Sunday, July 11, 2010

Giving a Voice to the Voiceless in India

Baby Halder became a writer between domestic chores. She wrote, hesitantly, in the pages of an exercise book given to her by her employer, an anthropology professor. In intervals snatched between washing dishes, cleaning floors, making tea, she set down her story, one slow, compelling paragraph at a time.

Nalini Jameela, a sex worker, encountered writer’s block after one of her clients came across a line in an early draft of her book: “I am 49 years old.” She had told him she was only 42. Ms. Jameela lost the client and, briefly, her nerve.

Anjum Zamrud Habib became a writer in the Tihar jail, where she kept a journal during the five years she spent in prison on charges, later dropped, of supporting terrorism in Kashmir.

Sister Jesme, then the principal of a Roman Catholic school, says she was threatened with psychiatric treatment after she accused her religious order of exploiting women. She wrote “Amen: The Autobiography of a Nun,” while defending herself against her superiors.

Over the last four years, these slim, starkly told memoirs — and others of their kind — have become a body of work. They’ve given a voice to women used to being voiceless, a face to women who are usually invisible in today’s India.

Full report here New York Times

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