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This work describes the personal and social empowerment of migrant women from South Asia in the Basque Country 1 , Spain, through the life history method. Gender roles, cultural identity and the migratory process as a transformative instrument are discussed. Based on in-depth interviews, and individual and group analysis of life histories, the findings indicated that migration had a positive effect on women in terms of self-development. Clearly, migration was a tool for transformation and empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the possibilities of rediscovering the erotic as ordinary, as a strategy for writing queer, feminist erotica in a South African context that successfully negotiates heterosexist, patriarchal, racist and colonial discourses. I focus on two short stories from Open: An Erotic Anthology by South African Women Writers (2008), known as the first erotic anthology by women published in South Africa. South Africa does not have a large body of erotic writing, and the work that does exist is not widely written about. Both stories covered here, 'Inside' by Makhosazana Xaba and 'Mrs Habib's Hypothalamus' by Suzy Bell, depict erotic tension between women but do not contain graphic sex scenes. They emphasise the ordinary place of sexual desire in the lives of women by detailing the interior life of a female character whose everyday life is limned by the erotic. The focus in these stories is not on the sex act but on the build-up of sexual desire. Furthermore, the erotic is not limited to sexual desire but runs through other aspects of the characters' lives, including spiritual, intellectual and embodied experiences. It is through these various elements that the two authors imagine the erotic as ordinary. Thus these two stories contest the spectacularisation and abjection of Black female lesbian sexuality and open up interesting possibilities for the representation of the erotic in literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an in-depth analysis of portrayal of women in the novels of Bharati Mukherjee. Most of her women characters are from India who migrates to America for a specific purpose. The first two of her novels deals with expatriates and the rest with immigrant experiences in the new world. Bharati Mukherjee has acquired a strong place among the diasporic writers through her writings which portrays the sufferings and survival of immigrant women. Mukherjee's women immigrants undergo a major and essential change in the process of living in the adopted homeland. All these are beautifully woven through her protagonists making them bold and assertive to face any kind of situation in the new land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an in-depth analysis of portrayal of South Asian Women in the select novels of Bharati Mukherjee. As a result of globalisation, the world has become a global village due to which, migration has become very common and people's movement has increased considerably in recent days. The process of migration, settling down in new land and adapting to the new culture involve several issues and affect both men and women irrespective of the gender. Bharati Mukherjee is an Indian-born diasporic writer who achieved a special place in Indian diaspora as well in the American Literary World. Being an immigrant, Mukherjee exhibits the lives of the migrant women lively and artistically. She expresses the social reality of the Asian Immigrants' lives in the contemporary America. She perfectly merges fact and fiction in her writings. She focusses on the sufferings and pains of the immigrants through her protagonists. The voyage of migration includes expatriation, racial discrimination, alienation, displacement and cultural shock. The women characters face many problems, endures all odds and emerge as survivors. The characters Tara in the Tiger's Daughter and Dimple in Wife denies to forget the past and accept the new. But, Jasmine undergoes many transformations at different locations and changes her identity along with the change of her names, where she emerges as a rebel and survivor, giving confidence and creates an optimistic view among the readers. She serves as an example for all the South Asian women immigrants to accept, adapt, adopt the new culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Freirean notion of inculcation of critical consciousness in masses for the transformation of social structures became a guiding principle for the women's movement to raise the consciousness of women in the 1960s. Fiction by South Asian women writers not only provides a detailed insight into women's dilemmas regarding their situation but also highlights their efforts to break free from the dominating and constricting cultural patterns inhibiting their development as self-conscious independent beings. This paper attempts to analyze the fiction of South Asian women writers in English in order to investigate how their fiction contributes in consciousness-raising of women in predominantly patriarchal South Asian cultures. The paper discusses how by portraying the lives of women in South Asian society, these authors have attempted to dismantle the culture of silence, challenged oppressive traditions, and thereby helped women to reflect on their subjectified identities and marginalized positioning in their society. Thus, women's fiction from this region contributes significantly in furthering the feminist agenda of consciousness-raising of women by voicing their concerns for the establishment of a more equitable society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at depictions of intimacy and sexuality in South Asian Muslim women's autobiographical writings. According to the author, these authors did not silence or suppress their sexual expression in their writings as uniformly as some scholars believe. Topics discussed include social status, education, and imperialism. It is suggested that the authors most closely connected to the colonial state were also most likely to avoid discussing sexuality.

How are landscape and space portrayed in the narratives of South Asian female writers and what role do they play in the formation of a national and cultural identity? Many Indian authors of the Diaspora, writing in English, are involved in a quest for identity. This is revealed through their characters, their construction of social, cultural and historical meaning and through their relationship with the homeland, whether real or imaginary. Landscape and space in Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss also play a fundamental and active role in the narrative and in the discovery of meaning, identity and identification. Whereas time in a novel is a dynamic factor allowing the reader to move between the present and the past, landscape and physical spaces are usually apparently solid and unchangeable. They are charged with history, culture and meaning. It is through them or around them that social action develops and identity is also constructed. I wish to explore some of these issues in my paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses the difficulties faced by women authors in South Asia. Referring to Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin, she states that the women authors in South Asian countries including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka continue to battle ghosts of censorship and constantly seek new channels of creativity to outwit fresh enigma of constraint. She says that South Asian feminism are joined to their political histories, especially in the course of the past century.

The article provides a critical assessment of the essays by South Asian women authors to consider the formation of subjectivity as constituted in and by multiple languages and their meaning systems. Using other languages such as French and, specifically, her native language Malayalam, Meena Alexander articulately evokes the struggle of British English.

Focuses on Pakistani British author Rhuksana Ahmad's representation of South Asian women's bodies as sites where racial and class differences are inscribed, and as sites of patriarchal repression and female resistance. Work of Ahmad as a novelist, a playwright and translator; Discussion of how issues of gender, class, culture and nationhood intersect in Ahmad's work; Account of how Ahmad resists discourses about non-Western women as submissive and totally subordinated by a monolithic and unchanging patriarchy.

Analyzes four novels in English by South Asian women writers. Bapsi Sidhwa; Kamala Das; Nina Sibal; Suniti Namjoshi.