Download or read book Women and Hinduism in Anita Rau Badami s The Hero s Walk written by Peggy Meier and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2006-12-16 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (Anglistik), course: Canadian-Asian Fiction, language: English, abstract: Anita Rau Badami’s novel The Hero’s Walk is about an Indian Brahmin family finding its way within the Hindu tradition at the end of the twentieth century. Still believing in conventional attitudes but also being confronted with contemporary problems they have to adapt themselves and reconsider their opinions about what is important in life. Though it is Sripathi Rao, the 52-year-old family father, who is in the centre of the story the complex characters of five female family members are – for the most part – shown very detailed. In Badami’s very emotive novel these five women represent four generations and different opinions about life, Hinduism and femininity. In the following paper the focus will be on these women and their attitudes towards Hinduism. In the first part the traditional role of women in Hindu culture will be described. To get a deeper insight into Badami’s novel it is important to know what was expected from girls, married and unmarried women but also from widows in past centuries, and which important changes took place. In the second part of this paper the female characters of The Hero’s Walk will be analysed. Each character will be examined concerning her position on Hindu religion and in how far she distances herself from the traditional role. In the course of this, the conflicts between them which result from the different opinions will be examined, too.
Download or read book The Hero s Walk written by Anita Rau Badami and published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2000 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the release of Anita Rau Badami's critically acclaimed first novel, Tamarind Mem, it was evident a promising new talent had joined the Canadian literary community. Her dazzling literary follow-up is The Hero's Walk, a novel teeming with the author's trademark tumble of the haphazard beauty, wreckage and folly of ordinary lives. Set in the dusty seaside town of Toturpuram on the Bay of Bengal, The Hero's Walk traces the terrain of family and forgiveness through the lives of an exuberant cast of characters bewildered by the rapid pace of change in today's India. Each member of the Rao family pits his or her chance at personal fulfillment against the conventions of a crumbling caste and class system. Anita Rau Badami explains that "The Hero's Walk is a novel about so many things: loss, disappointment, choices and the importance of coming to terms with yourself and the circumstances of your life without losing the dignity embedded in all of us. At one level it is about heroism - not the hero of the classic epic, those enormous god-sized heroes - but my fascination with the day-to-day heroes and the heroism that's needed to survive all the unexpected disasters and pitfalls of life."
Download or read book Tamarind Woman written by Anita Rau Badami and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2004-03-02 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing up in India, Kamini often found herself struggling to be noticed: noticed by her beloved, storytelling father, whose position as a railway officer took him away from home for long stretches of time; and noticed by her distant, distracted mother, Saroja, whose biting remarks earned her the nickname Tamarind Woman—and whose frequent disappearances while her husband was away led to whispers of dalliances and affairs. Now Kamini is grown, living in Canada in a sort of self-imposed exile from her eccentric family and all the turmoil they represent. After her father’s death, her mother embarks upon a solo journey across India by train— because what is the use of a lifetime railway pass if she doesn’t use it? The trip brings the past rushing back for Saroja and Kamini—as both are forced to confront their dreams, disappointments, and long-guarded secrets.
Download or read book Tamarind Mem written by Anita Rau Badami and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-01-29 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A beautiful and brilliant portrait of two generations of women. Set in India’s railway colonies, this is the story of Kamini and her mother Saroja, nicknamed Tamarind Mem due to her sour tongue. While in Canada beginning her graduate studies, Kamini receives a postcard from her mother saying she has sold their home and is travelling through India. Both are forced into the past to confront their dreams and losses and to explore the love that binds mothers and daughters everywhere.
Download or read book The Hero s Walk written by Anita Rau Badami and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2002-02-26 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a small, dusty town in India, Sripathi Rao struggles as a copywriter to keep his family afloat in their crumbling ancestral home. But his mother berates him for not becoming a lawyer, his son prefers social protest to work, his unmarried sister seethes with repressed desire, and his wife, though subservient, blames him for refusing to communicate with their daughter Maya, who defied tradition, rejecting her proper Brahmin fiancé for a Caucasian husband. Then a phone call brings tragedy: Maya and her husband have been killed in an accident leaving Sripathi to be their daughter’s guardian. Sripathi reluctantly travels to Vancouver to bring the child back to India. Nandana has not spoken a word since her parents’ death. Terrified, she resists her distant grandfather. Filled with guilt about his daughter but unable to express his feelings, Sripathi finds everything in his life falling apart. But with Nandana’s arrival, his world slowly, unexpectedly, finds new hope. The Hero’s Walk is a remarkably intimate novel that fills the senses with the unique textures of India. With humor and keen insight, Anita Rau Badami draws us into her story of the graceful heroism of the ordinary.
