Labrys
estudos feministas/ études féministes
janeiro/ junho 2006 -janvier / juin 2006
Voices from the Margin: Women’s Life-Writing in Kerala, India
Dr Rathi Menon
Hema Malini .M
Abstract
Kamala Das is a renowned writer known for her Indo-English poetry and short stories, as well as her novels in Malayalam, a South Indian language. She wrote her autobiography in the late 1960s, when theoretical aspects of women’s autobiographical practices were not evolved, and was subsequently rebuked by traditional critics, including women. Her autobiography reveals many aspects which later became the cornerstone of Indian women’s practice of autobiography. An author ahead of her time in terms of her incorporation of feminist theory.
Over the last few decades feminist scholarship has significantly changed perceptions regarding women’s life writing practices. Many women from around the world and different walks of life have placed their private lives in the public domain in various ways. Their narratives challenge the conventional model of the unique and enlightened individual (usually a man) whose life is worth knowing about because of his exceptional character. This has compelled a rethinking of previous definitions of autobiography, as proposed by earlier Western European male scholars like George Gusdorf (1956) and Karl Joach(1978). They considered autobiographical writings as the product of a conscious awareness of the singularity of each individual life and the result of a concept of the unique and autonomous individual that developed from the European Enlightenment. Olney(1972) while discussing the appealing aspect of autobiographical writing tried to focus much on the maleness. These humanist positions, according centrality to the human subject, celebrated autobiographies as individual examples illustrating the master narrative of a supposedly universal evolution towards clarity and autonomy. According to this view which was grounded in the metaphysics of the conscious, coherent and individual subject considered language as a tool to represent faithfully the already extant self and the past life. This perspective was challenged by poststructuralist theories that consider language as non-transparent and subjectivity as always contested and in process, because it is constructed through language as well as the socio-historical context of the life concerned. This shift has profound consequences for the practice and analysis of life writing. Paul de Man( 1979) suggested that the representation of self through language produces a literary figuration that can actually disfigure as much as it figures the self in question: it can be seen to be a “defacement” of the individual concerned rather than an “accurate” self-reflection. Philippe Lejeune ( 1989) mentioned about the theoretical problems unaddressed if the autobiography is considered as a prose narrative written by a real person concerning his own existence focusing story of his personality.
In all these theoretical positions, attention to women’s experiences was usually lacking. According to many feminist scholars, this is a result of the oppressive conditions that prevail in a patriarchal society, where women as a class are in an effaced or defaced position. For most women, in the West and elsewhere, their face has remained veiled in non-physical ways, and their attempts to reveal or develop an “autonomous self” give rise to conflicts. Confined to the private sphere, they have been largely excluded from the realm of public representation, accepting or adopting invisibility and silence to avoid self- exposure. The boundary between the private and public realms is still often strictly observed, and the feminine (as) self is denied or repressed. The present paper is an attempt to recognize and understand how women in Kerala, the most southern state of India, have broken the barrier of silence at various points in time through autobiographical narrations produced in Malayalam, the language spoken there, making their lives visible.
Early Western autobiographies by women tended to talk more about their relationship to a male other, who became the main topic of the life-story. Some feminist theories of female subjectivity have analyzed the social and psychological reasons why relationships and connectedness to others are frequently a central component of many women’s lives. But over a period of time significant mutations in the social sphere, in the West and other parts of the world, have changed the positions and postures of women as subjects. Even so, women’s accounts of their lives are often focused on what is told rather than on the teller. Women writing to denounce social or political ills of which their experience is but one example may not talk much about themselves or their personal lives, though certain aspects of domestic life are revealed. Secrecy and silence still exist, and Sidonie Smith (1998) suggests that women’s life-writing often illustrates the “two stories phenomenon”, where the narrator adopts conflicting positions and postures in the text. While exposing the stereotypical feminine object position still dominant in mainstream culture, veiled aspirations for subjectivity are projected through gaps, nuances, and fissures. This may be achieved by blurring the distinction between the singularity of one woman’s identity and her association with the collective context (as in the Latin-American testimonio). In such accounts, the subjugation associated with gender roles intersects with other categories of marginalization.
