TY - CHAP
T1 - Finding a voice
T2 - Literary representations of indentured women
AU - Mehta, Sandhya Rao
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020.
PY - 2020/1/1
Y1 - 2020/1/1
N2 - While the complex threads of the historical narrative surrounding indenture continue to be investigated, their representations in the literature have been less comprehensively explored. As much of the pain of indenture is unwritten and undocumented, art comes to the aid of the subject, giving voice to the imagination and recreation of past experiences. It acts as a cathartic experience, capable of facing, questioning as well as coming to terms with the past. The process of remembering, expressing and documenting has created spaces for those whose struggles and narratives have remained marginal in literary history and critique. This paper will explore the multiple ways in which gender in indenture is being documented, archived and represented through a range of writers who have taken on the task of exploring new ways of presenting the past and filling in the silences of the unrepresented. In doing so, new ways of conceptualizing transoceanic feminism are presented, going beyond the binary understanding ofWestern and Indian models of gender. By giving agency to imagined characters and contexts, the literature assumes a subversive voice and becomes a causal agent for change.
AB - While the complex threads of the historical narrative surrounding indenture continue to be investigated, their representations in the literature have been less comprehensively explored. As much of the pain of indenture is unwritten and undocumented, art comes to the aid of the subject, giving voice to the imagination and recreation of past experiences. It acts as a cathartic experience, capable of facing, questioning as well as coming to terms with the past. The process of remembering, expressing and documenting has created spaces for those whose struggles and narratives have remained marginal in literary history and critique. This paper will explore the multiple ways in which gender in indenture is being documented, archived and represented through a range of writers who have taken on the task of exploring new ways of presenting the past and filling in the silences of the unrepresented. In doing so, new ways of conceptualizing transoceanic feminism are presented, going beyond the binary understanding ofWestern and Indian models of gender. By giving agency to imagined characters and contexts, the literature assumes a subversive voice and becomes a causal agent for change.
KW - Creative sources
KW - Indentured women
KW - Jahaji
KW - Kalapani motikor
KW - Oral narratives
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85085423231&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85085423231&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/e3889fa0-7e01-3d5c-845e-b036a38e15e2/
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-15-1177-6_5
DO - 10.1007/978-981-15-1177-6_5
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85085423231
SN - 9789811511769
T3 - Indentured and Post-Indentured Experiences of Women in the Indian Diaspora
SP - 67
EP - 80
BT - Indentured and Post-Indentured Experiences of Women in the Indian Diaspora
PB - Springer Singapore
ER -