Stories abound in Assam’s fields, ponds, rivers, forests, hills and cities. Most of its people wear each other’s clothes, eat each other’s food and speak each other’s languages. Diversity and amalgamation are the primarily identifiable elements of people from Assam. Yet, everyday patriarchy and politics of boundaries have resulted in so much confusion and conflict. Thankfully, we are witnessing emerging voices of people who experience life differently because of their own identities and locations and propose an inclusive space for us all. The women and transpeople who have contributed to Riverside Stories come from this diversity and bring their stories of multiple experiences from Assam to the world.  This collection of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and visual stories, puts on record the experiences of the self, the very personal, within homes, in the environment, with politics, and with disappointments, desires, hopes and memories for a future. In putting together this anthology, it is our hope that we have complicated—more than it already is—the notion of whose and which stories can be told.

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BANAMALLIKA is mostly a disheartened feminist activist from Assam. She has used storytelling as a tool for questioning power in her personal life and professional work. To her ever-expanding array of activities, she has added drawing, filmmaking, entrepreneurship, gardening, theatre, cooking, research, writing and, very recently, playing with clay. She draws her sustenance from the feminist movement and its solidarity. She is currently fantasising about not having to write another proposal or project report and living on a farm on a foothill by a spring.

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