Download or read book Can You Hear the Nightbird Call written by Anita Rau Badami and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-03-05 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Anita Rau Badami's acclaimed novel Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? chronicles the stories of three women, linked in love and tragedy, over a span of fifty years, sweeping from the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 to the explosion of Air India flight 182 off the coast of Ireland in 1985. Alive with Badami's warmth and humanity, and brimming with the daily sights and sounds of both Canada and India, this novel brilliantly conveys the tumultuous effects of the past on new immigrants, and the ways in which memory and myth, the personal and the political, become heartrendingly connected.
Download or read book Tell it to the Trees written by Anita Rau Badami and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2011 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anu Krishnan, seeking refuge from city life, becomes a tenant of the seemingly happy, tightly-knit Dharma family in a small northern town in B.C. But the Dharma family holds secrets which begin to spill out, brought on by Anu's presence, and leading to tragic consequences.!
Download or read book Funny Boy written by Shyam Selvadurai and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable debut novel, a boy’s bittersweet passage to maturity and sexual awakening is set against escalating political tensions in Sri Lanka, during the seven years leading up to the 1983 riots. Arjie Chelvaratnam is a Tamil boy growing up in an extended family in Colombo. It is through his eyes that the story unfolds and we meet a delightful, sometimes eccentric cast of characters. Arjie’s journey from the luminous simplicity of childhood days into the more intricately shaded world of adults – with its secrets, its injustices, and its capacity for violence – is a memorable one, as time and time again the true longings of the human heart are held against the way things are.
Download or read book The Parcel written by Anosh Irani and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and for the Governor General's Literary Award, this powerful new work, about a transgender sex worker in the red-light district of Bombay who is given an unexpected task, is a gripping literary page-turner--difficult and moving, surprising and tender. Anosh Irani's best novel yet, and his first with Knopf Canada. The Parcel's astonishing heart, soul and unforgettable voice is Madhu--born a boy, but a eunuch by choice--who has spent most of her life in a close-knit clan of transgender sex workers in Kamathipura, the notorious red-light district of Bombay. Madhu identifies herself as a "hijra"--a person belonging to the third sex, neither here nor there, man nor woman. Now, at 40, she has moved away from prostitution, her trade since her teens, and is forced to beg to support the charismatic head of the hijra clan, Gurumai. One day Madhu receives a call from Padma Madam, the most feared brothel owner in the district: a "parcel" has arrived--a young girl from the provinces, betrayed and trafficked by her aunt--and Madhu must prepare it for its fate. Despite Madhu's reluctance, she is forced to take the job by Gurumai. As Madhu's emotions spiral out of control, her past comes back to haunt her, threatening to unravel a lifetime's work and identity. This is a dark, devastating but ultimately redemptive novel that promises to be one of the most talked-about publications of the year.
Download or read book Empathy and the Novel written by Suzanne Keen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-19 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does empathy felt while reading fiction actually cultivate a sense of connection, leading to altruistic actions on behalf of real others? Empathy and the Novel presents a comprehensive account of the relationships among novel reading, empathy, and altruism. Drawing on psychology, narrative theory, neuroscience, literary history, philosophy, and recent scholarship in discourse processing, Keen brings together resources and challenges for the literary study of empathy and the psychological study of fiction reading. Empathy robustly enters into affective responses to fiction, yet its role in shaping the behavior of emotional readers has been debated for three centuries. Keen surveys these debates and illustrates the techniques that invite empathetic response. She argues that the perception of fictiveness increases the likelihood of readers' empathy in part by releasing them from the guarded responses necessitated by the demands of real others. Narrative empathy is a strategy and subject of contemporary novelists from around the world, writers who tacitly endorse the potential universality of human emotions when they call upon their readers' empathy. If narrative empathy is to be taken seriously, Keen suggests, then women's reading and responses to popular fiction occupy a central position in literary inquiry, and cognitive literary studies should extend its range beyond canonical novels. In short, Keen's study extends the playing field for literature practitioners, causing it to resemble more closely that wide open landscape inhabited by readers.
