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Crafting the Word: Writings from Manipur
From ₹ 248
Manipur has a rich tradition of folk and oral narratives, as well as written texts dating from as early as in 8th Century AD. It was however only in the second half of the twentieth century that women began writing and publishing their works. Today, women's writing forms a vibrant part of Manipuri literature, and their voices are amplified through their coming together as an all-woman literary group. Put together in discussions and workshops by Thingnam Anjulika Samom, Crafting the Word captures a region steeped in conservative patriarchy and at the centre of an armed conflict. It is also a place, however, where women’s activism has been at the forefront of peace-making and where their contributions in informal commerce and trade hold together the economy of daily life.
Contributors: Arambam Ongbi Memchoubi, Aruna Nahakpam, Ayung Tampakleima Raikhan, Bimabati Thiyam Ongbi, Binodini, Chongtham (o) Subadani, Chongtham Jamini Devi, Guru Aribam Ghanapriya Devi, Haobam Satyabati Khundrakpam ongbi, Haobijam Prema Chanu, Koijam Santibala, Kshetrimayum Subadani, Kundo Yumnam, Lairenlakpam Ibemhal, Moirangthem Borkanya, Mufidun Nesha, Natalie Nk, Nee Devi, Nepram Maya Devi, Ningombam Sunita, Ningombam Surma, RK Sanahanbi (Likkhombi) Chanu, Sanatombi Ningombam, Sanjembam Bhanumati Devi, Satyabati Ningombam, Tonjam Sarojini Chanu, Yuimi VashumTranslators: Akoijam Sunita, Bobo Khuraijam, Kundo Yumnam, L. Somi Roy, Natasha Elangbam, Paonam Thoibi, Sapam Sweetie, Shreema Ningombam, Soibam Haripriya, Sonia Wahengbam, Thingnam Anjulika Samom
THINGNAM ANJULIKA SAMOM is an independent journalist, writer and translator based in Imphal, Manipur. Her journalistic writing focusing on gender, con ict and developmental issues in Manipur has been published in many online and print publications in India as well as outside the country. She is the recipient of the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity 2010–11 (Eastern Region). She also translates literary works from Manipuri to English and was given the Katha Award for Translation in 2004. A few of her poems are part of the anthology Centrepiece (2017) published by Zubaan.
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This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Contributors: Arambam Ongbi Memchoubi, Aruna Nahakpam, Ayung Tampakleima Raikhan, Bimabati Thiyam Ongbi, Binodini, Chongtham (o) Subadani, Chongtham Jamini Devi, Guru Aribam Ghanapriya Devi, Haobam Satyabati Khundrakpam ongbi, Haobijam Prema Chanu, Koijam Santibala, Kshetrimayum Subadani, Kundo Yumnam, Lairenlakpam Ibemhal, Moirangthem Borkanya, Mufidun Nesha, Natalie Nk, Nee Devi, Nepram Maya Devi, Ningombam Sunita, Ningombam Surma, RK Sanahanbi (Likkhombi) Chanu, Sanatombi Ningombam, Sanjembam Bhanumati Devi, Satyabati Ningombam, Tonjam Sarojini Chanu, Yuimi VashumTranslators: Akoijam Sunita, Bobo Khuraijam, Kundo Yumnam, L. Somi Roy, Natasha Elangbam, Paonam Thoibi, Sapam Sweetie, Shreema Ningombam, Soibam Haripriya, Sonia Wahengbam, Thingnam Anjulika Samom
THINGNAM ANJULIKA SAMOM is an independent journalist, writer and translator based in Imphal, Manipur. Her journalistic writing focusing on gender, con ict and developmental issues in Manipur has been published in many online and print publications in India as well as outside the country. She is the recipient of the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity 2010–11 (Eastern Region). She also translates literary works from Manipuri to English and was given the Katha Award for Translation in 2004. A few of her poems are part of the anthology Centrepiece (2017) published by Zubaan.
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Living a Feminist Life
From ₹ 248During the current COVID-19 surge we are shipping orders from Delhi once per week. Please allow 8-10 business days for delivery.
