Cover Image
Editorial
Editorial Note
Literary Voice: A Peer Reviewed Journal of English Studies (ISSN 2277-4521), Number 27, Volume 1, September 2026, brings together a wide range of scholarship – from the vulnerability of bodies and ecologies under strain to the persistence of memory against official forgetting, and the search for narrative forms that can articulate voices the mainstream has pushed to its margins. A strong ecological current runs through the edition, from readings of urban nature and ecofeminist agency in Charlotte Mew to studies of domestic resilience amid slow violence, hydrofeminist approaches to water and kinship, and sustainable futures imagined through contemporary fiction. The Comparative Literature section extends this concern into scripture and myth, asking why ecological doctrine in Indian religious traditions has not translated into ecological practice, and how feminist retellings of figures such as Ahalya recover the ecological and gendered meanings the canonical versions suppress. Throughout, the essays treat the environmental crisis not as a backdrop but as a structure of power, inseparable from questions of caste, gender, and extraction.
Another concern centres on the body: paralysis and stillness in Joyce, a sense of cosmic awareness in Imtiaz Dharker’s poetry, the disabled and gendered body in sport and memoir, the loss and reconstruction of voice after laryngeal cancer, and the caste-marked female body in Malayalam short fiction. Across these readings, the body emerges as the site where history is registered before it is narrated – where illness, disability, and social hierarchy leave their most immediate and least deniable trace.
Memory and testimony form a third preoccupation. The contributors examine Partition survivors reconstructing identity through narrative, postmemory and feminist testimony after the Holocaust, collective memory as resistance in Ilya Kaminsky’s poetry, and incarceration narratives from Malayalam prison writing. These essays share a conviction that memory, however fragmented or belated, remains a form of resistance to historical erasure. That conviction extends into the current edition’s sustained attention to marginalized and peripheral voices: Adivasi and Santhal women’s silences, Dalit epic and testimony, the folklore of Lepcha and Bhutia communities, and identity negotiated from the geographic and cultural periphery of India’s Northeast.
The Performance Studies section turns these same questions toward mediation itself how biopics stage and often flatten intellectual women, how digital fandom reshapes literary tourism and adaptation, how theatre and film adapt inherited narratives (Othello’s Willow Song reworked through Kaliyattam, animation reshaping children’s ecological consciousness) for new audiences and new technologies of attention. In addition, essays on diaspora and translation extend the volume’s feminist and postcolonial commitments across borders, examining mobility, digital circulation, and the gendered displacement of colonial and diasporic women.
The book review by Prof. Pradeep Trikha of Tamali Neogi’s Ripples in Silence and Dr. Dwaipayan Roy’s Jim Morrison – The Poet in Exile, and the introduction of three poetic voices in contemporary English poetry, add richness to the current edition of the journal.
What holds these sections together, finally, is less a single argument than a shared method: a willingness to read literature, film, myth, and testimony as active sites of negotiation rather than settled records places where resistance, however constrained, continues to be imagined and rehearsed. Taken together, the essays in this volume affirm literature and performance as enduring sites for interrogating power, memory, and ecological survival and for imagining, however provisionally, more just and habitable futures.
T.S. Anand
Content
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September, 2026
Literary Voice: A Peer Reviewed Journal of English Studies (ISSN 2277-4521)
Number 27, Volume 1, Sep. 2026, https://literaryvoice.in
Indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection ESCI, Cosmos, ESJI, I20R, CiteFactor, InfoBase
RESEARCH ARTICLES
BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURES
Ecologies of Resistance: Urban Nature, Ecofeminism, and Nonhuman
Agency in Charlotte Mew
Satorupa Ghosh Das
Prof. Arindam Modak 1-8
The Everyday Anthropocene: Navigating Slow Violence through Domestic
Resilience in Jessie Greengrass’ The High House
Selçuk Şentürk
Fatma Akdemir 9-15
The Wounded Rivers: Pollution and Deep Ecology in Ted Hughes’ River
Dr. Remi Cherian George 16-22
“Becoming Shades”: Paralysis and the Body in James Joyce’s “The Dead”
Shrestha Chatterjee 23-31
Imtiaz Dharker’s Leaving Fingerprints and the Cosmic Awareness of Human Existence
Dr. Arundhati Mahesh Barde 32-39
Planting Hope: Exploring Sustainable Futures through Ben Okri’s
Every Leaf a Hallelujah
Apurvi Kotwal 40-46
Embodiment, Relational Ontology, and Ecological Coexistence in Always Coming Home
Hina Singh
Prateek Pandey
Mukund K. Misra 47-54
Afrofuturism and Biopolitical Control: The Convergence of Eugenics
and Necropolitics in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed
Princess Mary G
Dr. Latha R 55-61
Between Screen and Body: Storytelling, Embodied Memory, and Selfhood in
Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This
Dr. Sanghamitra Baladhikari
Trisha Sengupta 62-70
The Townspeople tell the story”: Collective Memory as Resistance
in Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic
Oishi Banerjee 71-77
What the Water Carries: A Hydrofeminist reading of Abraham Verghese’s
The Covenant of Water
Sangeetha K. Mohan
Dr. Liss Marie Das 78-84
INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE
From Recollection to Reconstruction: A Ricoeurian Analysis of Narrative Identity
of the Partition Survivors in Rajeev Shukla’s Scars of 1947: Real Partition Stories
Ritik Garg
Dr. Niraja Saraswat 85-92
Marginalized Voices and Constructed Silences: Reading Santhal Women
in The Adivasi Will Not Dance
Sneha S
Dr Nancy Prasanna Joseph 93-100
Slow Violence and Indigenous Resistance in Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds:
Extractivism Across Global South Resource Frontiers
Aman Deep Singh 101-108
Identity Fragmentation and Emotional Negotiation in Ravinder Singh’s
Novel, Like It Happened Yesterday: A Lacanian Study of Adolescent Masculinity
Dr. Monika Singh
Dr. Usha Kaushik 109-116
Between Old Values and New Realities: A Critical Study of
Chetan Bhagat’s 12 Years: My Messed-up Love Story
Dr. Ali Ahmed Khan 117-123
Posthuman Subjectivity and Digital Surveillance in Samit Basu’s Chosen Spirits
Himankar Das
Dr. Diganta Borgohain 124-131
From Harm to Hope: Slow Violence and the Emergence of Resistance
in Sheela Tomy’s Valli
Neha James
Dr. S. Sujaritha 132-138
Springing from the Margins: G. Kalyana Rao’s Untouchable Spring as a Dalit Epic
Nida 139-147
Repression and Resilience through Food: A Study of Selected Short
Stories by Bulbul Sharma
Geethu T. Mohan
Dr. Binu Zachariah 148-155
Sacred Hills, Extractive Capitalism, and Indigenous Rights: A Decolonial Ecological
Reading of Year of the Weeds
Agalya D
Dr. Sulagna Mohanty 156-163
Land, Identity, and Cultural Erosion in Narayan’s Kocharethi: The Araya Woman
Reneeta Anna Robert 164-173
Caste-Informed Female Bodies and Slippery Sexual Spaces: A Study
of Select Malayalam Short Fiction
Dr. Sheniya Jose P. 174-181
LITERATURE FROM THE NORTH EAST
Whispering Mountains: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Lepcha and Bhutia Folklore
Dr. Balaji B. Shelke
Mr. Kunzang Bhutia 182-191
Uncertain Identities: Contemporary Voices from the Periphery
Amanda B. Basaiawmoit
Dr. Paonam Sudeep Mangang 192-202
Negotiating Roots and Routes: Migration, Myth, and Indigenous Identity
in Escaping the Land
Dr. Priyanka Kakoti 203-209
PERFORMANCE STUDIES
Erasure of the Intellectual Feminine in Biopics: The Politics
of Representation in Iris and The Iron Lady
Dr. Poulomi Mitra 210-219
Walking Through the Screen: A Comparative Study of Digital Fandom’s Influence on Interpretations of the Jane Austen’s House Museum and Pride and Prejudice Film Sites
Dr. Ihsan-ur-Rahim Malik 220-227
Alienation through Theatre: Examining the Viability of Digital Theatre
in Amitesh Grover’s The Last Poet
Shashank Shekhar
Prof. Smita Jha 228-235
Spaces of Confession, Sites of Resistance: Therapy Rooms as Heterotopias
in Select Films
Saumya Agarwal
Prof. Nagendra Kumar 236-244
Appropriating Narrative Agency and Accusation: A Contrapuntal Reading
of Ennodenthinee Pinakkam in Kaliyattam (1997) as an Adaptation of
Willow Song from Othello (1625)
Gopika Hari
Dr. Vaibhav Pathak 245-251
Losing Voice, Reconstructing Selfhood: Journey of a Laryngeal Cancer
Patient in the Bengali Film Konttho
Ankita Nandi 252-257
From Screen to Green: Cultivating Ecological Consciousness in Children
through the Indian Series Chhota Bheem
Keerthana Sridhar
Padma Priya R 258-267
LIFE WRITINGS
(Re)framing the Narratives of Gender and Disability in Sports: A Critical
Study of Sarah Reinertsen’s memoir In A Single Bound
Gopal Kumar Choudhary
Prof. Binod Mishra 268-274
On Surviving the Doomed Space:
A Study of Two Select Malayalam Prison Narratives
Niranjana P
Dr. Aiswarya S Babu 275-281
The Politics of Gendered Silence in Ronny Hein’s Krisia’s Silence: Writing
Postmemory and Feminist Testimony After the Holocaust
Dr. Rincy Saji 282-289
LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION
Homes Lost and Homes Found: The Gendered Displacement and Elusive
Quest of the Colonial Women
Dr. Kakalee Das 290-297
Divided Consciousness and the Surrealist Structure of the Unconscious in
Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Dipeshkumar B. Patel 298-305
Thresholds of the Self: Exploring Liminal Identity in Yukio Mishima’s
Confessions of a Mask
Chhavi Chauhan
Dr. Mudita Agnihotri 306-313
Unbordering Womanhood: Mobility, Memory, and Feminist Resistance
in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand
Satyawati
Dr. Geetha Yadav 314-320
ECOFEMINIST READINGS OF INDIAN MYTHOLOGY
Eco-Doctrinal Dissonance, Epistemic Myopia, and the Oligarchocene: Explaining
the Gap Between Scriptural Ecologism and Environmental Practice in India
Dr. Devendra Rankawat 321-330
Reclaiming the Silenced: Feminist Mythmaking in Koral Dasgupta’s Ahalya (2020)
Simran Kashyap
Dr. Aditya Prakash 331-337
Silence, Responsibility, and the Limits of Dharma in the Mahabharata