Download or read book Women s Studies Index 2001 written by G. K. Hall and Co. Staff and published by G. K. Hall. This book was released on 2002-08 with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lessons In Forgetting written by Anita Nair and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-06-22 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Here, indeed, is a novel well worth remembering'-India Today 'This is Nair's fourth book and there is no doubt about one thing: she gets better with each one. It's a story told at an unhurried pace by an accomplished writer'-The Hindu Literary Review Meera is happily submerged in the role of corporate wife and writer of cookbooks. Then, one day, her husband fails to come home. Overnight, she becomes responsible not just for her children Nayantara and Nikhil, but also her mother Saro, her grandmother Lily, and the running of Lilac House, their rambling old family home in Bangalore. Professor J.A. Krishnamurthy or Jak, cyclone studies expert, survivor of one marriage and several other encounters, has only recently returned from America. In a bedroom in his house lies his nineteen-year-old daughter Smriti, a tragic embodiment of memory and past violence. What happened on her holiday in the small beachside town in Tamil Nadu to make her so? The police will not help, Smriti's friends have vanished, and a wall of silence and fear surrounds the incident. But Jak cannot rest till he gets to the truth. By a series of coincidences, Meera and Jak find their lives turning and twisting together, with the unpredictability and sheer inevitability of a cyclone. And as the days pass, fresh beginnings appear where there seemed to be only endings. Delicately crafted and beautifully told, Lessons in Forgetting is a heartwarming story of redemption, forgiveness and second chances.
Download or read book Encyclopaedia of Women Biography written by Nagendra Kr Singh and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Family Matters written by Rohinton Mistry and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in Bombay in the mid-1990s, Family Matters tells a story of familial love and obligation, of personal and political corruption, of the demands of tradition and the possibilities for compassion. Nariman Vakeel, the patriarch of a small discordant family, is beset by Parkinson’s and haunted by memories of his past. He lives with his two middle-aged stepchildren, Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent. But the burden of the illness worsens the already strained family relationships. Soon, their sweet-tempered half-sister, Roxana, is forced to assume sole responsibility for her bedridden father. And Roxana’s husband, besieged by financial worries, devises a scheme of deception involving his eccentric employer at a sporting goods store, setting in motion a series of events that leads to the narrative’s moving outcome. Family Matters has all the richness, the gentle humour, and the narrative sweep that have earned Mistry the highest of accolades around the world.
Download or read book G K Hall Women s Studies Index written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 894 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Diaspora Criticism written by Sudesh Mishra and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-27 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first introduction to the field of Diaspora criticism that serves both as a timely guide and a rigorous critique. Diaspora criticism takes the concept 'diaspora' as its object of inquiry and provides a framework for discussing displaced communities in a way that takes contemporary social, cultural and economic pressures into account. It also offers an alternative to Postcolonial Studies. This book is the first to provide an accessible overview of the critical trends in Diaspora criticism and to critically evaluate the major Diaspora critics and their models, with the aim of adding to the debate on methodology.
Download or read book Our Lady of Alice Bhatti written by Mohammed Hanif and published by Bond Street Books. This book was released on 2012-05-29 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the universally acclaimed debut novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes: a subversive, often shockingly funny new novel set in steaming Karachi, about second chances, thwarted ambitions, and love in the most unlikely places. The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments need a miracle, and Alice Bhatti may be just what they're looking for. She's the new junior nurse, but that's the only thing ordinary about her. Her father is a part-time healer in the French Colony, Karachi's Christian slum--and it seems she has inherited his part-time gift. With a bit of begrudging but inspired improvisation, Alice brings succour to the patients lining the hospital's corridors. Yet, a Christian in an Islamic world, she is ensnared in the red tape of hospital bureaucracy, trapped by the caste system, and torn between her duty to her patients, her father, and her husband--an apprentice to the nefarious "Gentlemen's Squad" of the police, and about to plunge them both into a situation so dangerous that perhaps not even a miracle can save them. But, of course, Alice Bhatti is no ordinary nurse...
