Bama: The Writer of a Counter Culture

Bama is a Tamil Dalit feminist writer and novelist. Her autobiographical novel Karukku, which chronicles the joys and sorrows experienced by Dalit Christians in Tamil Nadu, catapulted her to fame. As a prolific writer, she has experimented with all kinds of genres, such as novels, short stories, poems, autobiographical writing, children’s literature, and discursive essays. This book presents a dedicated study of Bama’s work as a writer and activist and situates her in the context of Dalit literature in general and Tamil Dalit literature in particular. It recognises Bama as writer of great relevance especially in bringing to the fore the problematics of Dalit issues and their possible modes of aesthetic articulation through a new Dalit language.

Part of the Writer in Context series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Dalit Literature, Dalit Studies, Tamil literature, English literature, comparative literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, Green studies. global south studies and translation studies.

Raj Kumar is Professor in the Department of English, Delhi University. His book, Dalit Personal Narratives: Reading Caste, Nation and Identity has been published by Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi in 2010. His English translation of Akhila Naik’s Bheda, the first Odia Dalit novel is published in 2017. His book Dalit Literature and Criticism was published in 2019.

S. Armstrong is Professor and Head, Centre for Endangered Languages, University of Madras, Chennai. He is a former Fulbright and Shastri Indo-Canadian Fellow and authored Voice of the Voiceless (2013) and edited three books. He is currently working on Blue Humanities and Literatures.