Burn the Sari or Save the Sari: Dress as a Form of Action in two Feminist Poems

Authors

  • Bonnie Zare
  • Afsar Mohammad University of Texas, Austin

Keywords:

poetry, feminism, dalit literature, Telugu literature, sari, clothing traditions of India, modesty, chastity

Abstract

From ancient times to the present, the image of the Indian woman has been synonymous with a woman draped in a sari. This highly visible garment has been associated with marriage, fertility, and good fortune as well as modesty and virtue. In recent decades, two Telugu poems have used the sari to make a statement about women’s lives, drawing upon a familiar material item to advance the cause of social justice. In this study, we investigate their counter claims and the ways the poems intervene in Brahmin-influenced discourse about purity, chastity, and dress. In particular, while Jayaprabha’s “Burn the Sari” (1988) paints the sari as inseparable from confining gender norms and rejects the dress, Jupaka Subadra’s “Kongu, No Sentry on my Bosom” (1997) answers back, reclaiming the sari from a dalit manual laborer’s perspective.

Author Biographies

Bonnie Zare

Bonnie Zare is an Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Wyoming. She is co-editor, with Nalini Iyer, of Other Tongues: Rethinking the Language Debates in India, and her work, focusing on discourses of identity, feminism and activism in contemporary Indian women’s literature and art has appeared in the International Journal of Cultural Studies, the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and South Asian Review among others. Zare has designed the courses “Gender and Sexuality in Postcolonial Writing,” “Women of India: Lives and Literatures” and “India overseas: Social Justice in Culture and Practice.” She is also Founder of the Keep Girls in School Project, which raises funds for abandoned children in Andhra Pradesh.

Afsar Mohammad, University of Texas, Austin

Afsar Mohammad teaches South Asian religions and literatures at the University of Texas at Austin. He teaches courses on modern Indian writing and Telugu language. Afsar has a doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a published poet and literary critic in his home language Telugu from India. His book on sainthood narratives in South India will be coming out soon from the Oxford University Press, USA. Afsar is now working on various translations of Muslim writing from Telugu into English.

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Published

2012-12-05

Issue

Vol. 43 No. 2 (2012): April 2012

Section

Articles

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