In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of colour scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique—often by naming and calling attention to problems—and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions—such as forming support systems—to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.With an introduction by Chayanika Shah.“From the moment I received Sara Ahmed’s new work, Living a Feminist Life, I couldn’t put it down … Ahmed lifts us higher.” — bell hooks
"I read Living a Feminist Life with a deep sense of recognition. This is a book that feminists will find illuminating—acutely painful at times, but mostly profoundly insightful … A beautifully written, smartly provocative book that belongs on our shelves, in our classrooms, and in our daughters’ hands." — Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity
SARA AHMED is a feminist writer, scholar, and activist. She works at the intersection of feminist, queer, and race studies. Her research is concerned with how bodies and worlds take shape; and how power is secured and challenged in everyday life worlds as well as institutional cultures. She is the author of Willful Subjects, On Being Included, The Promise of Happiness, and Queer Phenomenology.CHAYANIKA SHAH is an optimist activist at heart, a physicist by training and a teacher by choice. She has worked in areas like politics of population control, communalism, feminist studies of science, and sexuality, which seem to have no connection with each other but which have come together of late to define her as a queer feminist. Her co-authored books include No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy (Zubaan 2015); Bharat ki Chaap, and We and Our Fertility: The Politics of Technological Intervention.
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The Many That I Am: Writings from Nagaland
From ₹ 350
A grandmother’s tattoos, the advent of Christianity, stories woven into fabrics, a tradition of orality, the imposition of a ‘new’ language, a history of war and conflict: all this and much more informs the writers and artists in this book. Filmmaker and writer Anungla Zoe Longkumer brings together here, for the first time, a remarkable set of stories, poems, first-person narratives and visuals that reflect the many facets of women’s writing in Nagaland.Written in English, a language the Nagas — who had no tradition of written literature — made their own after the Church came to Nagaland, each piece speaks of women’s many journeys to reclaim their pasts and understand their complex present.
Contributors: Abokali Jimomi, Ahikali Swu, Aniho Chishi, Anungla Zoe Longkumer, Avinuo Kire, Beni Sumer Yanthan, Dzuvinguno Dorothy Chasie, Easterine Kire, Em Em El, Emisenla Jamir, Eyingbeni Humtsoe-Nienu, Hekali Zhimomi, Iris Yingzen, Jungmayangla Longkumer, Kutoli N, Licca Kiho, Limatola Longkumer, Manenjungla Aier, Marianne Murry, Moaso Aier, Narola Changkija, Neikehienuo Mepfhüo, Nini Lungalang, Phejin Konyak, rōzumarī saṃsāra, Sirawon Tulisen Khathing, Metongla Aier, Talilula, Temsula Ao, Thejakhrienuo Yhome, Theyie Keditsu, Vishü Rita Krocha.
ANUNGLA ZOE LONGKUMER can best be described as a free individual discovering her way through creative pursuits in music, writing, filmmaking, and folk traditions. Having travelled and lived outside Nagaland during most of her life, she is currently based in Dimapur, Nagaland, where she freelances doing some content editing, music and filmmaking. She is the author of Folklore of Eastern Nagaland (2017), that comprises translations of folktales, folk songs and real-life accounts, collected from the six tribes who inhabit the more remote districts of Eastern Nagaland.
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This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Contributors: Abokali Jimomi, Ahikali Swu, Aniho Chishi, Anungla Zoe Longkumer, Avinuo Kire, Beni Sumer Yanthan, Dzuvinguno Dorothy Chasie, Easterine Kire, Em Em El, Emisenla Jamir, Eyingbeni Humtsoe-Nienu, Hekali Zhimomi, Iris Yingzen, Jungmayangla Longkumer, Kutoli N, Licca Kiho, Limatola Longkumer, Manenjungla Aier, Marianne Murry, Moaso Aier, Narola Changkija, Neikehienuo Mepfhüo, Nini Lungalang, Phejin Konyak, rōzumarī saṃsāra, Sirawon Tulisen Khathing, Metongla Aier, Talilula, Temsula Ao, Thejakhrienuo Yhome, Theyie Keditsu, Vishü Rita Krocha.
ANUNGLA ZOE LONGKUMER can best be described as a free individual discovering her way through creative pursuits in music, writing, filmmaking, and folk traditions. Having travelled and lived outside Nagaland during most of her life, she is currently based in Dimapur, Nagaland, where she freelances doing some content editing, music and filmmaking. She is the author of Folklore of Eastern Nagaland (2017), that comprises translations of folktales, folk songs and real-life accounts, collected from the six tribes who inhabit the more remote districts of Eastern Nagaland.
Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories
From ₹ 248
After the success of her collection The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet, Vandana Singh returns to the short story in Ambiguity Machines. Her deep humanism interplays with her scientific background in stories that consider and celebrate this world and others, with characters who try to make sense of the people they meet, what they see, and the challenges they face. An eleventh century poet wakes to find he is an artificially intelligent companion on a starship. A woman of no account has the ability to look into the past. And in 'Requiem,' a major new novella, a woman goes to Alaska to try and make sense of her aunt’s disappearance.Examining the revolutionary potential of speculative fiction, Singh dives deep into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within to explore the ways in which we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.
Vandana Singh was born and raised in New Delhi, and currently lives in the United States near Boston, where she professes physics and writes. Her short stories have appeared in numerous venues and several Best of Year anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. She is the author of the ALA Notable book Younguncle Comes to Town (Young Zubaan/Puffin India, 2004) and a previous short story collection, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories (Zubaan/Penguin India, 2009).
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This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page “A delicate touch and passionately humanist sensibilities sweep through this magnificent collection, which ranges from the near future of our world to eras far away in space and time.” — Publishers Weekly
“Singh is laying the groundwork attempt to re-write the plots of Chosen Ones, dystopian governments, and self-actualizing hero tropes common to Western literature, where the quest for “the meaning of life” is often seeking a single endpoint, an origin. Singh’s characters wish only to know for the sake of knowing. Life isn’t defined by linear time, it is the richness of experience.” — Aerogram
Vandana Singh was born and raised in New Delhi, and currently lives in the United States near Boston, where she professes physics and writes. Her short stories have appeared in numerous venues and several Best of Year anthologies, including the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. She is the author of the ALA Notable book Younguncle Comes to Town (Young Zubaan/Puffin India, 2004) and a previous short story collection, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet and Other Stories (Zubaan/Penguin India, 2009).
Mahuldiha Days
From ₹ 248
Set in the forests of northern Odisha, Mahuldia Days is the moving story of a young civil servant caught between her commitment to the tribal communities she knows are the original inhabitants of the forest, and the monolithic state, oblivious to the diverse realities of life on the ground. The moonlit Brahmani river snakes through the story with a life of its own while the city of the narrator’s childhood returns to her in dreams. Agnihotri creates a poignant, intense narrative layered with an awareness of the pressures of motherhood and personal love.
Anita Agnihotri works in the Ministry of Social Justice in India. She is a Bengali writer of over twenty-five books, including Seventeen and The Awakening, both also published by Zubaan. Seventeen won the Economist-Crossword Book Award for translation in 2011.Kalpana Bardhan is a writer and translator based in San Francisco.
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This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page Praise for Anita Agnihotri:
“Agnihotri draws you in with her well fleshed out characters. Their dreams, idiosyncrasies and disappointments are all too real; as are their failures.” —Aparna Singh, Women’s Web
“Urgently told and precise in their direction... Each story crackles with intensity and purpose.” —Mike McClelland, Spectrum Culture
“[Anita Agnihotri] sensitively and beautifully chronicles the plight of a major chunk of the country’s population.” —Abdullah Khan, The Hindu
Anita Agnihotri works in the Ministry of Social Justice in India. She is a Bengali writer of over twenty-five books, including Seventeen and The Awakening, both also published by Zubaan. Seventeen won the Economist-Crossword Book Award for translation in 2011.Kalpana Bardhan is a writer and translator based in San Francisco.
The Empty Room
From ₹ 248
In 1970s Karachi, where violence and political and social uncertainty are on the rise, a talented painter, Tahira, tries to hold her life together as it shatters around her. Her marriage is quickly revealed to be a trap from which there appears no escape. Accustomed to the company of her brother Waseem and friends, Andaleep and Safdar, who are activists, writers and thinkers, Tahira struggles to adapt to her new world of stifling conformity and to fight for her identity as a woman and an artist.Tragedy strikes when her brother and friends are caught up in the cynically repressive regime. Faced with loss and injustice, she embarks upon a series of paintings entitled ‘The Empty Room’, filling the blank canvases with vivid colour and light.Elegant, poetic, and powerful, The Empty Room is an important addition to contemporary Pakistani literature, a moving portrait of life in Karachi at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history, and a powerful meditation on art and the dilemmas faced by women who must find their own creative path in hostile conditions.
SADIA ABBAS grew up in Pakistan and Singapore. She received her PhD in English literature from Brown University, and she teaches in the English Department at Rutgers University-Newark. Sadia is Adjunct Professor at the Stavros Niarchos Center for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. She loves long walks, the Mediterranean and, indiscriminately, all sorts of films.
