Truth Tales: Contemporary Stories by Women Writers of India

The _Truth Tales_, originally published by Kali for Women, is an inaugural anthology of Indian women's writings, and serves a fitting prelude to the two-volume collection _Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the Present_ also published by the Feminist Press, in 1991. The seven short stories in the ensemble--six in English translation from regional languages Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Urdu, and the seventh an English original--provide a miniature sample of contemporary fiction by distinguished writers. Cutting across lines of class, religion and generation, the plots revolve around women negotiating their survival in a difficult world. The deep feminist engagement of the writings derives from the authors' inquiries into diverse topical issues of social injustice, sexuality, mandates of culture, and the material struggle for many living on the frayed edges of society to stay alive. Mahasweta Devi's story "The Wet Nurse" maps the intersection of sexuality and survival in a context outside of prostitution; Jashoda's entire body advances her career as a wet nurse, but eventually ruptures under protracted abuse. Whether victims or survivors, the women labor to expand their life-chances. In Suniti Aphale's "The Dolls," Shakun's financial resources and solitude draw her into a vortex of parasitic relations; while her usefulness sustains her sense of self-worth and compensates her want of social contact, it also authorizes her control over those dependent lives.The Truth Tales offers a series of memorable footages on women's lives narrated with simplicity, sometimes with humor, and with sympathy and sadness but always with restraint. There are no morals attached to the ends and despite the palpable anger suffusing some of them, the socio-political critique seldom interferes with the pleasure of reading a good story. However, most but not all the stories are of a uniformly superior caliber. But whether it is due to the untranslatability of systems of meaning and regional particularities into another language it is difficult to assess. Meena Alexander's introduction provides a crisp but somewhat simplistic contour of the social and cultural contexts germane to the stories for unfamiliar readers. Together with its sequel _The Slate of Life_, the _Truth Tales_ is a valuable addition to the archives of women's writings.