Listen to the Heron's Words
Reimagining Gender and Kinship in North India
$24.95, £14.95 paperback
978-0-520-08371-4
Available Now
,
April 1994, Not available in South Asia
Categories: Anthropology; Cultural Anthropology; Folklore & Mythology; Women's Studies; South Asia
April 1994, Not available in South Asia
Categories: Anthropology; Cultural Anthropology; Folklore & Mythology; Women's Studies; South Asia
Free online edition (eScholarship)--available only to University of California faculty, staff, and students (List of public titles)
"What Raheja and Gold have provided here is a focus for considering women's speech and song as declarations of self-perception and self-determination. By placing the issue squarely on the table along with other forms everyday resistance, they invite us to 'listen to the heron' and then join in the song."—Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology
"Belongs to a new genre of writing in literature, history and anthropology which listens to the voices of real women and is led by that listening to more sophisticated theoretical formulations. . . . Most accounts of North Indian kinship are black and white; Raheja shows all the shades of grey, the tensions and ambiguities of a structure in which everyone has multiple roles to negotiate. She is illuminating on the connection between pollution and the giving of gifts, especially the gift of a daughter in marriage: when gift giving is understood as passing pollution on to another and away from oneself, it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive."—Asian Studies Review (Australia)
"Belongs to a new genre of writing in literature, history and anthropology which listens to the voices of real women and is led by that listening to more sophisticated theoretical formulations. . . . Most accounts of North Indian kinship are black and white; Raheja shows all the shades of grey, the tensions and ambiguities of a structure in which everyone has multiple roles to negotiate. She is illuminating on the connection between pollution and the giving of gifts, especially the gift of a daughter in marriage: when gift giving is understood as passing pollution on to another and away from oneself, it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive."—Asian Studies Review (Australia)
In many South Asian oral traditions, herons are viewed as duplicitous and conniving. These traditions tend also to view women as fragmented identities, dangerously split between virtue and virtuosity, between loyalties to their own families and those of their husbands. In women's songs, however, symbolic herons speak, telling of alternative moral perspectives shaped by women. The heron's words—and women's expressive genres more generally—criticize pervasive North Indian ideologies of gender and kinship that place women in subordinate positions. By inviting readers to "listen to the heron's words," the authors convey this shift in moral perspective and suggest that these spoken truths are compelling and consequential for the women in North India.
The songs and narratives bear witness to a provocative cultural dissonance embedded in women's speech. This book reveals the power of these critical commentaries and the fluid and permeable boundaries between spoken words and the lives of ordinary village women.
The songs and narratives bear witness to a provocative cultural dissonance embedded in women's speech. This book reveals the power of these critical commentaries and the fluid and permeable boundaries between spoken words and the lives of ordinary village women.