| Abstrakt: |
This article reads Hangwoman (2014) by K.R. Meera as a feminist fiction of memory which narrates the herstory of India through the collective memory of the Grdhha Mullicks, a hangman family in Kolkata. It studies the novel as an example of mnemonic narrative that renders alternative histories of trauma in the lives of those at the margins, particularly, in this case, of women in the hangman family across the generations, through an exploration of counter memories. The novel's protagonist Chetna reclaims women's traumatic pasts as mediated through oral narratives in the form of intergenerational memory, intertwining myth and reality like the strands of a hang(wo)man's rope. The mnemonic narrative creates a diegetic to reclaim (her)stories of women that have been erased from dominant national historiographies. By analysing how the undercurrents of rememory are infused into the fiction, the article demonstrates the potential of mnemonic feminist fiction to reclaim women's subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