Aradhya Maria David
Dr. Mini VS 338-346
LITERATURE OF INDIAN DIASPORA
Negotiating Power and Resistance in Such a Long Journey: A Postcolonial Reading
Randeep Kaur
Prof. Mahesh Arora 347-354
Feminist Agency as Killjoy Misalignment in Indian Diasporic Women’s
Narratives: Embodiment, Refusal and Digital Circulations
Kakoli Debnath 355-363
LIT-TREAT V, SSSIHL CONFERENCE PAPERS
Stories Silenced by the Social Stereotypes: Foregrounding Narrativity
in Jayanta Mahapatra’s Lyrics with Special Reference to “Summer”
B Sai Vaishnavi
Dr. Maitali Khaanna 364-373
Tracing the Threads: Nostalgic Memory in Mourid Barghouti’s
I Was Born There, I Was Born Here
Lekshmi Chandra
Prof. Rani P L 373-379
Shades of Lady Superstardom in South Indian Movies: A Study of Selected
Movies of Manju Warrier and Nayanthara
Bijitha P
Dr. Kekhronguu Dazo 380-389
Of Boochandis, Rakshasas and Asuras: Reimagining the Monster in
Select Indian Picturebooks in English
B. Sai Harshitha
Dr Sowmya Srinivasan 390-396
BOOK REVIEWS
Still Pond of Silence: Metaphor, Myth, and Resilience
in Tamali Neogi’s Ripples in Silence
Prof. Pradeep Trikha 397-400
Jim Morrison – The Poet in Exile
Dr. Dwaipayan Roy 401-403
POETIC VOICES
Parneet Jaggi 404-406
The Curriculum
I Have No Plans Now
The Hidden Grammar
Paul Mirabile 407-408
Guardian of the Treasure
Himself Seen
Darkly Suffered
Dawn Will Always Vanquish Dusk
However
Dr. Shalini Sharma 409-412
Punctuated
A Parent in Search of Y
Pain to Panacea
Kun fayakun – Be, and It Is
Despite …
Between a Couple of Punches and Lunches
Ecologies of Resistance: Urban Nature, Ecofeminism, and Nonhuman
Agency in Charlotte Mew
Satorupa Ghosh Das – Prof. Arindam Modak
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 1-8 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.1
This paper studies selected works of Charlotte Mew (1869-1928), a Yellow Book find, through the ecocritical and ecofeminist lens, to probe into the complex human-nature relationship in her writings. Much of the existing critical scholarship on Mew has emphasised gender, trauma, and psychological realism. This study foregrounds the ecological dimensions of her work. Through close readings of her urban pieces — “Passed,” “Men and Trees” (I and II), and “The Trees Are Down,” the paper challenges the prevailing reductive assumption that urban literature is intrinsically anthropocentric and environmentally sterile. It also examines her rural and semi-rural poems — “Saturday Market,” “The Farmer’s Bride,” and “Ken” to argue for the impact of trauma, marginalisation, and grief on human interaction with the natural world. Mew presents Nature as an active moral and emotional force rather than a passive backdrop in human drama, anticipating contemporary debates in urban ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and posthumanist theory.
Keywords: Ecocriticism; Ecofeminism; Charlotte Mew; Urban Ecology; Modernist Poetry;
Nonhuman Agency
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The Everyday Anthropocene: Navigating Slow Violence through Domestic
Resilience in Jessie Greengrass’s The High House.
Selçuk Şentürk – Fatma Akdemir
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 9-15 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.2
This study examines Jessie Greengrass’s representation of environmental crisis and domestic survival in The High House (2021). Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence frames the novel’s ecological vision, where catastrophe accumulates through delayed, uneven, and ordinary forms of harm. Set in a coastal refuge prepared by the climate activist Francesca, the narrative follows Caro, Pauly, Grandy, and Sally as they inherit both shelter and ruin. Domestic life becomes the central site through which climate breakdown is lived, managed, and understood. Their labour of storing food and medicine, maintaining the mill and water supply, preserving fruit, sharing practical knowledge, and caring for one another makes ecological crisis materially legible. The study argues that Greengrass shiftsthe focus of climate fiction by locating resistance within household endurance, where care becomes an ethical practice against slow violence in the Anthropocene.
Keywords: slow violence, domestic care, domestic labour, ecological collapse, The High House
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The Wounded Rivers: Pollution and Deep Ecology in Ted Hughes’ River
Dr. Remi Cherian George
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page16-22 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.3
This paper aims to explore the ecological themes in Ted Hughes’ poetic anthology, River, analysing the portrayal of rivers as both symbols of life and environmental degradation. By focusing on pollution, the paper examines Hughes’ critique of human impact on water bodies, particularly rivers, through poignant lines of his poetry. Drawing on the philosophy of Deep Ecology, the study investigates the interconnectedness of man and nature, urging a shift from anthropocentrism to a more holistic and ecological perspective. This work highlights Hughes call for ecological responsibility, with his poems offering a timely reflection on the environmental challenges of both his time and today.
