Breaking free of a shackled existence

This year, three works of fiction stood out to me for their nuanced representations of female desires. Through lyrical prose, Dharini Bhaskar in her debut novel These, Our Bodies, Possessed by Light produces a literary experience that speaks of the conditioned nature of choices that ordain female existences across generations through a sensitive examination of mother-daughter relationships.

The English translation by Meena Kandasamy of Salma’s second novel, Women, Dreaming similarly presents strife-filled relationships among women across ages, all of whom are fighting their individual battles against patriarchal institutions of religion and child marriage in a small village in Tamil Nadu. Through the parallel lives of Parveen and Mehar, Salma weaves a narrative that explores the inner workings of the minds of these women as they go through life with dreams of breaking away from their shackled existences.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s The First Woman, also set in a small village, but in Uganda, plays out against the political backdrop of Idi Amin’s dictatorship. In her search for her absent mother, Kirabo navigates life through stories and with a thirst for knowledge beyond what is prescribed for a girl. The story is radically feminist in the ways in which it describes the female body coming into its own. All three novels experiment with language and ways of storytelling that present a Global South-oriented female gaze.