Three Studies on Ashapurna Devi (Set of 3 Books)

FREE Delivery
Express Shipping
$50.62
$75
(10% + 25% off)
This Set Consists of 3 Books
1.The Mystery That is Woman
2.Ashapurna Devi and Feminist
3.Breaking the Silence
Express Shipping: Guaranteed Dispatch in 24 hours
Quantity
Delivery Ships in 1-3 days
Item Code: HAY498
Author: Sushma Kulshreshtha, Pradyumna Pandey, P.B Acharya
Publisher: Various Publishers
Language: English
Edition: 2010 to 2019
ISBN: 9780198099994 9789386473424
Pages: 930 (B/W Illustrations)
Cover: HARDCOVER/ PAPERBACK
Other Details 9.00x6.00 inch
Weight 1.06 kg
Fully insured
Fully insured
Shipped to 153 countries
Shipped to 153 countries
More than 1M+ customers worldwide
More than 1M+ customers worldwide
100% Made in India
100% Made in India
23 years in business
23 years in business
Book Description
This bundle consists of three books. To know more about each individual title, click on the images below:
Three Studies on Ashapurna Devi
Ashapurna Devi
The Mystery That is Woman
Breaking the Silence
Ashapurna Devi and Feminist Consciousness in Bengal (A Bio - Critical Reading)
About the Book

Ashapurna Devi, one of the foremost Indian women writers, was born in colonial Bengal in 1909. She lived until 1995, witnessing the transitions and transformations that took place in society, culture, and family life during the colonial times and after India gained political independence. Recognized and honoured for her novels, short stories, and poetry in Bengali, Ashapurna wrote more than 240 novels, over 2,000 stories, and 62 books for children, along with many other unpublished essays and letters. Her stories are woven around her familiar world but are universal in appeal. Through her writings, Ashapurna casts an ironical eye on the patriarchal social norms.

Exploring Ashapurna's correspondence, essays, and interviews, this book opens new dimensions to our understanding of her writings. Her non-fiction works, which reveal her concern with the condition of women in society and their role in the family, help us to better understand the mind and art of one of the finest writers of our time.

 

About the Author

Dipannita Datta is a researcher. She teaches at the Centre for Studies in Book Publishing, University of Calcutta, and also at the Centre for Translation of Indian Literatures, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

 

Preface

This volume pays homage to Ashapurna Devi, the Indian activist writer, who silently lived her life thinking and writing for women and working towards human solidarity.

Here is an attempt to read the feminist insights of Ashapurna Devi (1909-1995) through a selection of her fiction and non- fiction writings, particularly as it relates to an understanding of her impressive agency as a writer; for certainly Ashapurna wields an agency that enables her to strategically emphasize and minimize certain dimensions of her position as an Indian woman for specific socio-cultural purposes. To develop this understanding, an engagement with her writings is vital. For me the interest in Ashapurna started to pick up when I first met her for an interview on 9 March 1992 at her Garia residence, Calcutta (now Kolkata). I must admit that since then I have managed to read only some of her works.

Ashapuma Devi's birth centenary (2009-10) celebration brought, in general, a new impulse to understand her works and that ensued in a spate of publications. I, too, became enthusiastic once again. Initially, a brief biographical volume to fit in within the centenary year publications was conceptualized. That did not happen simply because Ashapurna is too vast to attempt finishing quickly. Her unexplored non-fiction works required some attention, however slim the intended volume was to be. Certain retrieval works also appeared necessary even as the urgency to complete the work, close to the centenary year, was pressing. The work was indeed quite challenging, but it progressed rather slowly, giving shape to this present introductory volume to Ashapuma's life and works.

Ashapurna's immensely thoughtful essays on women's issues in India, definitely, have not received enough attention. To give a comprehensive idea of Ashapurna's works, even though briefly, this volume offers a selection of translated five sample essays along with a few of her letters and interviews.

I would like to share a few words as to why I chose to include those essays, letters, and interviews as a part of the biographical work. Numerous books including the novels and short-story collections of Ashapurna Devi have been translated into English and many Indian regional languages. No serious attention has been paid to read her life through her non-fiction writings. I must state that her essays demonstrate a strong assertion of Ashapurna of the negotiation with and opposition between varied 'contradictions' and 'limitations' of working towards social change, although the latent values of the transactions are detailed by an apparently routine domesticity. Moreover, her non-fiction writings, especially her essays, are particularly important documents in the Third World context as they are essential social critique on the post postcolonial condition of women of Bengal (India). The 'lack' or the absence of these invaluable works from circulation prompted me to compile at least a selected few of them. It took me quite a while to get hold of the essays and selecting them, and I must say collecting the letters till the last was an extremely difficult job. Holding patience helped, and I received two important letters, one from Bangladesh and another from Prague.