Keywords: Anthropocentrism, Deep Ecology, Pollution, Rivers, Ted Hughes
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“Becoming Shades”: Paralysis and the Body in James Joyce’s “The Dead”
Shrestha Chatterjee
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 23-31 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.4
Writing this paper amidst an economic crisis triggered by a political stalemate by global capitalist forces has enabled me to deepen my understanding of the depiction of social malaise embedded within Joyce’s oeuvre. This paper examines through close reading the interplay between paralysis and embodiment in James Joyce’s short story “The Dead”, arguing that the text reconfigures paralysis as an infectious social condition that is reflective of a spiritual and physical degradation within the characters. The body becomes the primary site through which such illness is articulated. The characters alternate between hesitation and absolute fixity, and this disconnection removes them from the vitality of society towards a liminal position between life and death. In my reading, Joyce utilises this state to understand how political agency is eroded away by turning citizens into ghostly un-‘dead’ beings, a condition which continues to recur in the modern world.
Keywords: Modernism, death, James Joyce, paralysis, Dubliners
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Imtiaz Dharker’s Leaving Fingerprints and the Cosmic Awareness
of Human Existence
Dr. Arundhati Mahesh Barde
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 32-39 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.5
Imtiaz Dharker is one of the foremost contemporary poets whose work traverses geographical, cultural, and ideological boundaries. Born in Pakistan, raised in Scotland, and deeply connected with India, Dharker brings to her poetry a distinctive transnational sensibility that explores identity, memory, migration, and spirituality. This paper examines her fourth poetry collection, Leaving Fingerprints (2009), arguing that it marks a significant shift from the search for personal identity toward the attainment of cosmic awareness. Through close textual analysis, the study demonstrates how Dharker transforms ordinary objects, historical memories, folklore, recipes, songs, and urban experiences into metaphors of interconnectedness and universal belonging. The collection challenges rigid categories of religion, gender, and nationality by presenting identity as fluid and constantly evolving. Ultimately, the poems envision human existence as part of a larger cosmic order in which individual selves dissolve into the rhythms of nature and the continuity of life. The paper argues that Leaving Fingerprints is not merely a collection about migration or multiculturalism but a philosophical meditation on the unity of existence and the spiritual interconnectedness of all beings.
Keywords: Leaving Fingerprints, identity, spirituality, cosmic consciousness, interconnectedness.
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Planting Hope: Exploring Sustainable Futures through Ben Okri’s
Every Leaf a Hallelujah
Apurvi Kotwal
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 40-46 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.6
The paper explores Ben Okri’s ecological allegory, Every Leaf a Hallelujah, through the lens of Glenn Albrecht’s concepts of Solastalgia and Symbiocene, as developed in Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. This paper suggests that Okri’s story is a lament on ecological destruction and a call for ecological restoration, and it expands, complicates, and in some ways, challenges Albrecht’s framework. The novel’s fairy-tale form provides emotional currency for solastalgia and also raises questions about the possibility of literary utopianism as an alternative to structural ecological action. Moreover, it is important to take care of the application of a Western ecological psychology to a West African story, as some postcolonial dynamics of human-nature interaction can be neglected in Albrecht’s model. These tensions, when considered together, suggest that the combination of Okri and Albrecht is best approached dialectically, as a fruitful tension that points to new alternative visions of ecology. The research focuses on the role of literature as a transformative medium to cultivate awareness of the ecological and the notion of re-imagining sustainability as an integrated research tool.
Keywords: Symbiocene, Ecological Imagination, Sustainability, Solastalgia, Ecocriticism
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Embodiment, Relational Ontology, and Ecological Coexistence in
Always Coming Home
Hina Singh – Prateek Pandey – Mukund K. Misra
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 47-54 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.7
This study uses an ecofeminist perspective to analyze Always Coming Home by Ursula Kroeber Le Guin. The focus of the study is to examine how gender-based oppression, non-human species-based oppression, and ecological exploitation are all connected together with each other as part of the oppressive hierarchical structure of the Condor Society. The research will investigate how Le Guin’s writing challenges patriarchy and its societal constructs of women and nature as less than, expendable categories that exist outside of structures of power and recognition. This paper also includes close textual analysis to explore the devaluing of women, marginalizing of non-humans, and ecological impacts of industrial modernism presented throughout the novel. A particular emphasis is placed on examining the militarized and exploitive world view of the Condor society, and how it supports itself through domination, exclusion, and strict social hierarchies. On the other hand, the Kesh society is analyzed as an alternative ecological model where humans live in coexistence with one another and with their environment based on reciprocal relationships and dependence on one another. Additionally, the paper examines how Le Guin reveals the devastating effects that industrial civilization has on both human life and ecological life to illustrate the connection between environmental degradation and social inequalities. Overall, by analyzing hierarchy, ecological ethics and domination systems throughout the novel, this research demonstrates that Le Guin presents alternative ways for people to live which contest anthropocentric and patriarchal forms of thinking about being alive and present with multiple forms of life and material realities.
Keywords: Materialist Ecofeminism; Embodiment; Relational Ontology; Ecological Coexistence
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Afrofuturism and Biopolitical Control: The Convergence of Eugenics
and Necropolitics in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed
Princess Mary G – Dr. Latha R
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 55-61 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.8
This study examines how biopolitical eugenics and necropolitical authority operate together rather than as two fully separate frameworks, in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed with particular attention to the immortal characters Anyanwu and Doro. Michel Foucault’s biopolitics and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics are incorporated as theoretical lenses to reveal Doro’s hegemonic practice of selective breeding and genetic governance. His breeding program selectively reproduces powerful individuals to create a power-driven world. In parallel, he lives by consuming others’ bodies which depicts necropolitical approaches. In contrast, Anyanwu’s counter-necropolitical survival is rooted in healing, collective care and responsibility which defies systemic injustices such as colonialism, racism and gendered violence. By critiquing influential reproduction and commodification of bodies, this study depicts necropolitical control by confronting rigid forms of marginalization that intersects with life.