Feminist theorists like Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (1998), Susan Friedman (1989), and Shari Benstock (1988), who make use of Freudian or Lacanian psychoanalytic models of identity formation, do not deny that how sexual difference plays out is related to cultural and historical situations. Sheila Rowbotham (1973) suggested that women develop a dual consciousness because of their subjugation, while Nancy Chodorow (1978) analysed the specificity of women’s identity formation by observing the special bond of the mother/daughter relationship. For her, this relationship enables women to maintain a “sense of shared identity”. Helen Buss (1996) has also observed that women’s writing of the self is often a metaphorical exploration of the self as a territory, and of other territories from various vantage points. All these observations insist on the need to find different criteria for assessing women’s autobiographical narratives.
Through life-writing in a range of forms and media, women can shatter the existing cultural hall of mirrors that imprisons them and break the silence imposed on them by male speech. Domna Stanton (1984) prefers to call such writings by women that challenge the male model autogynographies or autographs, while Leigh Gilmore (1994) coined the term autogynographics. Their work illustrates how in the 1980s and 1990s the canon of autobiography expanded its boundaries and new methods and strategies evolved to interpret a wider range of practices. Aside from a new theoretical and academic emphasis on gender analysis and intersectionality in the representation of subjectivity, women from various walks of life have been able to speak frankly about their experiences, even their sexuality. They have become more self assured, more responsible for their deeds, and more optimistic about the power inherent in them to change or re-map their lives as women. Their efforts have helped to spark awareness and inspire the sense that telling one’s life-story, rather than evoking an elitist symbolic and verbal act of only literary significance, can be a practical activity with tangible results for less literary and even illiterate people speaking from the margins socially or geographically.
In the Western hemisphere in the 1970s, militantly feminist texts like Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970) or Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex (1970) or Andrea Rita Dworkin’s Women Hating ( 1974) provoked debate about the construction of gender, while more directly autobiographical works like Adrienne Rich’s The Will to Chan ( !971) Diving into the Wreck ( 1973) Of Woman Born : Motherhood as Experience and Institution ( 1976), Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968) and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) were also making ripples by questioning assumptions about feminine subjectivity and female consciousness. At that time, in Kerala, a celebrated short-story writer, Madhavikutty, shocked the literary world of India by her autobiography simply entitled “My Story”. Kerala already had a rich tradition of women’s writing, even autobiographical writings, but her defiant tone was very different from the existing body of literary works and scholarship, conveying a new sensibility to women’s issues. The earlier autobiographical writings by women mimicked the subjectivity of “universal man” or tried to counter the centrifugal power in relatively harmless ways (1). In either case the objective of women’s emancipation was not clearly visible. Through her autobiographical account, Madhavikutty tried to uncover the “truth” of her existence in a more candid manner, daring to name the sources of oppression in the course of her life. She described the effects of a patriarchal domestic atmosphere and a colonial education, and was bold enough to identify her inner strength by acknowledging her specificity as a particular woman, in body, psyche, and mode of knowing/ being in the world. In spite of coming from a conservative family, she chose to write her autobiography in a confessional manner which allowed her to openly disclose and discuss the humiliations she underwent in a patriarchal domestic set-up, in a colonial context. She wrote candidly about the abandonment she felt in a supposedly congenial and protective family, the sexual abuse afflicted by her husband, and her own amorous confusions. Boldly, she expressed her rage and rebellion against all oppressive institutions and proclaimed her disregard for “decent” feminine concealments. Presenting her own vision of man-woman relationships with outspoken frankness, she wrote about discarding the burdens of tradition and social taboos and questioned the identity which cultural norms conferred on her. This refusal to be confined by conventional “morality” was not received with compassion and celebration. This unfamiliar tone enraged traditional literary critics and she was attacked from all sides. The controversy provoked her to produce an English version with added chapters and explanations.
My Story inaugurated a new era in women’s autobiographical writings, not only in Malayalam but also in other Indian languages. In the Malayalam language more bold attempts were made questioning the prevailing patriarchal culture, as a number of women used autobiographical writing to try demythify and demystify the process of discrimination obscured by institutional practices, including literature (2). Such writings helped to identify the “ culturally pervasive and centrifugally dispersed “ power and authority that still governs women’s lives, and paved the way for textual experiments in the women’s autobiographical tradition.
