Subaltern Narratives in Fiji Hindi Literature

Subaltern Narratives in Fiji Hindi Literature
Author: Vijay Mishra
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2024-02-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1839990716

Subaltern Narratives in Fiji Hindi Literature is the first comprehensive study of fiction written in Fiji Hindi that moves beyond the hegemonic and colonially-implicated perspectives that have necessarily informed top-down historical accounts. Mishra makes this case using two extraordinary novels Ḍaukā Purān [‘A Subaltern Tale’] (2001]) and Fiji Maa [‘Mother of a Thousand’] (2018) by the Fiji Indian writer Subramani. They are massive novels (respectively 500 and 1,000 pages long) written in the devanāgarī (Sanskrit) script. They are examples of subaltern writing that do not exist, as a legitimation of the subaltern voice, anywhere else in the world. The novels constitute the silent underside of world literature, whose canon they silently challenge. For postcolonial, diaspora and subaltern scholars, they are defining (indeed definitive) texts without which their theories remain incomplete. Theories require mastery of primary texts and these subaltern novels, ‘heroic’ compositions as they are in the vernacular, offer a challenge to the theorist.

The Literature of the Indian Diaspora

The Literature of the Indian Diaspora
Author: Vijay Mishra
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2007-09-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134096925

Exploring the work of key writers from across the globe, this significant contribution to diaspora theory constitutes a major study of the literature and other cultural texts of the Indian diaspora.

Voices and Silences

Voices and Silences
Author: Anjali Singh
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2022-10-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000782980

Indian indentured emigration is among the most notable social phenomena of modern history, which sent over one million men and women to tropical sugar colonies in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. Indenture began in the 1830s and lasted till 1920; a period which finds little or no mention either in history textbooks or in literature. This book takes a closer look at some of the important narratives on indenture and evaluates them in order to highlight the experience of the indentured people across the plantation colonies in Fiji and in the Caribbean. The story of indenture is the story of betrayal, of trauma and of resistance. It is also a narrative of resilience, assimilation and acculturation. This book offers an in-depth literary study to reveal that there exists a language of indenture, one that permeates all the texts written on the subject. The texts speak to, and for each other, thereby revealing the indenture experience to the reader.

Fiji Maa - Mother of a Thousand

Fiji Maa - Mother of a Thousand
Author: Professor Subramani
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-01-27
Genre:
ISBN:

Fiji Maa, written in Fiji Hindi and Devanagari Script, depicts the life story of the main character, Ved Mati, as she passes from childhood innocence towards final detachment through the journey of her life amid the changing backdrop of the socio/political landscape of Fiji. The story is set in Labasa and Suva and follows the life of the main character as she grows from a little girl into adulthood. Her carefree childhood and school life is portrayed so well by Professor Subramani. Her role as a goat herder and a sprinter shows the research capability of the writer. Also the almost destitute living in the Estate in Suva is so accurately described.

Span

Span
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 198
Release: 1999
Genre: English literature
ISBN:

The Literature of the Indian Diaspora

The Literature of the Indian Diaspora
Author: Vijay Mishra
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2007-09-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1134096917

The Literature of the Indian Diaspora constitutes a major study of the literature and other cultural texts of the Indian diaspora. It is also an important contribution to diaspora theory in general. Examining both the ‘old’ Indian diaspora of early capitalism, following the abolition of slavery, and the ‘new’ diaspora linked to movements of late capital, Mishra argues that a full understanding of the Indian diaspora can only be achieved if attention is paid to the particular locations of both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ in nation states. Applying a theoretical framework based on trauma, mourning/impossible mourning, spectres, identity, travel, translation, and recognition, Mishra uses the term ‘imaginary’ to refer to any ethnic enclave in a nation-state that defines itself, consciously or unconsciously, as a group in displacement. He examines the works of key writers, many now based across the globe in Canada, Australia, America and the UK, – V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, M.G. Vassanji, Shani Mootoo, Bharati Mukherjee, David Dabydeen, Rohinton Mistry and Hanif Kureishi, among them – to show how they exemplify both the diasporic imaginary and the respective traumas of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Indian diasporas.

Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum

Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum
Author: Ato Quayson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2023-11-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1009299956

Leading scholars illustrate the necessity and advantages of reforming the English Literary Curriculum from decolonial perspectives.

Writing Resistance

Writing Resistance
Author: Laura R. Brueck
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2014-06-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231166044

Writing Resistance is the first close study of the growing body of contemporary Hindi-language Dalit (low caste) literature in India. The Dalit literary movement has had an immense sociopolitical and literary impact on various Indian linguistic regions, yet few scholars have attempted to situate the form within contemporary critical frameworks. Laura R. BrueckÕs approach goes beyond recognizing and celebrating the subaltern speaking, emphasizing the sociopolitical perspectives and literary strategies of a range of contemporary Dalit writers working in Hindi. Brueck explores several essential questions: what makes Dalit literature Dalit? What makes it good? Why is this genre important, and where does it oppose or intersect with other bodies of Indian literature? She follows the debate among Dalit writers as they establish a specifically Dalit literary critical approach, underscoring the significance of the Dalit literary sphere as a ÒcounterpublicÓ generating contemporary Dalit social and political identities. Brueck then performs close readings of contemporary Hindi Dalit literary prose narratives, focusing on the aesthetic and stylistic strategies deployed by writers whose class, gender, and geographic backgrounds shape their distinct voices. By reading Dalit literature as literature, this study unravels the complexities of its sociopolitical and identity-based origins.

The Cambridge Companion to Global Literature and Slavery

The Cambridge Companion to Global Literature and Slavery
Author: Laura Murphy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2022-12-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 100908027X

The Cambridge Companion to Global Literature and Slavery reveals the way recent scholarship in the field of slavery studies has taken a more expansive turn, in terms of both the geographical and the temporal. These new studies perform area studies-driven analyses of the representation of slavery from national or regional literary traditions that are not always considered by scholars of slavery and explore the diverse range of unfreedoms depicted therein. Literary scholars of China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa provide original scholarly arguments about some of the most trenchant themes that arise in the literatures of slavery – authentication and legitimation, ethnic formation and globalization, displacement, exile, and alienation, representation and metaphorization, and resistance and liberation. This Cambridge Companion to Global Literature and Slavery is designed to highlight the shifting terrain in literary studies of slavery and collectively challenge the reductive notion of what constitutes slavery and its representation.