Keywords: Biopolitics, Necropolitics, Afrofuturism, Reproductive Hegemony, Collective Survival
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Between Screen and Body: Storytelling, Embodied Memory, and Selfhood
In Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This
Dr. Sanghamitra Baladhikari – Trisha Sengupta
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 62-70 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.9
Literature has become a significant space for negotiating the boundaries between the virtual world and the real world in the era of technology which constantly mediates with perception, identity and emotion. No One Is Talking About This (2021), authored by Patricia Lockwood explores how identity, memory and storytelling is redefined in a hyperconnected, data-driven world by depicting the liminal space between the digital and the corporeal self. In this paper, I examine the conflict between the two forms of self, the digitally mediated self and the embodied/ corporeal self, by exploring how storytelling and memory intersect in a state of technological saturation. The paper also examines how Lockwood’s representation of a movement from fragmentation in the digital world to embodied trauma, reclaims the body as the site of memory, emotions, and meaning in a world which is increasingly getting dissociated from the material. The digital and the corporeal, therefore coexist in a state of tension and each aspect shapes how the ‘self’ senses, experiences, remembers, and narrates.
Keywords: Embodied Memory, Corporeal Self, Digital, Grief, Trauma, Storytelling
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The Townspeople tell the story”: Collective Memory as Resistance
in Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic
Oishi Banerjee
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 71-77 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.10
Research in recent years has shifted its focus to micronarratives; certain narratives have become more and more discussed, propagated, and remembered than others. This makes the preservation of cultural memory exceedingly important in terms of narratives that are undermined and discarded by the majority. The narratives of Ukrainian history and resistance, a country weary of war, are one such case. Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic is considered one of the greatest examples of resistance poetry. This article looks at the construction of collective consciousness and memory in the text and argues that preserving cultural memory (violent or otherwise) itself becomes an act of resistance in Deaf Republic (2019). This analysis aims to establish how memory (or specifically the act of remembering) acts as a form of resistance in this narrative by employing a storytelling arc within the greater narrative. Through the metanarrative nature of the text, the act of storytelling is employed to convert the act of remembering into an act of resistance. I primarily engage with Jeffrey Olick’s theory of “collective memory” while referring to other theorists in memory studies to explore how collective memory is constructed in the text through storytelling and how this construction becomes an act of resistance.
Keywords: Collective Memory, Resistance, Ukraine, Narratives, storytelling
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What the Water Carries: A Hydrofeminist Reading of Abraham Verghese’s
The Covenant of Water
Sangeetha K. Mohan – Dr. Liss Marie Das
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 78-84 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.11
This paper explores the resonances between contemporary hydrofeminist theory and Abraham Verghese’s novel, The Covenant of Water (2023) and examines how both articulate human existence as fundamentally aqueous and interconnected. This literary analysis reveals how Verghese’s narrative embodies hydrofeminist principles through its treatment of drowning, the hereditary ‘The Condition.’ Applying Astrida Neimanis’s concept of “bodies of water” and the notion of “deictics falter,” along with Stacy Alaimo’s theory of transcorporeality and the Kerala backwaters, this paper argues that the novel’s genealogical construct is a liquid cartography, where family lineage flows like water through generations, disrupting fixed boundaries between self and other, past and present, and human and aquatic environments. The exploration reveals several interconnected observations in relation to the connection between hydrofeminist theory and Verghese’s novel. By reading The Covenant of Water through hydrofeminist frameworks, this paper proves how literary fiction can materialize theoretical concepts of bodily porosity, environmental entanglement, and the ethics of aqueous interconnection.
Keywords: Environmental Humanities, Hydrofeminism, Transcorporeality, Bodies of Water, Deictics Falter
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From Recollection to Reconstruction: A Ricoeurian Analysis of Narrative
Identity of the Partition Survivors in Rajeev Shukla’s Scars of 1947:
Real Partition Stories
Ritik Garg – Dr. Niraja Saraswat
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 85-92 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.12
This paper critically analyzes selected narratives from Rajeev Shukla’s Scars of 1947: Real Partition Stories, a 2022 collection of personal, memory-based testimonies and oral histories of 1947 Partition survivors. The study employs Paul Ricoeur’s concept of “Narrative Identity” to, first, investigate the varied “emplotment” strategies that the Partition survivors utilize within their recollective narratives to structure their fragmented and fractured Partition memories to construct a coherent and meaningful life story, and second, to locate certain events, objects, symbols and themes present in the narratives through which the survivors shape their personal and collective identity by distinguishing between their continued sense of “Idem” (sameness) and “Ipse” (selfhood). The analysis argues that the Partition survivors’ personal memories construct their sense of self and belonging across space and time. It highlights the need to recover subjective histories of the Partition to understand how the affected individuals actively remember, forget, and utilize their memories, both traumatic and nostalgic, to forge their identities.
Keywords: Partition, Memory, Oral History, Narrative Identity, Emplotment, Selfhood
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Marginalized Voices and Constructed Silences: Reading Santhal Women
in The Adivasi Will Not Dance
Sneha S – Dr Nancy Prasanna Joseph
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 93-100 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.13
Tribal (Adivasi) literature, often characterized as a ‘Minor Literature,’ works as an important medium for transporting the voice of tribals, which was unheard for centuries. This research paper explores the reason behind the silence of tribal women against their struggles, and studies the helpless situation of these tribal women using Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar’s The Adivasi Will Not Dance. The position of tribal women as outsiders in their own land and their lack of economic independence is examined. This research uses social constructivism theory to analyse the submissive character of tribal women. The analysis focuses on five select stories, from the short story collection, The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Sons, November is the Month of Migration, Baso-jhi, Desire, Divination, Death, and The Adivasi Will Not Dance.
Keywords: Minor literature, Silence, Helpless situation, Outsiders, Submissive
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Slow Violence and Indigenous Resistance in Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds:
Extractivism Across Global South Resource Frontiers
Aman Deep Singh
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 101-108 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.14
This article explores Siddhartha Sarma’s Year of the Weeds (2018) as a work that critiques extractivism and appeals for environmental justice in Devi Hills, Odisha, India. Using theories of extractivism, slow violence, and the environmental humanities, the study examines how the novel portrays mining as an extension of colonial dispossession through state–corporate collusion that marginalises the Gondi community in Devi Hills due to bauxite extraction. It also shows how toxicity functions not only as ecological harm but also as a political and cultural condition shaped by capitalist modernity. Through Korok’s struggles and the recurring “weed” metaphor, Sarma highlights Indigenous resistance, ecological awareness, and the fight for environmental justice against extractive capitalism. Therefore, the article contributes to postcolonial ecocriticism and the environmental humanities by demonstrating how the novel reveals the interconnected dynamics of extractivism, slow violence, and Indigenous resistance in contemporary India.
Keywords: Extractivism; Environmental Justice; Slow Violence; Indigenous Resistance
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Identity Fragmentation and Emotional Negotiation in Ravinder Singh’s
Novel, Like It Happened Yesterday: A Lacanian Study of Adolescent Masculinity
Dr. Monika Singh – Dr. Usha Kaushik
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 109-116 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.15
This paper deals with the construction of the identity of an adolescent in Like It Happened Yesterday by Ravinder Singh, using the psychoanalytical framework suggested by Jacques Lacan. The work goes beyond the traditional format of the direct development of childhood and examines the protagonist’s confused sense of self and psychological tension that continues through adolescence. This analysis focuses on these experiences as described by the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan: lack, desire, Mirror Stage and the Symbolic Order. All of his frequent searches for parental honesty, peer validation, emotional security and social acceptance are a constant negotiation between personal helplessness and socially imposed masculine expectations. The paper also explores the role of external structures and social contexts in the formation of identity. Childhood fantasies are gradually undermined by social reality in public-institutional spaces like the village temple, public transportation, the school classroom and the biology class, where emotional anxiety, embarrassment and symbolic regulation take place. The subject’s need to rely on others’ reflections, such as those from parents or peers, cultural stories, or public opinions, illustrates the unawareness of the adolescent’s subjectivity and the delicateness of establishing masculinity. The study employs qualitative textual analysis and psychoanalytical literary criticism to claim that the construction of adolescent identity in the novel is not done by the process of psychological consistency or emotional stability but by the process of ongoing compromise with trauma, desire, social pressure and emotional suppression. The paper provides a psychological analysis rather than the usual nostalgic and romantic interpretations of Ravinder Singh’s novels, thereby contributing to the current address on Indian young adult literature, the concept of masculinity and Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Keywords: Young Adult literature, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Masculinity, Identity Disturbance, Adolescence
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Between Old Values and New Realities: A Critical Study of
Chetan Bhagat’s 12 Years: My Messed-up Love Story
Dr. Ali Ahmed Khan
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 117-123 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.16
This study contends that Chetan Bhagat’s 12 Years: My Messed-up Love Story offers an incisive portrayal of the tensions between tradition and progress in contemporary India, positioning the novel as a prominent examination of shifting class structures, generational anxieties, and the ongoing negotiation of identity. Through humor and sharp social observation, Bhagat inter rogates evolving norms in modern relationships within a rapidly globalizing society. Drawing on New Historicism, Bourdieu’s Doxa, Foucault’s Panopticon, and Bakhtin’s Chronotope, this research presents an integrated analytical approach that clarifies how Bhagat’s work demon strates the transformative influence of globalization and digital technology on both individual and collective lives. This study advances the debate on Bhagat by asserting that 12 Years: My Messed-up Love Story offers a unique lens on contemporary Indian values in flux.
