MILESTONE BOOKS

A pick of Urvashi Butalia’s favourite books on ‘women’s writing’

Recasting Women: Essays in Colonial

History by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid: (Zubaan): A feminist classic, it explores the linkages between patriarchy and the political economy, law, religion and culture to re-imagine histories of colonialism.

Writing Caste, Writing Gender by Sharmila Rege, (Zubaan): The essays in the book talk about exclusion, violence, joy and the hope of an anti-caste world in the everyday - in universities, offices and even within the women’s movement.

Patriarchy, by V. Geetha (Stree): Geetha uses examples and theory to show how patriarchy is woven into the family and is covered up by culture and tradition.

Gendering Caste by Uma Chakravarti: (Stree): How are caste and gender linked? The book lays bare the relationship between the maintenance of caste and patriarchy.

The Truth About Me by A. Revathi (Penguin): One of India’s leading transgender women activist’s searing account of life as a a transperson. We Also Made History by Urmila Pawar and Meenakshi Moon (Stree): The book explores the socio-economic-cultural condition of Dalit women’s lives, their writings and their activisms.

Same Sex Love in India by Kidwai and Ruth Vanita (Palgrave Macmillan): It broke the stereotype that same-sex love did not exist in ‘Indian culture’.