Secrecy and Sapphic Modernism: Reading Romans À Clef Between the Wars (2012)

Hilton, Lisa

Bolin, Alice

Bolin, Alice

Devika, J

This ground-breaking anthology brings together 38 short stories culled from<br>over a century of writing by Muslim women from colonial and postcolonial<br>India. Selected from different Indian languages, it includes fascinating stories<br>by celebrated and emerging authors. It also excavates stories from early women's<br>journals such as Tehzeeb-e-Niswan, Saogat, and Indian Ladies' Magazine.<br>Written in different styles, modes, and forms, the stories deconstruct cultural<br>essentialism often involved in imagining Muslim womanhood and reflect upon<br>the diversity of imagined and lived experiences. They challenge sundry labels, <br>explore intersections of identities, debunk several myths, and demonstrate how<br>the authors navigate the world of voices and silences. Ranging from imaginary<br>geographies to topographies of Muslim ghettos, most of these powerful stories<br>narrate the spaces that Muslim women inhabit, and delineate their courage, <br>desires, freedom, struggle, and myriad subjectivities.

McCabe, Susan