TY  - BOOK
AU  - Pawar,Urmila
AU  - Pandit,Maya
AU  - Sonalkar,Wandana
TI  - The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman's Memoirs 
SN  - 9780231149013
U1  - 891.4/687109 22
PY  - 2009///]
CY  - New York, NY : 
PB  - Columbia University Press, 
KW  - Authors, Marathi
KW  - 20th century
KW  - Biography
KW  - Dalits
KW  - India
KW  - Maharashtra
KW  - Political activists
KW  - Women
KW  - HISTORY / Asia / India & South Asia
KW  - bisacsh
N1  - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Preface --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; A Note on Kinship Terms --; One --; Two --; Three --; Four --; Five --; Six --; Seven --; Eight --; Nine --; Ten --; Twelve --; Notes --; Glossary --; Readers' Reactions To Aaydan; restricted access; Issued also in print
N2  - "My mother used to weave aaydans, the Marathi generic term for all things made from bamboo. I find that her act of weaving and my act of writing are organically linked. The weave is similar. It is the weave of pain, suffering, and agony that links us."Activist and award-winning writer Urmila Pawar recounts three generations of Dalit women who struggled to overcome the burden of their caste. Dalits, or untouchables, make up India's poorest class. Forbidden from performing anything but the most undesirable and unsanitary duties, for years Dalits were believed to be racially inferior and polluted by nature and were therefore forced to live in isolated communities.Pawar grew up on the rugged Konkan coast, near Mumbai, where the Mahar Dalits were housed in the center of the village so the upper castes could summon them at any time. As Pawar writes, "the community grew up with a sense of perpetual insecurity, fearing that they could be attacked from all four sides in times of conflict. That is why there has always been a tendency in our people to shrink within ourselves like a tortoise and proceed at a snail's pace." Pawar eventually left Konkan for Mumbai, where she fought for Dalit rights and became a major figure in the Dalit literary movement. Though she writes in Marathi, she has found fame in all of India. In this frank and intimate memoir, Pawar not only shares her tireless effort to surmount hideous personal tragedy but also conveys the excitement of an awakening consciousness during a time of profound political and social change
UR  - https://doi.org/10.7312/pawa14900
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780231520577
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780231520577/original
ER  -