Truth Tales: Contemporary Stories by Women Writers of India [Paperback]

Laura Kalpakian (Editor), Meena Alexander (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 155861012X | ISBN-13: 978-1558610125 | Publication Date: January 1, 1993

   The rich popular tradition of India's women writers is finally available in this collection of short stories translated from seven of the country's languages. The writers and their heroines reflect the complex mosaic of Indian life-they are old and young, rural and urban, rich and poor. Here we meet Muniyakka, called “walkie-talkie” because she mutters to herself; Shakun, the dollmaker, an exploited artist who needs to feel that others depend on her; and Jashoda, professional mother to children of the rich, from Mahasveta Devi’s acknowledged masterpiece “The Wet Nurse.” These stories "are dense with thsoe customs, manners, and objects that usually remain locked within regional languages," wrote Anita Desai in the New York Review of  Books. Meena Alexander's thoughtful introduction places the stories and the writers in the context of modern India.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The stories here, unusual in that six out of seven were originally written in six different Indian dialects rather than in English, reflect a correspondingly broad range of perceptions. "The Wet-Nurse," a many-layered, nearly mythic tale, concerns a woman who is elevated and then ruined by traditionally honored aspects of motherhood. In "The Dolls," a successful artisan resents the responsibility she has assumed for the widow and son of the man she once loved. Her attempts to free herself force her to realize that their dependence has become her substitute for love. The narrator of "Tragedy, in a Minor Key" is a bracingly irreverent schoolgirl who sees through the shallow ambitions of her bourgeois peers. But, she wonders, is she exchanging a comfortable future for a solitary existence, "approaching middle age . . . dissatisfied, obstinate . . . and bitter." "Midnight Soldiers," the only original English-language story, is a potent tale of the cycle of misery set in motion by poverty and oppression. The narrator, caught in a life of grueling labor, with a demoralized husband and ailing children, experiences her greatest tragedy at the hands of a well-meaning family planner. Compelling in their artistic power and moral integrity, these tales merit reading and re-reading. Kali for Women is a feminist publishing house in New Delhi.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Originally published by a New Delhi feminist publisher called Kali for Women, these seven tales by seven authors are drawn from seven Indian languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, and English. Throughout, we experience the permeating essence of being a woman (whether young, middle-aged, or old) in India's paradoxical, discordant maelstrom, with interest-arousing details on India's caste/class system, occupations, and geography. The collection is of uneven merit, but three stories are especially noteworthy--"The Wet-Nurse," "Midnight Soldiers," and "Tiny's Granny." The introduction to Truth Tales, which appeared in India in 1986 and in England in 1987, is helpful but weightily academic and too explicative, and the glossary is useful but incomplete. Notes on writers are also included.
- Glenn O. Carey, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY (January 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155861012X
• ISBN-13: 978-1558610125
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,056,513 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Different women, different lives, August 17, 2000

By 

Debali Mookerjea - See all my reviews

This review is from: Truth Tales: Contemporary Stories by Women Writers of India (Paperback)

The _Truth Tales_, originally published by Kali for Women, is an inaugural anthology of Indian women's writings, and serves a fitting prelude to the two-volume collection _Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present_ also published by the Feminist Press, in 1991. The seven short stories in the ensemble--six in English translation from regional languages Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Urdu, and the seventh an English original--provide a miniature sample of contemporary fiction by distinguished writers.

Cutting across lines of class, religion and generation, the plots revolve around women negotiating their survival in a difficult world. The deep feminist engagement of the writings derives from the authors' inquiries into diverse topical issues of social injustice, sexuality, mandates of culture, and the material struggle for many living on the frayed edges of society to stay alive. Mahasweta Devi's story "The Wet Nurse" maps the intersection of sexuality and survival in a context outside of prostitution; Jashoda's entire body advances her career as a wet nurse, but eventually ruptures under protracted abuse. Whether victims or survivors, the women labor to expand their life-chances. In Suniti Aphale's "The Dolls," Shakun's financial resources and solitude draw her into a vortex of parasitic relations; while her usefulness sustains her sense of self-worth and compensates her want of social contact, it also authorizes her control over those dependent lives.

The Truth Tales offers a series of memorable footages on women's lives narrated with simplicity, sometimes with humor, and with sympathy and sadness but always with restraint. There are no morals attached to the ends and despite the palpable anger suffusing some of them, the socio-political critique seldom interferes with the pleasure of reading a good story. However, most but not all the stories are of a uniformly superior caliber. But whether it is due to the untranslatability of systems of meaning and regional particularities into another language it is difficult to assess. Meena Alexander's introduction provides a crisp but somewhat simplistic contour of the social and cultural contexts germane to the stories for unfamiliar readers. Together with its sequel _The Slate of Life_, the _Truth Tales_ is a valuable addition to the archives of women's writings.