The Prisons We Broke: The Autobiography of a Community
Baby Kamble
Published by Orient Longman
The Prisons We Broke is the first autobiography of a Dalit woman in Marathi. Jina Amucha, the original in Marathi, was serialised in 1982 and published as a book in 1986.
What Ambedkar’s teachings meant to this oppressed group of people shunned by society is what comes through in this work, as Baby records her own involvement with the Dalit movement. An interesting read, The Prisons We Broke humanises the Dalit movement in India.
Priya M Menon
THE NEW SUNDAY EXPRESS
Janhavi Acharekar
THE HINDU, 2 March 2008
Showing posts with label Dalit History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dalit History. Show all posts
Liberation narrative
The Prisons We Broke: The Autobiography of a Community
Baby Kamble
Published by Orient Longman
The Prisons We Broke is significant because it traces the evolution of the Mahar community from pre-Ambedkar days to its rapid transformation through education and mass conversion.
Dalit literature, historically, has been writing of protest and part of a larger social movement. While Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke continues the tradition, it is also an important life narrative whose original title Jina Amucha (Our Existence) communicates simply an urge to share the trials, tribulations and triumphs of an extraordinary people.
Janhavi Acharekar
THE HINDU, 2 March 2008
Baby Kamble
Published by Orient Longman
The Prisons We Broke is significant because it traces the evolution of the Mahar community from pre-Ambedkar days to its rapid transformation through education and mass conversion.
Dalit literature, historically, has been writing of protest and part of a larger social movement. While Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke continues the tradition, it is also an important life narrative whose original title Jina Amucha (Our Existence) communicates simply an urge to share the trials, tribulations and triumphs of an extraordinary people.
Janhavi Acharekar
THE HINDU, 2 March 2008
The Grip of Change, The Hindu, 4-Jun-06
THE first thing that strikes you about The Grip of Change? Author P.Sivakami's translation makes you forget it was written originally in Tamil. More remarkably, in dealing with life in a Dalit community, it deals with life itself. It is a work of literature, not a manifesto. Avoiding shrillness makes the novel more poignant and powerful.
About centuries-old injustice, and rank destitution, as seen by Gowri, the young daughter of Dalit leader Kathamuthu, the story refuses to drown itself in misery. It shows socio-political shifts bringing about changes, and the faint glow of better tomorrows afar. Not as roseate dreams, but realised in the author's own breaking free from some shackles, and in a cousin who refuses to kowtow to the cannibalising forces within and outside his community. >>>
About centuries-old injustice, and rank destitution, as seen by Gowri, the young daughter of Dalit leader Kathamuthu, the story refuses to drown itself in misery. It shows socio-political shifts bringing about changes, and the faint glow of better tomorrows afar. Not as roseate dreams, but realised in the author's own breaking free from some shackles, and in a cousin who refuses to kowtow to the cannibalising forces within and outside his community. >>>
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