Luke > Recent Status Updates

Some poor soul's going to come across my 500 GBBW Group and think, "Aha! I will read all the 500 GBBW! That is how things should be!" No. No. No no no. No prescriptivism here plzkthxbai. Now, directories of women authored works in neglected spaces of literature that the 500 GBBW group hasn't even dreamed of. That's where it's at.

Bahinabai (1628-1700, Marathi)

The Vedas cry aloud, the Puranas shout,
"No good may come to woman."

I was born with a woman's body
How am I to attain Truth?

"They are foolish, seductive, deceptive—
Any connection with a woman is disastrous."

Bahina says, "If a woman's body is so harmful,
How in this world will I reach Truth?"

Chandrabati (ca. 1550-1600, Bengali) - "Indian literature of all kinds is full of the enmity between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. But in this story, when Malua is released from the hauli, her mother-in-law stands up for her and argues, in a remarkable passage, against the elders of the village, who want to exile her. Chandrabati also depicts the village women as joining together to argue Malua's case."

Gul-Badan Begum (1523-1603, Persian) - "The learning and the sophistication of women in the Mughal royal families are common knowledge. It was not unusual to find among them scholars, poets, stateswomen, and even architects. Yet as we look back at their achivements, Gul-Badan's history of her brother Humayun's reign, the Humayun Nama, completed around 1587, stands out as exceptional."

Atukuri Molla (early 16th c., Telegu) - "In Molla's times if a brahmin were to read through the Ramayana once, it would be an event to be celebrated with joy and feasting. One can imagine what an extraordinary achievement it must have been for a woman from the lowly potter caste to write a new version of the epic. Atukuri Molla did so, legend has it, in five days."

Mirabai (ca. 1498-1565, Gujarati and Hindi) - "All Mira's poems are intended to be sung, and she may have herself composed or selected the melodies. Although the musical quality is marked even when they are read aloud, they gain immensely when sung. Fourteen hundred short compositions have been attributed to her, of which four hundred are in Gujarati."

Ratanbai (12th-14th c. Gujarati) - "Since the bhakti movement was primarily a movement of artisans and small tradespeople, it would not have been unusual for a spinner to compose poetry."

Gangasati (12th-14th c. Gujarati) - "Whereas accounts of the lives of other women devotional poets tend to show them abandoning the family and attaching themselves to a guru, Gangasati is presented as striving to make worship and religious or intellectual search the fundamentals of her family tradition and a woman, the daughter-in-law, the bearer of that tradition."

Rami (ca. 1440) - "About two hundred years ago scholars came across a sheaf of poems, in manuscript, written after the death of the famous fifteenth-century Vaishnava poet Chandidas. When these poems were attributed to his distinguished contemporary and companion Rami, a love story that had already given rise to countless Bengali folk plays and folk songs sprang to life and Bengali literature found its..."

Janabai (ca. 1298-1350)

Cast off all shame,
and sell yourself
in the marketplace;
then alone
can you hope
to reach the Lord.

Cymbals in hand,
a veena upon my shoulder,
I go about;
who dares to stop me?

The pallav of my sari
falls away (A scandal!);
yet will I enter
the crowded marketplace
without a thought.

Jani says, My Lord,
I have become a slut
to reach Your Home.

Sule Sankavva (poet-saint and prostitute, 12th c.)

In my harlot's trade
having taken one man's money
I daren't accept a second man's, sir.
And if I do,
they'll stand me naked and
kill me, sir.

And if I cohabit
with the polluted,
My hands nose ears
they'll cut off
with a red-hot knife, sir.

Ah, never, no,
Knowing you I will not.
My word on it,
libertine Shiva.

Akkamahadevi (12th century)

It was like a stream
running into the dry bed
of a lake,
like rain
pouring on plants
parched as sticks.

It was like this world's pleasure
and the way to the other,
both
walking towards me.

Seeing the feet of the master,
O lord white as jasmine,
I was made
worthwhile.

The Sangam Poets (ca. 100 B.C.—A.D. 250) — "Anonymous, we know from other cultures, was often a woman."

Therigatha (Song of the Nuns, 6th Century B.C.)

This introduction's so fucking erudite it makes me want to cry. Here's a perfect quote for why I'm moderating my intake of white people lit, both male and female (if it seems like I'm posting a lot of statuses, this work didn't have any before I started reading this, so prepare yourself for floods of beautiful bite-sized insight (and accompanying comments when I can't fit all of it into 420 characters)):

First author + work to be discussed: Muddupalani's Radhika Santwanam

Yandamuri Satyanarayanarao comments: "These epic poems are well-formed works, complete with all nine rasas. If we look at them with our present view of women, they might appear low and unrefined. That is the inadeqacy of our culture, and not that of the epic or the poet."

'On the whole we have required that a reader use the context a story provides, which the other pieces and the introductions fill out and complicate, to make her way into the writer's times and the writer's world; we are asking that a reader—in India or abroad—learn slowly, as she relates to the objects, the concerns, the logic of the worlds women have inhabited over the years, to live a mode of life, and...

"If someone ever compliments my taste in classical music, I'm going to say, "Yeah, I got it all from cartoons," and settle into watching them collapse in a writhing pool of horror and despair."

She was for clarity and consciousness; but she didn't think, as many people do, that it takes no more than a little courage, no more than the surfaces of events which are easily called truth, no more than a little chatter about "getting on fine, thank you."

Bro. Hey bro. The Quran only allows up to four wives. Bro. BRO. Ugh I give up.

'Voted on only by teens' is such a common disparaging Listopa remark. We should expand this to all-purpose heights. 'Voted on only by men'. 'Voted on only by white people'. Let us be equal in our pointing out of hegemonies.

Two Tutuolas showed up side by side. I couldn't resist.

A library of books is the fairest garden in the world, and to walk there is an ecstasy.

Cinderella, Cinderella. Also, favorite novels from 1999, everyone! How time does fly.

Sickness and deadlines and laundry, oh my. Good thing I have books and tea and kitties, oh yes.

The Tale of Ali Bābā and the Forty Thieves! Also, I should've started doing this earlier, but likers and commenters, name your favorite work from 1925 (or thereabouts)!

...how, if at all, and under what circumstances, can one realize oneself in a work of art.

...European firms had begun to favour appointing gays to desert posts for both practical and financial reasons.

Reading Interlude, aka What I Listen To Between the Bouts of Reading My Heart Out

Worse than actual events was the fact that not even the horror itself could surprise one now. Nothing new under this sun, only the end, as long as it lasts. And the certainty: that it had to come.