and literature, by Ruth Vanita, Saleem Kidwai St. Martin's Press, New York.
Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History, by Ruth Vanita Co-edited with Saleem Kidwai. Palgrave-St Martin's Press, 2000; New Delhi: Macmillan, 2002
Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination, by Ruth Vanita Columbia University Press, 1996.
Sati: Widow Burning in India, by Sakuntala Narasimhan Year?
Seasons of Splendour, by Madhur Jaffrey Pavilion, London, 1985.
Self and sovereignty : individual and community in South Asian Islam since 1850., by Ayesha Jalal 2000.
Seven Sisters, by Anees Jung : among the women of South Asia. Penguin, New Delhi. 1994.
Shabash!: The Hip Guide to All Things South AsianArtwallah, 2005 The Artwallah Organization commissioned 30 authors to cover the progressive South Asian scene in NY, LA, SF, DC, Toronto, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago -- music, art, film, dance, politics, religion, culture. More info at the book's website.
Sawnet Review
Shadow Lives: Writings on Widowhood, by Uma Chakravarti & Preeti Gill Kali for Women, 2002. [Excerpt]
Shooting Water: A memoir of second chances, family and filmmaking, by Devyani Saltzman Newmarket Press, May 2006 Recounts Devyani Saltzman's remarkable story of reconnecting with her mother, international award-winning filmmaker Deepa Mehta. When Devyani was eleven, her parents divorced, and the courts required her to choose which parent to live with. She chose to live with her father in Toronto and then spent the next eight years navigating between two religions (Hinduism and Judaism), two cultures (Indian and Canadian), two traditions, and two people -- belonging to both and to neither at once. In late 1999, at the age of nineteen, Devyani was invited by her mother to join her in the holy city of Benares, India, to work on Water, the final installment in Mehta's acclaimed Elements trilogy (which started with Fire and Earth). After only a week of shooting, Water became the target of a series of politically motivated attacks. The movie was shut down. Devyani went off to Oxford and, three years later, rejoined her mother when production resumed in Sri Lanka. What began as a journey to heal deep wounds from the past turned into a five-year odyssey to complete the film. Transformative and inspiring, Shooting Water chronicles Saltzman's life-changing experience in India, the struggle to produce a film, and, through that struggle, the emergence of a deeper love between mother and daughter.
Sawnet Review
Review at curledup.com
Ram Subramaniam interviews Devyani Saltzman at curledup.com
Review by Sandip Roy-Choudhury in India Currents.
Review in the Toronto Observer.
Silence, exile and cunning: the fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala . Orient Longman Ltd., New Delhi, and Sangam Press Ltd., London 1983
Single in the City, by Sunny Singh
Slivers of a Mirror: Glimpses of the Ghazal, by Shama Futehally Mapin Books, Bangalore. Fall 2004. This translation attempts to capture the best qualities of the ghazal in a contemporary voice. Many of the enduring names of the ghazal are to be found here, from the early mystic Siraj Aurangabadi, whose language still has a touch of the Deccan, through the great Ghalib to modern poets like Faiz and Sahir Ludhianvi. Urdu and Devanagiri renderings of the poems will ensure that the originals are also accessible to many readers.
Sole spokesman : Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the demand for Pakistan., by Ayesha Jalal 1985.
Speaking Peace: Women's Voices from Kashmir, by Urvashi Butalia Kali for Women, 2002.
Speaking the Unspeakable: Marital Violence Among South Asian Immigrants in the United States, by Margaret Abraham Rutgers University Press, 2000.
..Finally, a friend, an article in the New York Times about Abraham and Sakhi.
Review by Vandana Singh in SAWF
Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan, by Shrabani Basu Roli Books, Delhi. 2006 "On 13 September 1944, Noor Inayat Khan, the first female wireless operator to be flown into occupied France, was shot at Dachau. The descendant of Tipu Sultan, the tiger of Mysore, Noor was born in Moscow and raised in the Sufi style of Islam. From this unlikely background she became the only Asian secret agent in Europe in world war II, was one of three women in the SOE to be awarded the George Cross and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Shrabani Basu's new book tells the full story of this extraordinarily heroic woman.
