Postcolonial servitude : domestic servants in global South Asian English literature / Ambreen Hai.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hai, Ambreen, 1964- author.

Series:

Oxford scholarship online.

Oxford scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Household employees in literature.

South Asian fiction (English)--Themes, motives.

South Asian fiction (English).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 394 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2024.

Summary:

Domestic servitude is a widespread phenomenon in countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, where even lower-middle class homes rely on domestic workers (mostly women and children). While social scientists have begun to study this unregulated and exploitative 'informal sector,' literary critics have not paid attention to servants in South Asian literatures or examined their political or literary significance. 'Postcolonial Servitude' argues that a new generation of writers has begun to rethink this culture of servitude and to devise new forms of writing designed to prompt change in normalized ways of seeing and being.

Contents:

PART ONE

1. Constituting (from) the Background: The South Asian Literary Servant in the Margins, or, Early South Asian English Fiction from Below

2. The Servant('s) Turn, in the Middle Ground: Rushdie and Transnational Writers After Rushdie

PART TWO

3. Foregrounding the Servant: What's New About Daniyal Mueenuddin's Interlinked Short Stories

4. From Periphery to Center: The Male Servant as Narrator and Protagonist in Romesh Gunesekera's Reef

5. In the Driver's Seat?: Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger

6. Sharing Space: Alternating Female Servant-​Employer Narratives in Thrity Umrigar's The Space Between Us

7. Legacies of Servitude, Global and Local: Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss

Conclusion

Notes:

Also issued in print: 2024.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on January 8, 2024).

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

9780197698037

0197698034

9780197698013

0197698018

OCLC:

1416891707