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This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page "‘Regret is only one kind of torment in a world generous with pain’, writes Sadia Abbas. In her debut novel, regret and pain appear in light, luminous hues as the story of a new nation, struggling to retain its democratic resolve, is enmeshed with the story of a rocky marriage. The courage, wit and capacity for love displayed by the characters are sure to linger long after the last chapter has been read." — Annie Zaidi, author of Gulab and Love Stories #1-14
"A gripping and wonderfully observed account of domestic life and its many perils in Pakistan's early decades. The portrait of a marriage set in the minefield of an extended family, this novel offers us an extraordinarily nuanced view of a woman's life." — Faisal Devji, author of The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and The Temptation of Violence
"The personal and the political come together in this tale of a nation and a young, newly-married woman, as they push against horizons, stretch boundaries and make painful self-discoveries." — Rakhshanda Jalil, writer and translator
SADIA ABBAS grew up in Pakistan and Singapore. She received her PhD in English literature from Brown University, and she teaches in the English Department at Rutgers University-Newark. Sadia is Adjunct Professor at the Stavros Niarchos Center for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University. She loves long walks, the Mediterranean and, indiscriminately, all sorts of films.
Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry
From ₹ 248With a domestic market of around 70 billion dollars, the Indian fashion industry employs over 60 million people and accounts for a sizeable chunk of the country’s GDP. Despite this, models—the most visible yet voiceless actors of the industry—are rarely given the recognition they deserve. It is this overlooked demographic that forms the focus of Manjima Bhattacharjya’s remarkable study, bringing these women’s voices and perspectives to us.
Tracing the rise of the modelling and beauty industry from the 1960s to the present day, Bhattacharjya argues that modelling is work, and should be recognized as such. At the heart of the book lies a difficult question: should the industry be seen as objectifying women or as acknowledging their agency? Mannequin is also an individual’s personal exploration of the changing relationship between fashion and feminism.
“This book does an impossible thing — bridge the gap between fashion and feminism. Manjima Bhattacharjya offers us a sweeping history of India’s beauty industry, but more precious are the stories she brings from behind the catwalk — stories from small towns, stories of osmosis, desire, and ultimately, empowerment. “ —Tishani Doshi, poet and writer
“Mannequin attempts to decode the link between fashion and feminism and emerges as an important voice in the struggle toward empowerment through its intensive research and empathy.” —Nonita Kalra, editor, Harper’s Bazaar India
“An extraordinary and unputdownable deep dive into the fascinating world of Indian fashion.” —Sonia Faleiro, author of The Girl and Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars
Manjima Bhattacharjya is a feminist researcher, writer and activist. She has been part of the Indian women’s movement for over two decades. She holds a PhD in sociology. Her areas of specialization include gender and sexuality, and labour and the body. Her first book, an edited volume Sarpanch Sahib was long-listed for the Crossword Best Non-Fiction Book of 2009. She has written for several publications including the Times of India, ELLE and Info-change India. She lives and works out of Mumbai. Find her on Twitter @manzibarr.
In the Shadow of Freedom: Three Lives in Hitler’s Berlin and Gandhi’s India
From ₹ 395
In the early nineteen thirties Ayi Tendulkar, a young journalist from a small town in Maharashtra, travelled to Germany to study. Within a short time he married Eva Schubring, his professor's daughter. Soon after the short-lived marriage broke up, Tendulkar, by now also a well-known journalist in Berlin, met and fell lin love with the filmmaker Thea von Harbou, divorced wife of Fritz Lang, and soon to be Tendulkar's wife.Many years his senior, Thea became Tendulkar's support and mainstay in Germany, encouraging and supporting him in bringing other young Indian students to the country. Hitler's coming to power put an end to all that, and on Thea von Harbou's advice, Tendulkar returned to India, where he became involved in Gandhi's campaign of non-cooperation with the British and where, with Thea's consent, he soon married Indumati Gunaji, a Gandhian activist.Caught up in the whirlwind of Gandhi's activism, Indumati and Tendulkar spent several years in Indian prisions, being able to come together as a married couple only after their release -- managing thereby to comply with a condition that Gandhi had put to their marriage, that they remain apart for several years 'to serve the nation?. In this unique account, Indumati and Tendulkar's daughter, Laxmi Tendulkar Dhaul, traces the turbulent lives of her parents and Thea von Harbou against the backremove of Nazi Germany and Gandhi's India, using a wealth of documents, letters, newspaper articles and photographs to piece together the intermeshed histories of two women, the man they loved, their own growing friendship and two countries battling with violence and non-violence, fascism and colonialism.