Noor was brought up in France and Britain and joined the Red Cross when world war II broke out. But, though Sufi tradition preached non-violence, she felt that she had to do more to oppose the horrors of fascism. In Britain, Noor trained as a wireless operator before being recruited by the SOE.
Such was the urgent demand for radio operators that she was sent to France before her training was completed. Working under the code name of Madeleine, she joined a group that sabotaged communication lines. But disaster struck quickly and within days her circuit collapsed and her colleagues were arrested.
Though instructed by her controller, the famous Maurice Buckmaster, to return home, she refused to abandon her post as she was the last radio operator left in Paris. For a time she successfully dodged the Gestapo, but by late 1943 her luck had run out. She was betrayed, arrested and imprisoned at Avenue Foch. Undaunted, she made two dramatic escape attempts, but was recaptured and sent to Germany. Here she was interrogated and tortured and finally sent to Dachau, where she was shot. The Germans had learned nothing from her-not even her real name."
The truth about India's spy princess. Nilanjana Roy in Business Standard.
Review by Chris Coleman in RCPB.
A spark out of darkness Review in the Hindu.
Interview with the author in the BBC Woman's Hour.
The spy who wowed all. Review in the Hindu.
Princess who became a spy. Review in the Chandigarh Tribune.
State of martial rule : the origins of Pakistan's political economy of defence., by Ayesha Jalal 1990.
Staying alive : women, ecology, and survival in India, by Vandana Shiva c1988
Story of Mohammed, the Prophet., by Bilkiz Alladin
Storylines: conversations with women writers, edited by Women's World (India) and Asmita Resource Center for Women, Hyderabad. A compilation of 17 interviews of writers and poets of eminence writing in different languages, and includes, Ilampirai, Bama (Tamil), Shafeeq Fatima Shera (Urdu), Sarup Dhruv, Dhiruben Patel (Gujarati), Nayantara Sehgal (English), Nabaneeta Dev Sen (Bangla), Sara Aboobacker (Kannada), Volga (Telugu), Rukmini Bhaya Nair (English), among others.
Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels : Folk Narrative in Hindu Religious Teaching, by Kirin Narayan University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989
Subject: Cinema, Object: Woman, by Shoma A. Chatterji Parumita Publications, Calcutta. A study of the portrayal of women in Indian cinema.
Suburban Sahibs, by S. Mitra Kalita Rutgers University Press, 2003. traces the evolution of the suburb from a destination for new arrivals to a launching pad for them. She focuses on three waves of immigration in the post Civil Rights era through the stories of three families: the Kotharis, Patels and Sarmas.
Sawnet Review
Subversive Sites: Feminist Engagement With Law in India, by Ratna Kapur & Brenda Cossman : Sage(New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London) 1996.
Suchitra Sen, by Shoma A. Chatterji Charitabali Series, Rupa & Co., Delhi. 2002
Surviving Men, by Shobha De
Sweet and Sour, edited by Sahitya Press, UK. 1993 This bilingual book explores the subject of food. Through stories, poems, letters, recipes and dialogue 30 Bengali women and girls comment on the very important part that food plays in their lives.
Taking Precautions, by Shyama Perera New Holland Publisher, 2004 A fascinating account of the often imaginative ways in which humans throughout history have tried to prevent themselves from propagating the race. These range from crocodile dung pessaries, diaphragms made from lemon halves and the linen condoms pioneered by the Italian anatomist Falloppio in the 16th century, through to the breakthrough of the Pill - and the women's liberation it represented - in the 1960s and beyond to the 21st century. Although the methods of today are relatively sophisticated, a foolproof form of contraception has yet to be found if the number of unplanned pregnancies each year is anything to go by. With fascinating illustrations, Taking Precautions is an engrossing, thorough, down-to-earth and amusing history of an often taboo subject.
Sawnet Review
Tantrika, by Asra Nomani Harper Collins, 2003. Nomani, an Indian-born Muslim and a Wall Street Journal reporter, writes about her investigation into her cross-cultural heritage while reporting for Salon.com from Pakistan in the wake of 9/11.
Sawnet Review
Wall Street Journal review
Review at Mantram
Zarqa Javed's KitabKhana
Sharia, the divine law of Islam Asra Nomani on NPR.
Technobrat: Culture in a Cybernetic Classroom, by Rukmini Bhaya Nair
Technobrat, reviewed by Krishna Kumar in the Hindustan Times.
Tense Past, Tense Present: Women Writing in English, edited by Stree, Kolkata, 2003. Interviews with seven women writers -- Shashi Deshpande, Shama Futehally, Githa Hariharan, Lakshmi Kannan, Sujatha Mathai, Anuradha Marwah-Roy and Mina Singh.
Storylines reviewed in the Hindu by Uma Maheshwari.
A review of both these books by Meenakshi Mukherjee in Economic and Political Weekly.
The Beauty Game, by Anita Anand Penguin India, 2000 India's beauty queens did a hat trick in 2000, winning the titles of Miss World, Miss Universe and Miss Asia-Pacific. Coincident was the leap in the cosmetics industry, from Rs. 2,311 crore (1990) to Rs. 18,950 crore (2000).
The Book of Esther, by Esther David Penguin, 2003 When Esther David set out to write a novel that was loosely based on family history, she did not know that uncovering the past would reveal such a treasure trove of stories, or that the process would cut so close to her own life. Her story begins in the nineteenth century, with Bathsheba, as she waits for her husband to return from his long absence at their home in Danda village on the Konkan coast. A woman of great strength of character who disregards convention, she steers the family through difficult times, but is shattered by the combined weight of social ostracism and an aborted pregnancy. Her greatgrandson David inherits her sense of empathy for all things living, besides possessing a remarkable talent for healing. He acquires great respect as a doctor in Ahmedabad, but is unable to rein in his exuberant son Joshua, Esther's father, in whom the ability to heal will be directed towards a series of creatures large and small, among them lions, panthers and crocodiles. Joshua goes on to found a zoo, and the stories of the pets they raise form a heartbreaking accompaniment to the human drama.
At home in India Review in the Hindu. July 2003.
A woman's search for her identity. Review in the Sunday Tribune.
My Family and Other Stories. Review in the Telegraph.

The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile, by Arundhati Roy with David Barsamian. South End Press, 2004. Four long conversations between Arundhati Roy and David Barsamian, cutting edge radio producer. Beginning in February 2001, the talks presage the September 2001 attack and trace the subsequent War on Terror to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Arundhati Roy eloquently represents the thoughts of people worldwide who are coming to know the United States through the machinations of multinational corporations and the military.
The Christians of Kerala: History, Belief and Ritual Among the Yakoba, by Susan Visvanathan
The Cost of Living, by Arundhati Roy Random House, 1999 Roy's argument against the Narmada Dam. The second half of the book contains her essay on India's detonation of a nuclear bomb. She argues that rather than bringing power to India, the bomb is the "ultimate colonizer" -- "the most antihuman, outright evil thing."
The Dancing Girls of Lahore, by Louise Brown Harper Collins, July 2005 The dancing girls of Lahore inhabit the Diamond Market in the shadow of a great mosque. The twenty-first century goes on outside the walls of this ancient quarter but scarcely registers within. Though their trade can be described with accuracy as prostitution, the dancing girls have an illustrious history: Beloved by emperors and nawabs, their sophisticated art encompassed the best of Mughal culture. The modern-day Bollywood aesthetic, with its love of gaudy spectacle, music, and dance, is their distant legacy. But the life of the pampered courtesan is not the one now being lived by Maha and her three girls. What they do is forbidden by Islam, though tolerated; but they are gandi, "unclean," and Maha's daughters, like her, are born into the business and will not leave it.
Sociologist Louise Brown spent four years in the most intimate study of the family life of a Lahori dancing girl. With beautiful understatement, she turns a novelist's eye on a true story that beggars the imagination. Maha, a classically trained dancer of exquisite grace, had her virginity sold to a powerful Arab sheikh at the age of twelve; when her own daughter Nena comes of age and Maha cannot bring in the money she once did, she faces a terrible decision as the agents of the sheikh come calling once more.
In shadows of a city of pleasure, courtesans grow old. Review by William Grimes in the New York Times.
Review in Ready Steady Book
The End of Imagination, by Arundhati Roy 1998.
The endless female hungers : a study of Kamala Das, by Vrinda Nabar : Sterling Publishers, New Delhi, 1994.
The Ethnic Strife: A Study of Asian Indian Women in the U.S., by Nita Shah 1993. Pinkerton and Thomas Publications, New York.
The Gift of a Daughter, by Subhadra Butalia Penguin India, 2002.
Sawnet Review
Review by Shauna Singh Baldwin in Manushi

They still burn brides. Article in the Hindu.

Dying for dowry. Review in the Hindu.
The Goddess Kali and Kolkata: A short history of Calcutta linked to the Kali icon and to Kalighat., by Shoma A. Chatterji UBSPD, Delhi, 2006
The Greater Common Good, by Arundhati Roy 1999.
Available online at Outlook. 24 Mar 99. [Poetic Licence, B.G. Verghese's rejoinder to this essay]
The Greater Common Good II, a response by Roy.
Friends of the River Narmada, an anti-dam organization
Indian Supreme Court unhappy with NBA leaders and Arundhati Roy. Hindu, 16 Oct 99.
Can Medha Patkar win the Booker? Mahesh Nair criticizes Roy's social activism, in Rediff.
Novelist turned social activist. Christian Science Monitor, 17 Aug 99.
Indian Booker Prize winner turns eco-warrior. AFP, 29 Jul 99.
Threat to burn copies of Roy's article.
Gujarat bans Arundhati, other's entry. Hindustan Times, 2 Aug 99.
Roy is in court facing charges of contempt and inciting violence. BBC.
The Indian Woman: Search for an Identity, by Shoma A. Chatterji Vikas Publishing House, Delhi. 1988, 1989, 1997
The Indian Woman in Perspective, by Shoma A. Chatterji Ajanta International, Delhi, 1993
The invisibles : a tale of the eunuchs of India, by Zia Jaffrey Pantheon Books, New York, 1996. Zia Jaffrey's own hybrid Indian-American culture led her to empathize with the sense of otherness felt by the hijras, or eunuchs, of India. She pursued the story of their semi-secret existence. The hijras have a long tradition in India, yet are regarded with great ambiguity.
The book and Ms Jaffrey's own web site.
Review by Richard Bernstein in the NYT
UD Review
The Power of Women's Informal Networks: Lessons in Social Change from South Asia and West Africa., by Bandana Purkayastha , edited by Bandana Purkayastha Lantham, MD: Lexington Books. In contemporary discussions of gender relations around the world, a gap often exists between theory--which overemphasizes generalized units such as international or developing"--and the complex ways that global and local forces interact to structure women's lives in specific countries and regions. Analyses of movement dynamics on the global level contribute to our understanding of women's activism across borders but do not highlight localized politics spearheaded by poor women. Too often, editors Bandana Purkayastha and Mangala Subramaniam have found, marginalized groups in rural or impoverished areas are overlooked by the international economy of knowledge. The Power of Women's Informal Networks describes and evaluates social organization among poor women in South Asia and West Africa. The contributors to this important new collection of essays draw our attention to these small-scale but politically and socially significant networks as they focus on both agency and the situated contexts within which women work together to improve their lives. List of Contributors:
Alayne M. Adams, Bianca Ambrose-Oji, Kumkum Bhattacharya, Lucy Creevey, Kathleen Fallon, Shobha Hamal Gurung, Shahanara Husain, Sangeetha Madhavan, Simone Purohit, Sangeetha Purishothaman, Bandana Purkayastha, Dominique Simon, Mangala Subramaniam
The Rhetoric of English India, by Sara Suleri
Beyond Alterity: The English and Otherness in India. Review by Vinay Lal of The Rhetoric of English India
The Silken Swing: Cultural Universe of Dalit Women, by Fernando Franco, Jyotsna Macwan and Suguna Ramanathan (eds.) Stree, Calcutta, 2000. [Short review in Outlook]
The Song of India, by Anees Jung Himalayan books, New Delhi. 1990.