In the course of my work I have received the support, friend- ship, and advice from many well-wishers, friends, colleagues, and teachers, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of them. My deepest gratitude goes to my teachers, Nabaneeta Dev Sen and Jasodhara Bagchi, for their unfailing encouragement and for helping to get me started with a critical awareness of Ashapurna's works.

I also thank Sanjukta Dasgupta and she indeed deserves a special aclmowledgement for suggesting first that I start working on Ashapurna's life. Discussions with Krishna Sen and Jharna Sanyal helped me significantly in clarifying certain tentative ideas. I wish to express my deep gratitude to them. I am equally thankful to Chandrava Chakravarty and Joyeeta Ray for sharing their invaluable time with me discussing and commenting on the first draft of this work.

The advice of my teacher, Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta, to think beyond mainstream feminisms, gave a fresh direction to my work and I have tried to extend the meaning of the variety of feminisms in this volume. I am indeed grateful to her.

I also thank my dear friend Chandrima Roy for offering her enthusiastic help at several phases, which was undeniably significant, especially while I was rushing through to complete the volume. Young, talented scholars, Abin Chakraborty, Subarnasree Ghosh, and Prasita Mukherjee, need a special mention. They were wonderful early readers and I thank them all for their perceptive responses to parts of this volume. All of them must share in any success which this book may merit; while, of course, its shortcomings are entirely my own.

I also extend my deep gratitude to Nupur Gupta, Ashapurna Devi's daughter-in-law. This book would not have been possible without her persistent help in providing me with the rare materials. I sincerely thank her for being with me at all occasions of needful discussion.

I also wish to thank Aveek Sarkar, the Chief Editor, ABP Pvt Ltd, for generously permitting me to publish the interviews (translated), which are crucial to understand the various strands of Ashapurna's thoughts on Indian feminism and her literary world. In, addition, I would like to thank Shiuli Biswas, Associate Vice President, ABP Pvt Ltd, for her support.

I cannot forget the inspiration from my long lost contact Indira Chowdhury who wrote, 'Are you the Dipannita I used to know in JU Women’s Studies?... All the best for your work! I do hope to see it in print’. That was very motivating at the primary stage of my work.

My special thanks goes to Dilip Mookherjee. Without his help I could not have established a link with Jhumpa Lahiri, which was needed for certain clarifications on her works on Ashapurna Devi. I am also grateful to Surajit Dasgupta, who has helped me to procure an important letter of Ashapurna Devi from Bangladesh. Martin Hribek’s effort to scan and send me Ashapurna’s letter to the Czech scholar, Hana Preinhaelterova, is sincerely acknowledges.

I thank Enakshi Chattyopadhyay for volunteering to translate her interview with Ashapurna, Which has facilitated the retention of the originality of their conversation. Unfailing help of Arun De, Abhijit Sen, and Saptarshi Mallick at different stages of my library works is also recognized sincerely. Last but certainly not least, and it is not at all enough, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks for the wonderful support from Dipankar and our dear son Kaustuv.

I also wish to take the opportunity to thank the editorial team at Oxford University Press (OUP) for their continued support throughout the publication process. In addition, I wish to thank the anonymous readers who reviewed the manuscript for OUP for their comments on the chapters. Their pointed and generous suggestions helped me to better formulate key aspects of my argument.

 

Contents

 

  Preface ix
  A Critical Overview 1
  Silence and Its Contours 59
I Ashapurna Devi: Her Life, Private and Public(1909-1995) 61
II Resisting Silence: Ashapurna Challenging Hegemony? 90
  The Vices of Invisibility 139
I Essays by Ashapurna Devi 141
  Prelude to Ashapurna's Essays 141
  Society and the Role of Women 179
  Present Education System and Women's Self- sufficiency 187
  Girls of Kolkata- Then and Now 199
  Laws Are Not the Sole Answer to Problems 207
  Women in the Service of Humanity 216
II Letters from and to Ashapurna Devi 226
  The Other Side of Love 247
  Coversations with Ashapurna Devi  
  Subhdra Urmila Majumdar 249
  Partha Chatterjee 255
  Chitra Deb 268
  Jhara Basu 292
  Enakshi Chattyopadhyay 295
  Annexures 303
  A Brief Chronological Biography of Ashapurna Devi 305
  From Ashapurna's Dairy 314
  List of Translated Works of Ashapurna Devi in English 323
  Index 327
  About the Author 337
Sample Pages



















 

The Mystery That is Woman (Ashapurna Devi Through Her Stories)
About the Book

The stories have been selected to provide a look at human issues such as rural migration, feminism and the refugee experience. The characters, whether they are mothers and daughters or husbands and sons, always seem to be people we have seen and possibly even know in our daily lives. They are never distant or two dimensional. The stories are full of wisdom. The writer had a great understanding of the layered complexity of the world outside the confines of the four walls of a home. These stories deal largely with women and the situations they find themselves in, in different settings both urban and rural. While deeply sympathetic towards the dreams and heartache of a woman's life, Ashapurna never does this at a cost to her male characters. Her feminism is neither strident nor vitriolic, but her characters are treated with respect and compassion.