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This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page "Few children are capable of writing about their parents' lives with empathy and clinical precision." --Somak Ghoshal, Live Mint
Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora
From ₹ 248
On a cold February night in 1991, a group of soldiers and officers of the Indian Army pushed their way into two villages in Kashmir, seeking out militants assumed to be hiding there. They pulled the men out of their homes and subjected many to torture, and the women to rape. According to village accounts, as many as 31 women were raped.Twenty-one years later, in 2012, the rape and murder of a young medical student in Delhi galvanized a protest movement so widespread and deep that it reached all corners of the world. In Kashmir, a group of young women, all in their twenties, were inspired to re-open the Kunan-Poshpora case, to revisit their history and to look at what had happened to the survivors of the 1991 mass rape. Through personal accounts of their journey, this book examines questions of justice, of stigma, of the responsibility of the state, and of the long-term impact of trauma.
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Dear Mrs. Naidu
From ₹ 235
Twelve-year-old Sarojini’s best friend, Amir, might not be her best friend any more. Ever since Amir moved out of the slum and started going to a posh private school, it seems like he and Sarojini have nothing in common. Then Sarojini finds out about the Right to Education, a law that might help her get a free seat at Amir’s school – or, better yet, convince him to come back to a new and improved version of the government school they went to together. As she struggles to keep her best friend, Sarojini gets help from some unexpected characters, including Deepti, a feisty classmate who lives at a construction site; Vimala Madam, a human rights lawyer who might also be an evil genius; and Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, a long-dead freedom fighter who becomes Sarojini’s secret pen pal. Told through letters to Mrs. Naidu, this is the story of how Sarojini learns to fight – for her friendship, her family, and her future.
Funny, sensitively-told and easy to relate to, this novel is perfect for YA fans who want to see a strong, flawed, compassionate brown girl at the centre of the stories they read.
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Funny, sensitively-told and easy to relate to, this novel is perfect for YA fans who want to see a strong, flawed, compassionate brown girl at the centre of the stories they read. In stock
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When the River Sleeps
From ₹ 235
Winner of the Hindu Prize for Fiction, 2015.A lone hunter, Vilie, sets out to find the river of his dreams: to wrest from its sleeping waters a stone that will give him untold power. It is a dangerous quest, for not only must he overcome unquiet spirits, vengeful sorceresses and daemons of the forest, there are men – armed with guns – on his trail. Easterine Kire’s novel transports the reader to the remote mountains of Nagaland, a place alive with natural wonder and supernatural enchantment. As Vilie treks through the forest on the trail of his dream, we are also swept along in this powerful narrative and walk alongside him in a world where the spirits are every bit as real as men and women, and where danger – or salvation – lies at every turn.Kire’s powerful narrative invites us into the lives and hearts of the people of Nagaland: the rituals and beliefs, their reverence for the land, their close-knit communities – the rhythms of a life lived in harmony with their natural surroundings. It is against this spellbinding backdrop that Kire tells the story of a solitary man driven by the mysterious pull of a dream, who must overcome weretigers and malignant widow-spirits in the search for his heart’s desire.
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This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page “...reminiscent of Marquez’s magic realism and Leslie Silko’s Native-American story-telling. At the end, though, this is a Naga story, unmistakably so, in its sense of place, time, and oral traditions.”
Paulus Pimomo, Central Washington University, USA
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The Collector’s Wife
₹ 495
Rukmini is married to the District Collector of a small town in Assam, and teaches in the local college. On the surface her life is settled and safe, living in the big beautiful bungalow on the hill above the cremation ground, seemingly untouched by the toil and sufferings of the common folk living 'below’. And yet there is an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that grips the town each time there is an 'incident’ and this has its repercussions on her life too—for Assam is in the grip of insurgency and it is this thread that runs like a dark river through the novel and forms its plot.The Assam students’ agitation of the 1970s and 1980s has grown into a full-blown agitation today with kidnappings, extortions, and political instability being the order of the day. The meaninglessness of the violence, the complexities that divide 'them’ and 'us’ and the point at which the two merge are all explored here and the final dénouement is horrifying and yet true–for there can be no other 'end’ to such a tale both in personal and political terms.
MITRA PHUKAN is a well-known Assamese writer and contributes regularly to prominent English dailies in the North East. She has recently edited a collection of Assamese short stories and published a number of books for children.
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MITRA PHUKAN is a well-known Assamese writer and contributes regularly to prominent English dailies in the North East. She has recently edited a collection of Assamese short stories and published a number of books for children.