Quest for Self-Identity

Swaastitwako Khoj, a compilation of thirty eight narratives by women writers, and edited by Archana Thapa has been recently launched. This book is a serious move towards establishing women’s self-identity on their own accord. All the writers are adult, and they have explored the identity of themselves in their own way, within circumstances decreed by Nepal’s social reality.

The personal narratives give many stories heavily informed by the writers’ own experiences. The stories vary from one issue to another although they are similar as far as the theme of the quest for identity is concerned. A Family’s happiness on baby boy’s birth and grievances on baby girl’s birth, a single woman’s struggle to make up career for herself in Kathmandu, a woman dominating and suppressing another woman, husbands’ dominance and suppression upon their wives, mother’s hidden and suppressed dreams, daughters’ present full of infinite choices, state of finding identity between husbands’ environment and parents, stories of abduction, stories of economic and social struggle for freedom, genuine personal accounts during the menstrual cycle, daughter-mother stories of generation gap, daughter-in-laws’ stories, stories of change in time and equality and many other personal narratives related to women form the content of the book, without even sparing for their family members and male counterparts.

The writers’ personal narratives are quite different from one another, unique in themselves and in some manner relates to one another. The book although is about the accounts of female writers prioritizing their issues and patriarchy’s response to feminism, it does not proclaim a denouncement of or rebel against patriarchy. Instead, it tries to encourage women to seek for their self-identity of and develop a sense of sisterhood.

The content opens with Usha Sherchan’s poem “Kathaputali Ma” depicting how women have, for ages, been a showpiece and a toy, controlled and used by males and the difficulties of breaking such constraining chains. The book ends too, with a poem of Sulochana Manandhar, comparing and contrasting the lives of women who cook and of those who burn firewood and find their identity in them. Between the two poems, there lay thirty-six narratives of different writers, and their stories completely different from one another but unknowingly related to each others’ issues.

The book also reads like a novel although the accounts are independently written by various writers in their common theme of finding self-identity, showing the condition and state of themselves as wives, mothers, daughters-in-law and females in many relationships. Some topics are very eloquent and pull the readers heartstrings.

All the writings are in subjective form and are good mediums of self expression. The book has also proclaimed that women are not backward in sectors of literature and writing. The book also tries to denaturalize that patriarchal society has always dominated women through culture, language and socialization.

The narratives of Sharada Sharma, Uma Subedi, Nisha K.C, Archana Thapa, Alka Aatriya Chudal, beside others, demonstrate the real writing strength of female writers. The tales are superb both in content and organization. Denouncing the traditional gender stereotypes portraying males as bold, brave, determined, and logical and females as dull, weak, delicate, the book tries to argue that they all are discursively and ideologically created by society and social norm and values as they are in the hands of males.

This book is a boon to all the students of gender studies, literary theories, female rights activist and also to all those who want to have an insight of the response of women towards patriarchy and their personal take on the issue of identity.
Appeared in THE NEW PAPER, 17 March, 2012