Female Subjectivity in Narrating the Body: Selected Works of Contemporary Indian Women Writers

The book examines contemporary Indian women writers working in the English language, namely Anita Nair, Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, and Meena Kandasamy, all of whom give a free expression to the idea of body and sexuality, and self and identity in their writings. It is a comparative study and looks at women’s literary work and its relationship to the body in third-world societies. The attempt is to examine their works from this corporeal as well as a socio-cultural phenomenon.
There are informative and comparative analyses that will be of immense use to students and scholars with an interest in body studies and women’s writing in India. The authors have taken a valid and fresh approach towards the interpretation and interrogation of body politics and female subjectivity. Divided in five chapters, through an interdisciplinary approach, the book successfully examines issues related to gender, sexuality, identity, and selfhood, drawing on the socio-cultural, historical, and psychological insights that the selected writers bring to the works chosen for study.
The subject matter is well-drafted and reflects extensive reading on the issues of gender and sexuality, and on which, not much work has been done in the current Indian context. The authors successfully establish body as a trope that can possess repressive, authoritative, as well as transformative potential. Overall, the choice of area is unique and offers much scope for future research.