Centrepiece: New writing and art from Northeast India

The book is available at Zubaan Office, New Delhi

This book brings you a wealth of stories, in words and images, from a part of India known as the Northeast, a term that is widely contested for the ways in which it homogenizes a region of great diversity. It is also a term that has come to be a marker of identity and solidarity by many who are of the region. Here, 21 women writers and artists from Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Darjeeling (West Bengal) and the Chittagong Hill Tracts look at the idea of ‘work’ — from street hawking to beer brewing, weaving fabrics and fairytales and from mothering to dung collection — and describe their lives or those of others with humour and compassion. Parismita Singh’s wonderful compilation of the works of women asks: what are the different ways of telling a story? What if we were to attempt these tellings through poetry and portraits and essays, older traditions like textile art and appliqué and new genres like hashtag poetry tapped into a smartphone? Where would it take us, what would the world look like?

The book is part of a joint project titled “Cultures of Peace – Festival of the Northeast 2017” between the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Zubaan and Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) and published by Zubaan Publishers Pvt.Ltd.