About the Author

Ruma Chakravarti has been blogging about Bengali literature for seven years, translating songs, poems and stories. A year after she started, three volumes of Ruma's translations of Tagore's work were published at the Kolkata Book Fair in 2013. Reliving Tagore is another popular work. Ruma translates from Bengali to English in order to make more people aware of the rich body of Bengali literature, which remains relatively unknown to English- speaking readers. Growing up in Africa, India and Papua New Guinea, she now calls Australia home.

**Contents and Sample Pages**











Breaking the Silence: Reading Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir and Ashapurna Devi
Preface
The International Conference Breaking the Silence: Reading Virginia Woolf Simone de Beauvoir and Ashapurna Devi was an endeavour to bring together a collection of important and new interrogation of feminism both Indian and trans-Indian. This two day conference held on 15th and 16th January 2009 was a UGC-Assisted DRS (SAP-III) Programme in collaboration with Women's Studies Research Centre, University of Calcutta.

The present volume is a comprehensive reading of Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir and Ashapurna Devi who are seemingly unlikely names to be grouped together. Yet, as pioneers of feminism, they have much in common. The French writer with her Second Sex and Woolf with her Three Guineas and A Room of One Own have set the direction of much of modern feminism. Their novels, memoirs and diaries have reinforced their theoretical work. One might call them both theorists and practitioners of feminism. Ashapurna, on the other hand, was no theorist and had no formal education. However, her numerous novels and short stories have thrown much light on the condition of Bengali women and have thus helped the course of feminism, particularly in the Third World context. The scope of the project therefore, is not only wide-ranging, it is diverse. While analysing and appreciating all the three activist writers as cultural commentators in the light of later feminist and post-feminist thought, the project exposes and associates the varied range of cultural codes translated into one common language-`the language of women'. This distinct advantage has fissured a vast arena for new scholarships for associating, evaluating and demonstrating the difficulties of the language of varied cultural nuances. The awareness of the 'lack' is the strength of the project that enabled the scholars to explore and develop the pedagogical tools in their articles critiquing the postcolonial reason towards a cultural build up through interpretations of history, literary history, politics and socio-economic structures.

Therefore the essays included in this collection argue that a literary politics of feminist universals, constantly expansive and pluralist, finds its universe immeasurably enriched when added to the socialist existentialist philosophy of de Beauvoir, and to the acute middle-class white British feminism of Woolf and Ashapurna's dynamic, poignant and adventurous sense of ways in which women develop themselves and question society.

On this occasion we take the opportunity to thank the Vice Chancellor Prof. Suranjan Das for extending his continuous encouragement and support and for making this publication possible. We would like to thank Dr. Dipannita Datta for her meticulous editorial assistance as well as the members of the entire DRS executive team-Prasita Mukherjee, Saptarshi Mallick and Sanghita Sanyal.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages









Frequently Asked Questions
  • Q. What locations do you deliver to ?
    A. Exotic India delivers orders to all countries having diplomatic relations with India.
  • Q. Do you offer free shipping ?
    A. Exotic India offers free shipping on all orders of value of $30 USD or more.
  • Q. Can I return the book?
    A. All returns must be postmarked within seven (7) days of the delivery date. All returned items must be in new and unused condition, with all original tags and labels attached. To know more please view our return policy
  • Q. Do you offer express shipping ?
    A. Yes, we do have a chargeable express shipping facility available. You can select express shipping while checking out on the website.
  • Q. I accidentally entered wrong delivery address, can I change the address ?
    A. Delivery addresses can only be changed only incase the order has not been shipped yet. Incase of an address change, you can reach us at [email protected]
  • Q. How do I track my order ?
    A. You can track your orders simply entering your order number through here or through your past orders if you are signed in on the website.
  • Q. How can I cancel an order ?
    A. An order can only be cancelled if it has not been shipped. To cancel an order, kindly reach out to us through [email protected].
Add a review
Have A Question

For privacy concerns, please view our Privacy Policy