By the end of the 1980s feminist awareness had evolved through activism, and broader participation by women in various literary genres prepared a firm ground for feminist thinking and scholarship, although this was still mainly restricted to middle- class women. The marginalized among the marginalized still remained voiceless. Denying subordinate ethnic or linguistic groups a place in history is one of the deadliest forms of oppression. By silencing or ignoring their voices the dominant culture denies them the status of social subjects. Their depiction in fiction and other narratives by the dominant culture objectifies and exoticizes them. However, at the dawn of the twenty-first century counteractions to such discourses started appearing. Three autobiographical narratives by women in particular challenged conventionally accepted notions of marginalization and modes of oppression, along with the traditional narrative strategies of autobiographical writings: This is My Story and Song ( 2000) by Sarasu, Janu: The Life Story of C.K. Janu( 2002) (3) and Nalini Jameela’s The Autobiography of a Sex Worker” ( 2005) (4). The last two are oral life histories, transmitted through a mediator, and illustrate the efforts of the non-literate or non-literary to tell their story. These texts provide an opportunity to explore how these women view themselves and how their self-perceptions have in turn affected the choices they have made in their lives.
Sarasu , the youngest daughter of a hardworking Christian farmer couple, had polio when she was five years old, and it crippled not only her body but also her aspirations. The illness restricted her to her bed and forced her to seek the help of others even for her day-to-day activities. Her autobiographical narration reflects the sufferings of a physically challenged woman, her battle to grow up and the unfolding of a writer’s soul. The narration highlights her striking meditations on the distorting effects of the culture’s pre- occupation with physical disability. She candidly expresses the agony of the physical and mental traumas she had to endure at various points of time and also the pain of loneliness and isolation inflicted upon her at adolescence. She vividly portrays the pain of rejection and guilty pleasures of wanting to be special. With unique insight she records what it is like as a child and an adolescent girl and also to be torn between warring impulses. Most cultures have a tendency to type-cast a disabled person.
Casual conversations, exclusion from social participation, slips of the tongue - all these inflict wounds in one way or another in the psyche of the physically and mentally challenged individuals. Negative expectations limit and distort what a disabled person can actually perform .Society is often reluctant to consider a disabled person as a subject sharing the needs and desires experienced by “normal” people. In her autobiography Sarasu narrates the slow process of coming to terms with her physical disabilities with intelligence and grace. This is My Story and Song recounts her physical and spiritual struggle to surmount disfigurement and bottomless grief, both at home and later in Cheshire home where she decided to live .At home she was agonized by her parents’ anxieties, while in the institution she discovered the tormenting attitudes of the authorities towards less fortunate human beings. This engaging and engrossing book tells the plight of an individual who cherished dreams of a colorful life, and did not renounce them but transformed her experience of disability into a source of revelation about the spiritual strength and mystery of life. But she has turned her misfortunes into a book that is engaging at the same time engrossing. Her valor which reminds that the representations of physical disability cannot be treated under the rubric of “the grotesque”, really humbles the reader.
Janu, is a tribal activist who wages bitter struggles against the government for the land rights of tribal groups. She received no formal education but became actively involved in the literacy campaign in Kerala and learned to read and write, proving herself to be a natural leader. Her work focuses on the promotion and defense of human rights, peace activism, and the demands of the landless tribal people of Kerala. She was part of the three-member delegation from India on a European tour organized by the Global Action Group, and the lone representative from India at conference in Geneva organized by the United Nations in (1999), as well as an active participant in the second Global Action Group conference held at Bangalore in 2000. By sharing her own vision of survival and ideas on the strategies to achieve positive development, she is serving as a voice for her community which has been silenced for centuries. In her autobiographical narration, Janu gives a passionate account of her struggle get back the lands of which they were dispossessed. Without any means of earning a proper livelihood, her people fear they risk losing their identity also.
