Rising Voices


Written by SAO • Books • December 2009

This compilation includes fiction and poetry by women writers from more than 30 Asian countries, including China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Azerbaijan, Israel and Russia, to name a few.

Title: Speaking for Myself: An anthology of Asian women’s writing
Edited by: Sukrita Paul Kumar
and Malashri Lal
Publisher: Penguin Books, India
Price: Indian Rs. 650
Pages: 585

Here is a captivating anthology that includes such Pakistani women writers as Kishwar Naheed, Zaheda Hina and Bano Qudsia. The anthology also showcases writings by women from countries hardly in the news in our part of the world, for example Sumatra, Macau, Cambodia, Tajikistan.

The editors, Sukrita Paul Kumar and Malashri Lal, explain their reasons for compiling the anthology: the domination of books from the West in Asian bookstores, libraries and academia, which has led to a silencing of other voices, especially Asian writers’ voices and, in particular, of those writers writing in their native tongues.

They also cite the lack of readily available translations of Asian women’s writing; the virtual absence of academic courses focusing on Asian literature in our schools and colleges; the need to present the diverse and ongoing debates in Asian societies regarding gender roles, family dynamics, sexuality, motherhood, morality, etc., that is, debates that explore the nuances of ‘physical proximity, many historical and cultural movements and socio-political contexts [that] have contributed in creating a similar philosophical strain and temper in the peoples of various countries of Asia.’

The selected works reveal women’s choices, their dreams and aspirations, and challenge the stereotypical image of the Asian woman as a passive victim of patriarchal traditions. The inter-connected themes of sexuality and repressive morality are boldly explored, for instance in Bano Qudsia’s story, Soul-weary, which captures the disillusionment of a woman, repeatedly victimized by societal hypocrisy and double standards:

‘How could she have understood that from the beginning of this world human beings had been playing this game (of sexual relations), the only game that was real and true. If human beings had not associated honour with this game then they would have progressed much beyond the present stage. Now if one ever strays beyond the established conventions, she is crucified in the name of honour.’

Korea’s Oh Jung Hee’s story, China Town, is an evocative coming of age tale, narrated by a nine-year-old girl who feels neglected in the cycles of unending pregnancies she watches her mother undergo, while the family also experiences other alienations, losing their village home in the dislocation caused by America’s Korean war.

In A Girl Called Apple, Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh depicts the plight of Apple, a bold village girl who longs for marriage and children, yet won’t allow her father to advertise for suitors by hoisting a wedding flag on the roof. She waits for love to come looking for her and does not want to be treated like ‘mutton or old dates for sale’. But she invariably has to pay the price for her obstinacy with loneliness which awaits the woman who believes in love, who refuses to be intimidated by tradition.

The quality of the translations is excellent. However, some selections seem like samples of convenience. For instance, I wonder why we couldn’t have been spared the two poems by Taslima Nasreen and introduced to more talented, lesser known Bangladeshi writers.

I accidentally came across Ismat Chughtai’s work as a teenager, and wondered why she was not included as part of our Urdu syllabus. Without articulating it, there was an understanding, meant to percolate down to the unconscious self, that women writers were perhaps just not good enough to have their work included in the literary canons of the East or the West.

Let Palestinian writer Fadwa Tuqan’s sentiments, echoed in her autobiographical piece in this volume, ‘A Mountainous Journey’, remind us of the value of the commitment to her pen and the quest for selfhood every writer embarks upon when she writes: ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me; if I am for myself, who am I?’

Let us hope that anthologies such as this one will continue to flourish.

This article was first published in DAWN