India’s celebrated diversity and, by and large, a sense of peaceful co-existence has taken a severe hit since the past decade. This has been linked with the rise of right-wing Hindutva in politics, which has bred a sense of injured pride in the Hindu majority accompanied by a phobia created about the threat from minorities, most of all Islam.
The myths being perpetrated include the uncontrolled rise in the Muslim population, as also the physical threats that could result from this change in demographics.
There is no data to substantiate these claims but with the power of social media and its ability to make a piece of fake news viral, nobody seems to care anymore to do a fact check and most people are quite content to believe all the lies that land on their telephones, day in and day out. Read More→
Anita Loos’ wildly successful 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was followed by a sequel, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes. Published in the U.S. in 1927 and in England in 1928, it continued the adventures of the free, independent but ditzy Lorelei Lee and her friend, Dorothy Shaw.
Despite her misspellings and malapropisms, Lorelei is very much the modern, free 1920s woman and though she is deliberately written to appear as a “dumb blonde,” she is actually extremely sharp (and beautifully written in a virtuoso performance by Loos). Read More→
Dame Edith Sitwell (1887 – 1964), the British poet, literary critic, and famous eccentric, began publishing her poetry in 1913. With a modernist edge, some of it inscrutably abstract, some even set to music and sound.
Because of her dramatic self-presentation and manner of dress, she was sometimes criticized as a dilettante, but overall, her literary legacy remained intact and has grown over the years. Her poetry is praised for its craftsmanship and attention to technique. Read More→
The notorious stage and screen actress and playwright Mae West (1893–1980) of “come up and see me some time” fame, was surprisingly literary minded. West was famous as an actress, but it’s far less known that she wrote all her own stage and screen roles, creating the wickedly witty vamp character she became identified with.
Despite her bad girl reputation, despite having been sentenced to ten days in prison for obscenity in her 1926 play Sex, and despite the equally provocative title of her 1927 play The Drag: A Homosexual Play in Three Acts, Mae West wasn’t as much a modern woman as she seemed. Of her 1928 play Diamond Lil West said: Read More→
Dame Edith Sitwell (September 7, 1887 – December 9, 1964) was a British poet considered one of the first of the avant-garde movement. She had an enormous influence on literature and was also known for her eccentric demeanor, bon mots, and rather pronounced, if sarcastic, opinions.
As Elizabeth Bowen once said, she was “a high altar on the move.” Photo at right by Cecil Beaton.
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Presented here are ten trailblazing women translators whose work proved groundbreaking, from the 16th to 20th centuries.
After being entirely forgotten or reduced to half a line in their husbands’ entries in many encyclopedias, women translators are now starting to be recognized in their own right. Shown at right, translator Matilda Mary Hays (standing) and a love interest, actress Charlotte Cushman, 1858.
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It may be surprising to learn that a small but determined coterie of women published newspapers in the American colonies, before the states declared independence from Britain.
By the start of the American Revolution (1765), there were more than a dozen women printer-publishers operating on their own in the colonies. Most of them, called “widow-printers,” inherited their presses and newspapers after their husbands’ deaths.
Even so, it was rare for any woman to run a newspaper on her own. Not until much later could American women own property. They were property, though not to the extreme degree as their slaves and servants. Read More→
Jan Morris (October 2, 1926 – November 2, 2020) was a Welsh author and historian, whose work spanned the genres of journalism, memoir, history, essays, articles, and novels.
As a writer, she is best known for her Pax Britannia trilogy (a social history of the British Empire) and her written portraits of cities including Trieste, Venice, Oxford, Hong Kong, and New York City.
She is also famous for her transition from male to female in 1972, making her one of the first transgender public figures. Read More→