The forest meant everything to the tribal groups. Janu speaks of her childhood and her life in the forest, then as a maid in a teacher’s home .Her involvement with the literacy programme and other social activities lead to her political awakening. She became a worker for the communist party, but was soon disillusioned by the party’s hidden agendas and attitude towards her community. According to her, women’s liberation and empowerment have different connotations in a tribal context, which she explicitly records: “In this world all power lies with civil society. This power is wielded so effectively that very little is known to the world outside”. She is well aware of the fact that forest flower beetles cannot argue with city microphones that make great noise, but she will fight unto death for the restoration of the rights of her people. Her narration is an eloquent testimonial to her convictions and courage in mobilizing a protest against the government to restore the alienated land to the tribal people, enabling them to regain their sense of identity.
Nalini Jameela is the eldest girl child of a poor family. Her father, a retired military person of low rank, known publicly as a true communist, was a despot in the domestic circle. He was patriarchal to the core and treated his wife and children like slaves. The class oppression he preached outside was not relevant inside the walls of the house. Nalini’s fair skin and good looks added to her misery, especially when she started to work in the quarries to earn money to meet the growing needs of the family. The humiliations she and her mother had to suffer from her father and dire poverty provoked in her a rebellious attitude to the existing societal norms. Her elder brother was expelled from the house because he revolted against the father and married out of cast. When Nalini realized that her father’s only intention was to endanger her life, she decided to marry an undesirable man, in order to escape from her father’s tyranny. Soon she realized her mistake, since her husband, Subramanian, was no better than her father. The relation existed only for three years and ended in Subramanian’s suicide when he discovered he had advanced cancer. By then, through his sale of liquor, she had herself acquired a taste for it. After her husband’s death neither her family nor his were willing to accept her.
The future of her two children, at least a place for them to stay, was her greatest worry, especially because one was a girl. Her mother-in-law agreed to look after them for five rupees a day, at a time when the maximum wage a woman could earn was 4.50 rupees. In desperation, Nalini was lured into the sex trade. Since that time, life has been different for her. Twice she tried to normalize her life by getting married again (even changing her religion and adopting the name Jameela for one marriage), but in both cases she was cheated. Ill health lead her to spend several years as a wandering beggar, until her daughter from the second husband, who was growing up, persuaded her to settle down. Finally attaining some stability, she viewed the sex trade in a different light. Her autobiographical narration is an account of a perilous life, haunted by humiliation and suffering, both physical and mental. The atrocities she and her friends had to encounter from individuals and institutions prompted her to become involved with the rehabilitation of sex workers and to denounce the hypocrisy she encountered.
Nalini became a strong advocate of the rights of sex workers, and participated in a meeting in Thailand of sex workers from Thailand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Nepal and India where a video camera was presented to the participants to make films based on their actual experiences. But her efforts to organize and fight for the human rights of sex workers and her ability to make films were questioned even by feminists. In her autobiographical narration she writes candidly about her bitter experiences even at that time, and efforts to position herself as a subject expressing her own convictions. This assertion was too much to accept in a pretentious milieu where there is no red light district, but plenty of cases of rape and pedophilia involving big shots in society. This act of speaking out rejects the notion of sex worker as an object in market place and through the act of narration Nalini Jameela demands both a voice and identity.
These three autobiographical accounts do not maintain a posture of humility and a non- aggressive tone, concessions that might have made them more palatable to defensive readers. But articulating real life experiences in the context of a judgmental system is a bold step. In all three narrations one can feel the strong individuality of the narrator coming into power. They all script their experiences for survival and to revitalize a borderline culture. The narration may be in a “prelapsarian” tongue very different from what academic establishments expect for a life narration. Such life narrations may be hard to identify with, for those who have not suffered. Sarasu, a “differently abled” person writes about her desires in order to claim full human status for herself and others with disabilities, while communicating continued reverberations of pain and loss. She strongly condemns the hostility of the medical establishment and welfare philanthropism, recalling how she had to pay heavily when she resisted inhuman practices and questioned unethical deeds. Hers is a mature critique of the discourses of medicine and rehabilitation and also “rolelessness” ( Fine and Asch, 1988). This is a fine example to show how disability as a cultural institution similar to gender shapes the lives of physically disabled and invests their bodies with meaning and intersections of gender and disability.
Janu’s autobiographical narration, presented as an extended conversation with an editor, conveys her lack of compromise in her assertions. The shifts in tone, pauses or changes in diction reflect her refusal to erase the inevitable gaps and fissures of the actual narrative events. She is not positioned as a cultural icon, but as an ordinary individual with strong communal feelings. Nalini Jameela, through her own experiences, presents a sketch of a culture in decline. She warns of the problems of relegating unlicensed sexuality to a lower status and accusing only women of being responsible for that. Writing about sexual experience is still not welcomed in Kerala, with its rigid moral norms. The process of collaboration with an editor does not undermine the authenticity of the narration of a sex worker. In both Janu’s and Nalini Jameela’s works editorial interference does not prevent the narrator from conveying a sense of presence.
In all these narrations, the narrator’s self is relegated to the margins of society, whether it is because of physical disability, ethnic minority status, or moral exclusion. But they boldly resist taken for granted attitudes towards these neglected segments of the population and speak for them. Thus, through their narrations they are trying to locate themselves as a subject, leaving behind the object status to which cultural identities have confined them. These texts illustrate the need for a revisionary method of reading the discourses of people regarded as marginal to the dominant literary tradition. They also prompt one to re assess the psychological simplicity attributed to these marginalized groups.
Focusing on personal experiences of multiple intersecting oppressions, these texts with gaps and fissures take their contours from multiple spaces of adjacency. The narrators’ positions are different from the usual determined places of power or margins of meaning, questioning established geographies of knowledge. They urge us as feminists to acknowledge a different alignment in relation to private or personal space, challenging the hegemony of middle-class feminism. The strength of the trajectory of such mappings becomes evident in the specific cultural milieu of Kerala, where society is not at all permissive and imposes restrictions through both explicit coercion and veiled morality.
The three autobiographical narrations cited are purposeful deflections from the identities attributed to certain categories of people by an ideological system. They challenge the existing sanctioned and legitimated cultural performances of identity. Sarasu talks about her experience of a lukewarm attitude from authorities when a group of physically challenged people tries to give a music concert. Janu reveals her disillusionment with a Marxist party which stresses class struggle, but never bothers to attend to the problems of tribal groups who serve only to swell their numbers when required. Nalini Jameela recalls feminist film critics who explicitly questioned her credibility to engage in filmmaking. Through such narrative interventions, all three women contest oppressive identity performances and highlight the temporalities and spatialities of marginalized identities.
Another salient feature of these autobiographical accounts is the authors’ sense of group identification. Sarasu mentions the discrimination faced by Ammini and Kochu Mary, some other inmates of the Cheshire home who were persecuted by the authorities on illogical grounds. She also raises the sensitive issue of misinterpretations of women’s friendships. The traumatic experiences shared by those in the Cheshire home develop a basis for a group identity. Her narration becomes a unifying vehicle for expressing the disturbances experienced by female physically challenged individual, as women.
In Janu’s narration, the first- person plural is often used instead of the first-person singular. In her community the women can live independent of men and empowerment and emancipation have a different meaning in her tribal context. Her struggle becomes representative of the struggle for justice by the poorest and the most oppressed community in Kerala. She mentions the sense of sorority she has with Lakshmi and Devi, other women members of her community, but also talks about the difficulty of negotiating and sustaining women’s friendships in a patriarchal framework. Nalini Jameela presents the sad plights and destinies of many sex workers and how justice is denied to many even on humanitarian grounds. All three narratives suggest affiliations with other women, reflecting the narrators’ desire to contest the dominant discourses through which the female subject is objectified and silenced as part of a non-hegemonic group. Speaking with and to other women can be “a nurturing space where you sift out what people are saying about you and decide who you really are” (Reagon BJ, 1983) , a truly liberating experience. In their self-narration they attempt to construct the person within themselves that they should be, suggesting the viability of non universal positions.