The Sorrow and the Terror, by Bharati Mukherjee and Clarke Blaise About the explosion of Air India 182 on June 23, 1985.
The Trouble with Islam, by Irshad Manji Random House, Canada, 2003. In this book, Irshad Manji, a journalist, author, TV personality and media entrepreneur, eflects on the most fundamentalist aspects of Islam, her personal journey to arrive at this insider/outsider position, and the reprisals (including death threats) she is getting from people within her faith for being so outspoken.
Sawnet Review
Interview at beliefnet.com
A multifaceted fraud. Justin Podur in muslimwakeup.com.
Review in barficulture.com
Review by Andrew Sullivan in racematters.org.
Manji's trouble. Review in Now Toronto.
Review by Harry Rosenberg in roadtopeace.org
Review at atheism.org
Review by Lisa Belanger.
The violence of the Green Revolution : Third World agriculture, ecology, and politics, by Vandana Shiva 1991.
The Woman that I am: The Literature and Culture of Contemporary Women of Color, by D. Soyini Madison 1994. St. Martin's Press, New York.
To the Other Shore: Lalla's Life and Poetry, by Jaishree Odin A feminist analysis of the verses of the 14th century poet Lalleshwari.
Towards hope : an ecological approach to the future, by Vandana Shiva 1992.
Trade Liberalization: Challenges and opportunities for women in Southeast Asia and Beyond, by Vandana Shiva and Jayati Ghosh Engender Press, Singapore.
Tremors of Violence, by Rowena Robinson Sage Publications, Sep 2005 An ethnographic study of Muslim survivors of ethnic strife in Mumbai and two major cities of Gujarat. Based on narratives of and interviews with Muslim men and women, it tries to understand the world and worldview of those who have seen and lived through one or several violent confrontations and episodes in their lives.
Review at the Hindu.
Review in the Telegraph.
Review at the deshcalling blog.
Uncertain Liason, by Shobha De Penguin, New Delhi. 1993.
Uncertain Liason, by Vandana Shiva New Delhi : Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, c1994.
Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America, edited by Seal Press, 2004. An anthology of essays by women that explore through a child's lens the sometimes savage, sometimes innocent, and always complex ways in which race shapes American lives and families.
Sawnet Review
Unruly Immigrants: Rights, activism, and transnational South Asian politics in the United States, by Monisha Das Gupta Duke University Press, 2006 Explores the innovative strategies that South Asian feminist, queer, and labor organizations in the United States have developed to assert claims to rights?such as fair wages or protection from violence?for immigrants without the privileges or security of citizenship. Since the 1980s, many South Asian immigrants have found the India-centered, ?model minority? politics of previous generations inadequate to the task of redressing problems such as violence against women, homophobia, racism, and poverty. Thus they have developed new models of immigrant advocacy. They have sought rights that are mobile rather than rooted in national membership; they have advanced their claims as migrants rather than as citizens-to-be. Creating social justice organizations, they have inventively constructed a transnational complex of rights by drawing on local, national, and international laws to seek entitlements for their constituencies.
