Author Profile

Dr. Archana Sharma has been teaching English in Govt. Polytechnic College, Dhenkanal, Odisha for last ten years. She has done her research in ‘Experimental Studies of Speech Communication’. She has written four books on different areas of communicative English and presented 32 papers in international seminars. A prolific scholar on speech therapy she is widely acknowledged for her practical approaches.

About The Book

Dalit literature is a new phenomenon in the modern era of literature where the tormenting experiences of Dalit, Untouchable writers are exposed to present the contemporary social, mental agony. As time passed by since centuries, after endless suffering and utter dehumanization, the Dalits have become resistant and have assembled courage to challenge the upper caste Hindu hegemony. They have learnt to fight back the casteist forces and regain their self-dignity as human beings. They have organized many liberation movements and protests in different forms. One of the forms is literature through which they have expressed their century long agony and degradation which they have been tolerating. They have expressed their voice for their basic human rights through their own writings. They adapted various forms of literary wrings such as poems, short stories, novels, paintings, memoirs, and most importantly, the autobiographies, which altogether have formed a literary canon known as Dalit Literature. In this book select Dalit writings are provided to acquaint the reader with some of the dominant and non-dominant themes recurring in them. This book is a departure of traditional analysis rather emphasising on the critical part of Dalit Literature in modern context. This book discusses the recurring themes and important writers of all states. Major themes and important works are analysed separately along with the history, development, and different movements of the genre.

Table of Contents

Preface
1. Introduction
2. Concept, Origin, and Features of Dalit Literature
3. Dalit Literature: Past and Present
4. Dalit Literature of Post-Independence Era: Quest for Identity in Prose and Poems
5. Dalit Literature of Post- Independence Era: Novels, Autobiographies, and Plays
6. Aesthetics of Dalit Literature
7. Aesthetics of Dalit Poetry
8. Dalit Aesthetics: A Study of Bhakti Period
9. Marathi Dalit Literature
10. Tamil Dalit Literature
11. Gujarati Dalit Literature
12. Rich Heritage in Punjabi Dalit Literature and its Exclusion from History
13. Dalit Feminism: A Transformation of Rejection into Resistance
14. Representation of Dalit Women in Autobiographies
15. Om Prakash Valmiki’s Joothan A Dalit Autobiography
16. Dalit Women in Baby Kamble’s The Prisons We Broke
17. Urmila Pawar’s Aayadan: A New Perspective
18. Poems of Pain and Stories of Sadness: Dalit Literature
19. Emergence of Dalit Novel: Changing Notion of Freedom
20. Dalit Movements and Writings
21. Dr. Ambedkar’s Inspiration and Dalit Literature
22. Teaching of Dalit Literature in Higher Education
Bibliography
Index