A person’s life-story reflects a process or movement in a space-time location that is constantly shifting. In an autobiographical narration, the individual’s story is placed in a dual frame of biographical time (age) and historical time (period). Moreover, an individual belongs to many collectives, such as family, social circle, neighbourhood, workplace etc. The norms and expectations of these collectives may change over time and restructure these collectives themselves. Meanwhile, the biological process of aging and maturing also takes place within the complex interaction of these cultural, social and historical timeframes. Naturally, transitions and events in the narrator’s life influence her identity. This fluidity of identity is reflected in the autobiographical narrations of these three women.
The autobiographical narrations of Sarasu, Janu, and Nalini Jameela are not merely retrospective summations of past events and experiences. They genuinely wish to change the state of affairs in the community to which they belong. The problems of the community they represent are different. With no financial security or physical independence, the world of Sarasu is very restricted and even tormented, yet the religious faith which she inherited from her family helps her to face the challenges and imparts moral courage. Janu is also aware of her limitations in face of the power plays of a manipulative society. Her narration ends with a desire to know herself more. She wishes to position herself in a more liberated future, not only for her own individual benefit but for the welfare of her community as a whole. Nalini Jameela hopes to come out of the constraining and oppressive identifications society thrust upon her and other sex workers. She laments the refusal of feminists to accept her as a filmmaker and yearns for a new space of subjectivity. Thus these autobiographical narrations all in a sense foreground the relationship of subjectivity to power. Self-narration is an act that prevents amnesia, as well as a resistance to the practice of imposing identities on previously voiceless marginalized groups.
Sidonie Smith calls this type of text, in which women self -consciously pursue political autobiographical acts and demand to be seen and heard as subjects, autobiographical manifestos. She suggests that in such acts the narrator insists on a new identity, in service of emancipatory politics, fully acknowledging Robert Martin’s (1989) argument that identity is “assumed”. Within the parameters of feminist theory it self there has been a move to reconsider the term marginality. Bell hooks (1989 ) notes that “to be in the margin is to be part of the whole outside the main body”. But there will be an urge to get reconised the many voices outside dominant culture and assert their individualism and experience. Nellie McKay (1995) calls this as an expression of dynamic “I”. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) has also discussed about the precarious relationship between center and margin and mentions that the relationship is “intricate and inter-animating”. Experiences from the margins may askew from the templates of official knowledges. Probyn (1992 ) has pointed out that woman is only one fictive ground of location. Within the discursive regimes there are other locations also and the speaker’s position are closely related to these locations. The multiple locales reflect the fugue of voice forces conglomerating in the “I” and in autobiography, the narrator’s desire to negotiate with the multiple locales can be felt. In such cases the prevalent practices of discourses are questioned and the hegemonic truth of cultural construct of “woman” is shattered. Naturally from the periphery alternate of configurations of identity emerge. The language she uses to express this identity formation may not be explanatory or intentional. But the act of telling their experiences will be definitely emancipatory.
Through the interpretation of their lives, these three women bring culturally marginalized experiences out from the shadows of an undifferentiated otherness, suggesting that experiences of oppression are varied and differently located in discourse According to Felicity A Nussbaum ( 1989), when a woman enters the autobiographical scene, she encounters “ certain regimes of truth, of discourse and of subjectivity available to women”. But these three women have effectively counter act the hegemonic construct of woman and allows the readers a sense of feeling and perceiving reality. Sarasu, who has never aspired to become a writer , the autobiographical narration imparts a therapeutic effect on her long miseries and agonies reminding the world that the definition of crippled should be reframed. It encourages a transformation of agonized souls. ( 5). Story of Janu “acknowledges that each aspect of reality is gendered”. She often reminds the readers that within women’s experiences there are variety of subject positions and voices to be heard and represented. Hers is a humble attempt to evolve a subalteran essence. Nalini Jameela through her autobiographical narration stresses the need to “unlearn” the female privilege and consider the more nuanced social regulations and cultural productions. They bring an anonymous collectivity to the front of the stage, with great courage, no longer assuming the role assigned to them but asserting their own right to a voice and a part in the action. They deviate from a fixed object position which is culturally intelligible, purposefully locating themselves as subjects and revolutionizing earlier autobiographical writing norms, demanding attention and respect.