Keywords: tradition, modernity, society, change, values
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Posthuman Subjectivity and Digital Surveillance in Samit Basu’s Chosen Spirits
Himankar Das – Dr. Diganta Borgohain
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 124-131 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.17
This paper examines Samit Basu’s renowned novel Chosen Spirits through the lenses of digital modernity, psychopolitics and posthumanism to demonstrate how technologically mediated societies strip human subjectivity of its essence. The novel highlights the extensive use and pervasive presence of technological surveillance and digital performance to demonstrate governmental control over the lives of the individuals in society. Set in the near-future dystopian city of Delhi shaped by digital hyperconnectivity, the novel primarily narrates the lives of a group of friends, especially Joey, who works in a media and communication industry. Throughout the novel, Joey’s life and experiences are seen to be shaped by digital performativity and technological control, indicating a posthuman dystopian state in which digital frameworks and technology become inseparable from the formation of human identity. Drawing on Shoshana Zuboff’s ideas regarding surveillance capitalism, N. Katherine Hayles’s notion of posthuman condition and Rosi Braidotti’s views on posthumanism, this paper examines how Chosen Spirits portrays the emergence of posthuman subjectivity through technologically mediated individuals in a dystopian society shaped by surveillance capitalism and digital control.
Keywords: Posthumanism, Digital Surveillance, Psychopolitics, Surveillance Capitalism, Digital Performativity.
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From Harm to Hope: Slow Violence and the Emergence of Resistance
in Sheela Tomy’s Valli
Neha James – Dr. S. Sujaritha
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 132 -138 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.18
Ecological degradation does not always occur through a single catastrophic event. More often, it builds slowly, leaving its mark on the land and on the people whose lives are tied to it. Sheela Tomy’s Valli captures this slow violence in Wayanad through settler encroachment, commercial cultivation, timber extraction, and tourism. This article analyses the novel through the ideas of slow violence and environmental justice to show how these processes steadily reshape both ecology and community. At the same time, Valli does not remain only a narrative of violence and loss.It also traces different forms of resistance, from protest and ethical care to language, ecological knowledge, and practices of sustainable rebuilding. The article argues that the novel brings slow violence and resistance into close relation, showing that when ecological harm unfolds slowly, resistance too must take sustained and layered forms.
Keywords: Environmental humanities, Ecocriticism, Environmental Justice, Slow Violence, Resistance
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Springing from the Margins: G. Kalyana Rao’s Untouchable Spring
as a Dalit Epic
Nida
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 139-147 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.19
This paper offers a critical analysis of G. Kalyana Rao’s Untouchable Spring, examining how its formal and thematic innovations reconfigure the epic to centre Dalit histories, experiences, and cultural traditions. Informed by Dalit literary criticism, the study argues that Rao transforms the conventions of the epic to narrate lives historically excluded from dominant literary and historical discourses. Drawing on the novel’s multi-generational narrative, expansive historical canvas, oral storytelling traditions, songs, myths, folklore, and performative practices, the paper demonstrates how Rao reconstructs the epic by redefining heroism, foregrounding collective memory, preserving cultural knowledge, and recovering suppressed histories through alternative modes of narration. In contrast to classical epics that privilege kings, warriors, and divine figures, Untouchable Spring locates epic significance in the everyday struggles of Dalit communities for dignity, survival, and social justice. The novel also functions as an alternative archive, transforming oral traditions and cultural memory into repositories of historical knowledge that challenge caste-based structures of exclusion and the silences of dominant historiography. By reimagining the epic as a form rooted in collective experience rather than elite authority, Rao reclaims Dalit histories and cultural traditions within the literary imagination while expanding the possibilities of the epic itself.
Keywords: Dalit literature, epic, counter-history, cultural memory, G. Kalyana Rao, orality.
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Repression and Resilience through Food: A Study of Selected Short
Stories by Bulbul Sharma
Geethu T. Mohan – Dr. Binu Zachariah
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 148-155 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.20
Food and culinary practices often determine and reveal power relations in different social structures. Women are inextricably linked to food regardless of nation or culture. This paper attempts to study the gendered politics of food in the Indian domestic sphere by analysing two short story collections of Bulbul Sharma, The Anger of Aubergines: Stories of Women (1997) and Food and Eating Women, Telling Tales: Stories about Food (2011). Drawing on theories like gender performativity, necropolitics, beauty myth etc, the paper examines how everyday acts of cooking, fasting, serving and eating depicted in Sharma’s stories functions as mechanisms that regulates patriarchal conventions by suppressing and regulating women’s bodies, desires, and identities. At the same time, the paper also demonstrates how the female characters in selected stories transform food from a tool of oppression into a means of resistance against the oppressive forces to negotiate power, assert agency, and reclaim their identities.
Keywords: food culture, Indian households, patriarchy, performativity, necropolitics, resistance.
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Sacred Hills, Extractive Capitalism, and Indigenous Rights: A Decolonial Ecological
Reading of Year of the Weeds
Agalya D – Dr. Sulagna Mohanty
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 156-163 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.21
The mineral-rich areas in Odisha have also been home and sacred spaces to distinct trib al communities. These landscapes have long been targeted by extractive capitalist forces that mine resources and generate profits. Year of the Weeds (2018), a novel by Siddhartha Sarma, follows the tribal resistance and assertion of rights when a mining company targets the Gond tribe’s sacred hills for the extraction of bauxite. This study aims to explicate the sacred Devi hills in the novel as a site of indigenous epistemology facing disruption due to the developmental logic introduced through the mining project. It also positions the novel as a counter-narrative that critiques the dominant power structures legitimising extractivism. The study employs the theoretical lens of decolonial ecology to analyse the novel, and the methodology used is qualitative textual analysis. The results reveal that the Devi hills are not merely a geographical site for the Gond tribal community in the novel, but a space embedded with spiritual and ancestral significance. The findings demonstrate that in Sarma’s text, the sociopolitical sphere is inextricably linked to capitalist interests through the dismissal of indig enous knowledge systems and the systemic neglect of tribal rights until faced with resistance.
