A grandmother's tattoos, the advent of Christianity, stories woven into fabrics, a tradition of orality, the imposition of a 'new' language, a history of war and conflict: all this and much more informs the writers and artists in this book. Filmmaker and writer Anungla Zoe Longkumer brings together here, for the first time, a remarkable set of stories, poems, first-person narratives and visuals that reflect the many facets of women's writing in Nagaland. Written in English, a language the Nagas - who had no tradition of written literature - made their own after the Church came to Nagaland, each piece speaks of women's many journeys to reclaim their pasts and understand their complex present.
ANUNGLA ZOE LONGKUMER can best be described as a free individual discovering her way through creative pursuits in music, writing, filmmaking and folk traditions. Having travelled and lived outside Nagaland for most of her life. she is currently based in Dimapur, Nagaland, where she freelances doing some content editing, music and filmmaking, and is also involved in ongoing research on folklore. She is the author of Folklore of Eastern Nagaland (2017), which contains translations of folktales folk songs and real life accounts, collected from the six tribes who inhabit the more remote parts of Eastern Nagaland.
Long before I knew the meaning of the word 'displaced', my life had already been displaced. My great-grandparents had already been told in their time to abandon all of their beliefs, for everything they had believed to be true was now 'wrong' or 'sinful' according to the new religion in the land, brought by the American Baptist Mission who arrived in the Naga Hills towards the end of the nineteenth century. There are no written records of what impact this had on the psyche of my ancestors, but I did meet a tattooed grandmother who remembered the excitement of the day she had received her first tattoos, but also how sad she had been on her first day at the new school in the village; how as a young girl she had been pointed out by the teacher in front of everybody for having a 'dirty' face. She had run off to the corner to rub off the marks from her face, only to realize they were permanent. She would from then on face condemnation daily, for wearing her clan tattoos on her face. Some things of the past still hurt.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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