Customer Reviews

Bitter Soil

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BITTER SOIL contains four of Mahasweta Devi's most compelling stories--works which accent her political and economic humanism in ways which will surprise those who think of her as a feminist writer. Three of the stories are available elsewhere, but Ipsita Chanda's excellent translations give readers a fuller experience of the Bengali text's tone than the previous translations do. "Little Ones," which has appeared as "Children," recreates the experience of a kindhearted social worker overwhelmed by the devastation his government has wreaked on the Agaria, a small indigenous tribe. "Seeds," which Mahasweta herself has translated elsewhere as "Paddy Seeds," is even more supple and jagged in Ipsita Chanda's translation than in the author's own fine English. "Seeds" puts readers inside the mind of wily old Dulan Ganju as he slowly transforms from low-caste trickster to activist, avenging the murder of his son. "The Witch," which is also in Kalpana Bardhan's collection, is set near the same Hesadi village as "Seeds." It features the tribal Oraon midwife Sanichari as representative of the way village life should be, and the teacher, Mathur, as the "misfit" who quietly helps villagers abandon superstition. "Salt," which has not been translated previously, uses the trope of a rogue elephant to represent an economic and governmental system which exploits and destroys anyone who tries to work around its inequities. Mahasweta Devi is best known for her harrowing climactic symbols. In the works for which she is most famous in this country, these symbols generally involve rape of an innocent and heroic woman. In the stories in BITTER SOIL, iconography involving fertility and sexual violence applies to male and female protagonists alike. But it is not these multi-level, dread-inspiring icons which most impress me. Rather, it is the moments of subtle conversation, the quicksilver moments where understanding comes so fully in a single word that reasoning looks like intuition. Her primary interests are in the tribal (adivasi) cultures which she portrays in these stories. One warning for American audiences: Mahasweta Devi spares no one; her works were intended to move her Bengali readers to action. If they instead move American readers to pity or smugness, they fail. So pay special attention to the brief appearances of well-meaning bureaucrats and westernized intellectuals. They get an interesting mixture of appreciation and scorn.