Emerging South Asian Women Writers

Feroza Jussawalla is Professor of English at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Family Quarrels: Towards a Criticism of Indian Writing in English (Peter Lang, 1985) and of a collection of poems, Chiffon Saris (2003); editor of Conversations with V. S. Naipaul and co-editor with Reed Way Dasenbrock of Interviews with Writers of the Post-Colonial World; and editor of Border Crossing, the special online issue of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association Review (2012). She is the author of numerous articles in Indian, European, and U.S. literary critical journals.Deborah Fillerup Weagal holds a PhD. in English with an emphasis in postcolonial literature and is term teaching faculty at the University of New Mexico. She is the author of Interconnections: Essays on Music, Art, Literature, and Gender (2004), Women and Contemporary World Literature: Power, Fragmentation, and Metaphor (2009), and Words and Music: Camus, Beckett, Cage, Gould (2010). Her articles have appeared in the South Asian Review, the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, an anthology on Rohinton Mistry, and a variety of other scholarly journals.

• Contents: Dolores Herrero: Chandani Lokugé’s If the Moon Smiled: Female Subjectivity and Trauma at the South Asian/Australian Cultural Crossroads – Seema Malik: Injustice, Resistance, and Subversion: A Study of Selected Plays by Indian Women Playwrights – Sobia Khan: Transnational Feminism in Sidhwa’s Cracking India: A Geocritical Study of the Great Divide of the Indian Subcontinent – Feroza Jussawalla: South Asian Muslim Women Speak for Their Rights and Resistance – Manoj Kumar Mishra: Women Trapped in a Quagmire: A Study of Mrinal Pande’s My Own Witness – Laurel Ryan: Constructing «Home»: Eros, Thanatos, and Migration in the Novels of Anita Rau Badami – Geetanjali Singh Chanda: «Womenspace»: Negotiating Class and Gender in Indian English Novels – Shyamala A. Narayan: Neelum Saran Gour: Novelist of Small Town India and Beyond – Umme Al-wazedi: Hybridity and the Politics of Identity in the Writings/Texts of Diasporic South Asian Women.– Interviews – Deborah Fillerup Weagel: Language, Diaspora, and Identity: An Interview with Yasmine Gooneratne – Sissy Helff: A Journey from Sri Lanka to Australia: A Conversation with Chandani Lokugé – Antonia Navarro-Tejero: Gender without Borders: An Interview with C.S. Lakshmi/Ambai – Geetha Ganapathy-Doré: Speech-Act: An Interview with Susan Visvanathan.

«Arguably, one of the pressing obligations for literary academics in the West is to provide opportunities for colleagues in the emerging world, and particularly women, to be seen and heard, authors who otherwise might have little access to publishing houses focused on profit. This intelligently conceived collection of analytical essays does just that, introducing readers to women who often write of local and personal concerns that may surprise postcolonial theorists. Emphasis on scholars in India is welcome as well. The book’s interviews are fascinating windows into the worlds of writers seeking larger audiences, and clearly deserving them. The editors’ introduction is an eye-opener, demonstrating the extent to which this ‘emerging’ world is more than ready to be heard – and one result may be an enlarged comprehension of globalization.»(John C. Hawley, Professor of English at Santa Clara University andEditor of the Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies)