The shapes of silence
Subtitle: writing by women of colour and the politics of testimony
By: Proma Tagore
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Montreal; Ithaca, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 185
ISBN-13: 9780773534551
Subjects: Women authors; Minority authors; Women and literature; Reportage literature; History and criticism; Prose literature; Women in literature
Description: "The Shapes of Silence examines fiction, memoir, and autobiographical writing by marginalized women whose stories give voice to the gendered dimensions of colonial violence. Drawing from the insights of subaltern studies and postcolonial feminisms, Proma Tagore brings together the work of a diverse group of writers - Toni Morrison, Shani Mootoo, Louise Erdrich, M.K. Indira, Rashsundari Debi, and Mahasweta Devi. She focuses on the visceral, affective nature of their narratives and explores the way that personal and historical trauma, initially silenced, may be recorded across generations, as well as across complex national, racial, gender, and sexual lines. In emphasizing situations that cannot be summed up by clearly nameable, bounded moments of trauma, The Shapes of Silence identifies important shifts in how testimonial literature is theorized, arguing for an understanding of writing and storytelling by women of colour as crucial counter-narratives to what official colonial historicizing has left out."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [167]-177) and index.
Table of contents: title: Silence, speech, voice, and the politics of testimony; title: Witnessing as testimony : Toni Morrison's The bluest eye and Shani Mootoo's Cereus blooms at night; title: Testimonial remembrance and historical narration : Louise Erdrich's Tracks and M.K. Indira's Phaniyamma; title: Testimony, translation, and subalternity : Rashsundari Debi's Amar Jiban and Mahasweta Devi's Imaginary maps; title: Witnessing, remembrance, and resistance : living and embodied archives.