Das Gupta offers an ethnography of seven South Asian organizations in the northeastern United States, looking at how these groups developed, how they envisioned their politics, and the conflicts that emerged within the groups over questions of sexual, class, and political identities. She explores the ways that women?s organizations defined and responded to questions of domestic violence as they related to women?s immigration status, the construction of a transnational South Asian queer identity and culture by people who found themselves marginalized by both mainstream South Asian and queer communities in the United States, and the efforts of labor groups who sought economic justice for taxi drivers and domestic workers by confronting local policies that exploited cheap immigrant labor. Creatively responding to the shortcomings of the state, their communities, and the larger social movements of which they are a part, these groups challenge the assumption that citizenship is the necessary basis of rights claims.
Violence Against Women: New Movements and New Theories in India, by Gail Omveldt , 1990. Kali for Women, New Delhi.
Virtual Equality: The mainstreaming of the gay and lesbian civil rights movement, by Urvashi Vaid Anchor Bks. 1995 [The gay community] must wake up and face the forces that divide it: the current leadership crisis, the lack of a coherent agenda, the new gay conservaties, the threat of anti-gay legislation, and the gay ghetto.
Voices of Sanity - Reaching out for Peace, by Kamla Bhasin, Smitu Kothari, Bindia Thapar
War Talk, by Arundhati Roy South End Press, 2003 War Talk highlights the global rise of militarism and religious and racial violence. Against the backdrop of nuclear brinkmanship between India and Pakistan, the horrific massacre of Muslims in Gujarat, and U.S. demands for an ever-expanding war on terror, she calls into question the equation of nation and ethnicity.
When a place becomes a person, by Anees Jung Vikas, New Delhi, 1977.
Where Women are Leaders: The Sewa Movement in India, by Kalima Rose 1993. Zed Books
Why I Am A Muslim, by Asma Gull Hasan Element Books, 2004. The author, a South-Asian-American, California attorney, and practicing Muslim, writes with the hope of modifying common American stereotypes about Muslims: that they approved of 9/11, that they pray to a different God, and that Islam oppresses women. Her writing encompasses her knowledge of her culture and religion, and her own experiences.
Sawnet Review
Review from Pakistan Link
Women & the nation's narrative: Gender and Nationalism in twentieth Century Sri Lanka., by Neloufer de Mel Kali for Women, 2003.
Women as Subjects: South Asian Histories, by Nita Kumar 1994. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.
Women for Afghan Women, edited by St. Martin's Press, 2002. Traces the history of women's rights and roles in Afghanistan over the past 30 years; it examines the current human rights crisis, and suggests realistic solutions for post-war Afghanistan.
Sawnet Review[Review in the Washington Post]
Women in Black, White and Technicolour, by Shoma A. Chatterji Rupa & Co., Delhi. 2004
Women in India and Pakistan : The Struggle for Independence from British Rule, by Rozina Visram 1993. An historical account of the evolving roles of Indian and Pakistani women in their struggle for independence from the British as well as equal rights follows them from traditional roles through social and political awakening.
Women in Romanticism, by Meena Alexander Barnes & Noble, Md. 1989.
Women in Society -- India, by Vijaya Ghose Singapore: Times Books International, 1994.
Sawnet Review
Writing the Women's Movement, by Mala Khullar Zubaan, Delhi This collection seeks to provide a synoptic representation of women's studies in India as it has developed since the late nineteen-seventies and early-eighties. Following the women's movement, there has been a virtual information explosion in this field, which has expanded enormously, within the academic framework of the social sciences as well as the spheres of policy making and advocacy. Writing The Women's Movement aims at consolidating some of this knowledge and the research and policy perspectives offered, into a curriculum not only for teaching of women's studies, but also as an introductory text for the interested reader. It represents the work of several women's studies scholars such as Vina Mazumdar, Lotika Sarkar, Devaki Jain, Nirmala Banerjee, Patricia Uberoi, Bina Agarwal, FlaviaAgnes, Shohoni Ghosh, Zoya Hassan, Ratna Sudarshan, Ratna Kapur and others. The themes covered include the women's movement in India, the legal framework, women in politics, educational intervention, women's encounter with violence, women in the family, women's sexuality and women's work.

Last updated 11 May 2008 Contact us: info-at-sawnet-dot-org