Introduction : the ultimate unveiling -- Life/history/archive -- The sociology of authorship -- The autobiographical map -- Staging the self -- Autobiographical genealogies -- Coda : unveiling and its attributes
Summary
Muslim South Asia is widely characterized as a culture that idealizes female anonymity: women's bodies are veiled and their voices silenced. Challenging these perceptions, the author highlights an elusive strand of autobiographical writing dating back several centuries that offers a new lens through which to study notions of selfhood. In this book, she locates the voices of Muslim women who rejected taboos against women speaking out, by telling their life stories in written autobiography. To chart patterns, materials dated from the sixteenth century to the present are drawn from across South Asia - including present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh