Women for Afghan Women
edited by Sunita Mehta
Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2002
pp xiii+236, USD 13.95
ISBN 1 4039 6017 8
Edited by NRI feminist Sunita Mehta, Women for Afghan Women is a collection of 25 prose and poetry pieces, including 10 essays by Afghan women, exploring gender issues in Afghanistan and in the Afghan diaspora. With contributions on religion and history, as well as on issues such as health care and military intervention, the volume seeks to provide a study of various themes with women as the focal point. Most of the volume's contributions are by writers who attended the inaugural conference of Women for Afghan Women, an NGO co-founded by Mehta, in New York City in November 2001.
Travel Writing and the Empire
edited by Sachidananda Mohanty
Katha, New Delhi, 2003
pp xxi+185, INR 250
ISBN 81 87649 36 4
Travel writing during the British colonial era, writes Sachidananda Mohanty, "even when carried out under the guise of a more honorific study and research, often concealed a set of aims, objectives and agenda ulterior in motive". Such writing, as well as travel writing in the postcolonial world, has frequently been a "self-assuring" exercise for visiting writers and one of internalising subjugation for native residents. In this collection, 10 essayists approach travel writing in the context of imperialism, from foreign writers who "went native" to constructions of foreign travel in India's vernacular languages and the "colonial rhetoric" of present-day travel promotion.