The Silence That Speaks: Short Stories by Indian Muslim Women - Hardcover

by Haris Qadeer (Editor)

This ground-breaking anthology brings together 38 short stories culled from
over a century of writing by Muslim women from colonial and postcolonial
India. Selected from different Indian languages, it includes fascinating stories
by celebrated and emerging authors. It also excavates stories from early women's
journals such as Tehzeeb-e-Niswan, Saogat, and Indian Ladies' Magazine.
Written in different styles, modes, and forms, the stories deconstruct cultural
essentialism often involved in imagining Muslim womanhood and reflect upon
the diversity of imagined and lived experiences. They challenge sundry labels,
explore intersections of identities, debunk several myths, and demonstrate how
the authors navigate the world of voices and silences. Ranging from imaginary
geographies to topographies of Muslim ghettos, most of these powerful stories
narrate the spaces that Muslim women inhabit, and delineate their courage,
desires, freedom, struggle, and myriad subjectivities.

Author Biography

Haris Qadeer, Assistant Professor, English Department, Delhi University

Haris Qadeer teaches at the Department of English, University of Delhi, India. He was a UGC-DAAD visiting fellow to the Department of English, Potsdam University, Germany (2019), and the Charles Wallace Visiting fellowship to the King's College, London, UK (2022). He has co-edited the special issue of Thesis Eleven on Postcolonial World Literature and Sultana's Sisters: Genre, Genre, and Genealogy in South Asian Muslim Women's Fiction (2021). His forthcoming projects include Medical Maladies: Stories on Disease and Cure from Indian Languages (2022) and an English translation of a Hindi play.