Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India explores the implications of the energetic and, at times, acrimonious public debate among Indian authors and academics over the hegemonic role of Indian writing in English. From the 1960s the debate in India has centered on the role of the English language in perpetuating and maintaining the cultural and ideological aspects of imperialism. The debate received renewed attention following controversial claims by Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul on the inferior status of contemporary Indian-language literatures.
This volume :
offers nuanced analysis of the language, audience and canon debate;
provides a multivocal debate in which academics, writers and publishers are brought together in a multi-genre format (academic essay, interview, personal essay);
explores how translation mediates this debate and the complex choices that translation must entail.
Other Tongues is the first collective study by to bring together voices from differing national, linguistic and professional contexts in an examination of the nuances of this debate over language. By creating dialogue between different stakeholders seven scholars, three writers, and three publishers from India the volume brings to the forefront underrepresented aspects of Indian literary culture.
| Acknowledgements |
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vii | |
| Introduction: Problematizing Indian Literary Canons |
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ix | |
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I CANONIZING AUTHORS, AUTHORIZING CANONS |
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Embattled Canons: The Place of Diasporic Writing in Indian English Literatures |
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3 | (20) |
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Not Too Spicy: Exotic Mistresses of Cultural Translation in the Fiction of Chitra Divakaruni and Jhumpa Lahiri |
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23 | (30) |
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Code-Switching, Shape-Shifting, Asking Different Questions: South Asian Women's Language in and Across Nations |
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53 | (24) |
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One Bhasha Writer's Side of the Coin |
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77 | (12) |
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The Last Fifty Years: A Retrospective on the Calcutta Writers Workshop |
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89 | (8) |
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A South Asian American Writer's Perspective: An Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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97 | (10) |
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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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Nina Swamidoss McConigley |
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II PERSPECTIVES FROM THE WORLD OF PUBLISHING |
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India: The world of Publishing and Writing in 2007 |
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107 | (8) |
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Reaching New Audiences: A Conversation with Katha Press |
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115 | (8) |
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Publishing Translations: An Interview with Mini Krishnan, Oxford University Press |
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123 | (12) |
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III TRANSLATION AND TRANSCREATION |
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Translation and Globalization: Tamil Dalit Literature and Bama's Karukku |
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135 | (20) |
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Translation and the Vernacular: The Tamil Krishna Devotional "Alaippayuthey" |
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155 | (8) |
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163 | (6) |
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Real-Life Transfers: Reading Literature Through Translation |
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169 | (22) |
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Meeting Online: Publishing/Discussing Translation on the Web |
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191 | (14) |
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| Notes on the Contributors |
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205 | |
Nalini Iyer is Associate Professor of English at Seattle University. Bonnie Zare is Associate Professor of Womens Studies at the University of Wyoming.
Contributors: Urvashi Butalia, Arnab Chakladar, Geeta Dharmarajan, Chitra Divakaruni, Mahesh Elkunchwar, Nalini Iyer, Mini Krishnan, Nina Swamidoss McConigley, Christi Ann Merrill, Josna Rege, Pradip Sen, Lavina Dhingra Shankar, S. Shankar, Anushiya Sivanarayanan and Bonnie Zare.
