{"id":285966,"date":"2011-07-08T16:15:19","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T16:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/07\/08\/asian-anthologies-part-ii-the-lotus-singers-short-stories-from-contemporary-south-asia\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:17:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:17:06","slug":"asian-anthologies-part-ii-the-lotus-singers-short-stories-from-contemporary-south-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/07\/08\/asian-anthologies-part-ii-the-lotus-singers-short-stories-from-contemporary-south-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian Anthologies, Part II: The Lotus Singers, Short Stories from Contemporary South Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lotus Eaters: Short Stories from Contemporary South Asia<\/em>
\nEdited by Trevor Carolan
\nForeword by Urvashi Butalia<\/p>\n

To escape from poverty a woman sells of her body in order to get by.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve heard this story before, haven\u2019t you? Actually, you haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Niaz Zaman of Bangladesh\u2019s story \u201cThe Daily Woman\u201d is part of one of the new Asian anthologies out by Cheng and Tsui Company<\/a> and edited, like Another Kind of Paradise<\/em>, by Trevor Carolan. This anthology primarily features short stories from the countries of India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, but also Bhutan, Nepal, and the Maldives. <\/p>\n

Playing on the region\u2019s rich literary culture and history, old forms take new life. In Zaman\u2019s story a house worker, a daily woman, reflects back on a choice she made before she was able to find her job. Her husband was sick and the babies came early. What is the price of surviving in Bangladesh? \u201cHow hungry she had been, and the two babies crying together were enough to make her go mad.\u201d <\/p>\n

And then the Amrikans<\/em> came, pinkish-white people who were willing to solve her problem and take it away, a man and a woman. \u201cWhite hair and wrinkles near her eyes. And thin. No breasts. No behind. Flat as a dried fish.\u201d The narrator is not impressed, but it would be easier if there were less mouths to feed. So she made the deal and the Amrikans<\/em> drove away.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe sighed and drank the last of her tea. So that was what a Bangladeshi girl child was worth. Two brass bangles. She picked up the boy. Would he have been worth four brass bangles?\u201d<\/p>\n

Usha Yadav, an Indian writer, also takes a new twist on an old problem. In \u201cLibations,\u201d when the widow Saptadal dies during the festival of Holi, her fellow widows travel from door to door to seek men willing to arrange the burial rites for her funeral. When no one can be found three young women, going outside tradition, help the widows perform the burial themselves. <\/p>\n

In a subtle (in terms of the story) and less than subtle (in verbatim) commentary on social customs and class divisions, Yadav writes \u201cNot an ordinary funeral procession, this was also at once a protest march by women against a selfish and insensitive patriarchy which shadowed the lives of women from the beginning to the end: destroying the female embryo after the ultrasound report and forbidding women to perform the last rites of the dead. At least that is how it seemed to this small group.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lotus Singers<\/em> is an interesting and powerful collection and for those looking for a varied choice of reading and contemporary topics, the anthology has a lot to offer. While on the whole the stories are not as uplifting and positive as Carolan\u2019s other anthology Another Kind of Paradise<\/em>, their gritty darkness and at times black introspection give a telling look into South Asian life. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Lotus Eaters: Short Stories from Contemporary South Asia Edited by Trevor Carolan Foreword by Urvashi Butalia To escape from poverty a woman sells of her body in order to get by. You\u2019ve heard this story before, haven\u2019t you? Actually, you haven\u2019t. Niaz Zaman of Bangladesh\u2019s story \u201cThe Daily Woman\u201d is part of one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[41476,41466,40896,41496,41506,23086],"class_list":["post-285966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-asian-anthology","tag-asian-literature","tag-julianna-romanazzi","tag-short-stories","tag-trevor-carolan","tag-urvashi-butalia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343486,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285966\/revisions\/343486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}