India

“Digging out weapons in the arsenal of language” :  An Interview with Meena Kandasamy

“Digging out weapons in the arsenal of language” : An Interview with Meena Kandasamy

Meena Kandasamy is a writer based in India and London. She writes poetry and fiction, translates, and often uses social media to discuss issues of social justice. She describes her own work as maintaining “a focus on caste annihilation, linguistic identity and feminism.” She has published two collections of poetry: Touch and Ms Militancy. Her…

“We licked the dictionary off each other’s faces” : Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal: A Project for Future Children
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“We licked the dictionary off each other’s faces” : Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal: A Project for Future Children

What’s wrong with being raised by wolves? In Humanimal: A Project for Future Childen, Bhanu Kapil investigates “the true story of Kamala and Amala, two girls found living with wolves in Bengal, India, in 1920” (ix). But unlike a crowd drawn to witness a re-enactment, Kapil’s book instead involves “trying to see it” (17) and…

“If I could I would cut off my lovers’ heads” : Eunice De Souza’s Nine Indian Women Poets
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“If I could I would cut off my lovers’ heads” : Eunice De Souza’s Nine Indian Women Poets

“Anthologists invariably make enemies,” Eunice De Souza notes in her introduction to Nine Indian Women Poets. This anthology is unlike most anthologies, as De Souza takes up her editorial role to rally against universality, mapmaking, and flattery. De Souza isn’t seeking to make enemies, but she realizes that all choices for anthologies suggest other choices:…

Well-Traveled Verse: The Book of Poems You’ll Find Everywhere in India
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Well-Traveled Verse: The Book of Poems You’ll Find Everywhere in India

Indian bookstores come in wide varieties: street-sellers pitch copies of everything from tabloids to Freud, more upscale boutiques feature plastic-wrapped paperbacks in scholarly fields, and stuffed-to-the-brim cubicles at train depots deliver Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels beside worn editions of the Gita. But, without a doubt, I always came across copies of Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections. The…