Notes
(1) As early as 1916 an autobiographical text was published in the Malayalam language. The work, titled Vyazavatta Smaranakal ( Memoirs of Twelve Years) (1916), centres on the agonizing struggle of the narrator , B Kalyani Amma, the wife of a renowned journalist and freedom-fighter, when her uncompromisingly righteous husband encountered the iron hands of monarchy and British rule. Another, Oru Streeyude Mayatha Smaranakal ( Unvanishing Memoirs of a Woman ) (1956) reflects maternal anxieties in the turbulent period of the second world war in Borneo. Adukkalayil Ninnu Arangathekku ( From the Kitchen to the Parliament) ( 1960) is an account of a housewife’s transformation into a parliamentarian, although her own accomplishments are not accorded much significance. Balamani Amma’s Jeevithathiloode ( Through Life) ( 1969) is an introspective account of a poetic mind, while Dhanyayayee Njan ( I am Blessed) ( 1969), by K Gomathy Amma ( daughter of the first autobiographical writer in Malayalam) is a tribute to the memory of her renowned parents.
(2) Ivan Ente Priya CJ (1970) by Rosy Thomas (wife of C.J. Thomas, a famousliterary figure in Kerala) is a bold attempt to present the agonies and sufferings of a woman who questioned the conventional norms of the society to some extent. She narrates how she felt as a woman at various stages in her life in the presence of a renowned father and renowned husband, and how she tried to evolve an identity of her own in less than encouraging situations. Sahasra Poornima ( 1977) ( A Thousand Full Moon Days) by CK Revathy Amma narrates the patriarchal attitude prevalent in her community in the northern part of Kerala and how she tried to defy it. Memories (1982) by Ajitha ,who used to be a hardcore revolutionary in the70s, gives an account of her political awakenings and struggles. Idangaziyile Kurizu (1988) ( The Cross in the Bushel ), by Annie Thayyil, narrates the conflicts and discriminations a girl child has to face in an orthodox Christian community and as a woman in the public domain of Kerala society, and her pursuit of her own identity.
(3) Janu’s autobiography is an oral narration scripted by Bhaskaran. The narrator being a man and from a different social position raises several issues related to oral autobiography. But it is viewed here as an attempt to present the construction of an identity by a tribal woman.
(4) Nalini Jameela’s autobiographical narration is also a combined effort, edited by I. Gopinath. Although the narrator does not deny the factual statements made she also does not fully acknowledge as her own the language the editor has used, since she feels it has a patriarchal tone. She is trying to bring out a new version which will be published soon.
(5) Based on Sarasu’s autobiography, short film “ An Encounter With A Life Living” was taken by Suja Vinu Abraham, which got national recognition.
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biography
Rathi Menon, with post graduate degrees in Malayalam, Education and Linguistics, has been working in St Xavier’s College for Women, Aluva ( Kerala, India) since 1975 and is currently head of the Malayalam Department ( on leave). She obtained her doctorate in 1991 and did her post doctoral research in Delhi University ( Department of Modern Indian Languages and Literature). The Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Relations at the University of British Columbia, Canada awarded her a visiting fellowship during the academic year 2003-2004 for a project on Women’s Autobiographies. She has published number of articles on women’s writings and women’s issues . She has done the monograph of renowned Malayalam novelist for Central Literary Academy and has translated the autobiography of famous Assameese woman writer Indira Goswami.
Hema Malini M took her post graduate degree in 1993 in Malayalam and submitted her doctoral dissertation ( Study on the Narratives of P Valsala from an Eco Feminist Perspective) in November 2005. She has been working as Malayalam lecturer in Vimala College, Trichur ( Kerala, India) since 1998. She has published several papers on renowned Malayalam writers and authored one book on feminist theoretical perspectives ( Aparabhashyangal- 2004).. She is at present working on a project on selected Malayalam women writer’s narratives as self referential texts and study the process of identity formation through subjectively rendered consciousness
Labrys
estudos feministas/ études féministes
janeiro/ junho 2006 -janvier / juin 2006