Keywords: Sacred Groves, Extractivism, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Decoloniality, Ecocriticism, Tribal Resistance
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Land, Identity, and Cultural Erosion in Narayan’s Kocharethi: The Araya Woman
Reneeta Anna Robert
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 164-173 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.22
This paper examines how Kocharethi: The Araya Woman (2011) by Narayan critiques the marginalisation of indigenous communities within postcolonial India through the experiences of the Malayarayar tribe of Kerala. The study argues that the novel exposes the continuing forms of internal colonisation embedded in developmental modernity, state intervention, religious assimilation, and dominant social structures. By foregrounding the tribe’s intimate relationship with land, ecology, memory, and oral traditions, the novel reveals how land alienation and modernisation lead to cultural fragmentation and the erosion of indigenous identity. The paper further analyses how Hindu orthodoxy and Christian missionary intervention function as mechanisms of cultural assimilation, producing identity crises and social displacement. At the same time, the novel emerges as an act of decolonial resistance that reclaims tribal history, cultural memory, and indigenous voice while challenging dominant notions of civilisation, progress, and inclusion.
Keywords: Indigenous identity, postcolonialism, land alienation, cultural assimilation, tribal literature, Malayarayar community, decolonial resistance.
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Caste-Informed Female Bodies and Slippery Sexual Spaces: A Study
of Select Malayalam Short Fiction
Dr. Sheniya Jose P.
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 174-181 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.23
This paper aims to address the spatial aspect of the formation of Dalit female sexual identities with reference to select post-millennial Malayalam short fiction. The article argues that the right to own and occupy the social space and the right to have a free expression of one’s sexual identity and desire correlate in the casteist scenario of Kerala. How the social impurity and stigma of caste and the entailing untouchability pervade to sexuality and how tactile defilement becomes synonymous with sexual defilement in the caste-ridden society of Kerala are also brought to light. The paper also sheds some light on the “slippery” nature of sexuality in the cultural landscape of Kerala when savarna (upper-caste) and Dalit people confront each other in/with desire. The paper employs the method of close reading whereas the analytical framework is provided by various theories and concepts related to sexual geography, spatiality and caste.
Keywords: spatiality of caste, Dalit sexual space, Malayalam short story, purity norms, slippery spaces, sexual geography
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Whispering Mountains: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Lepcha and Bhutia Folklore
Dr. Balaji B. Shelke – Mr. Kunzang Bhutia
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 182-191 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.24
This article examines Lepcha and Bhutia folktales as repositories of cultural memory, Indigenous knowledge, and ecological ethics, asking how oral narrative sustains identity, sacred geography, and the relationship between human and non-human worlds. Using a qualitative, comparative method, it analyzes selected folktales through thematic and interpretive analysis. The folklore emerges as a cultural archive tying communities to sacred landscapes such as Mount Kangc hendzonga and the Teesta and Rangeet rivers: Lepcha narratives reflect an animistic worldview in which nature carries spiritual agency, while Bhutia narratives draw on Buddhist principles of karma, compassion, and interdependence. Despite these different cosmological roots, both traditions insist on ecological responsibility, cultural continuity, and an ethical relationship with the environment, together showing how Indigenous narrative can offer alternative ecological perspectives for contemporary environmental discourse. Keywords: Lepcha and Bhutia Folklore; Cultural Memory; Indigenous
Knowledge: Ecological Identity; Himalayan Traditions
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Uncertain Identities: Contemporary Voices from the Periphery
Amanda B. Basaiawmoit – Dr. Paonam Sudeep Mangang
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 192-202 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.25
Writing often serves as a subversive act, particularly when undertaken from marginalised positions. The emergence of Northeast Writings in English within the wider canon of Indian writing in English is a recent phenomenon, dating to the 1980s and 1990s. Although many contemporary writers writing in English from this region are first-generation authors, they have established themselves as significant and influential, particularly by articulating regional concerns and perspectives in their writing. Despite this recognition of Northeast poetry, the people of the region living in mainland India continue to suffer from an identity crisis. This paper will analyse selected works by contemporary Northeast poets who address the complex issue of identity, with a particular focus on Northeast identity. Employing a dual framework that combines the social identity approach and theories of othering, this paper, through close textual analysis, will trace boundaries between ‘self’ and ‘other’, demonstrating how constructed identities that perpetuate othering through the mechanisms of stereotyping and discrimination are addressed and resisted in the works. Ultimately, this paper contends that these poets are not simply engaging in “art for art’s sake,” rather, they actively articulate demands for acceptance and inclusion, transforming themselves into poetic voices of resistance.
Keywords: Northeast poets, identity, Northeast identity, otherisation, resistance.
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Negotiating Roots and Routes: Migration, Myth, and Indigenous Identity
in Escaping the Land
Dr. Priyanka Kakoti
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 203-209 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.26
In Mamang Dai’s recent novel Escaping the Land, Dai interweaves history, myth and contemporary politics to delve deeper into metaphors of roots and routes. Love for the land along with understanding the pulse of the people is the theme that runs through her work. Here, the metaphor of routes is also used to trace the journey of the land, beyond time, to the formation of the state of Arunachal Pradesh, the once “hidden land” that receives the first rays of the sun in India. The paper aims to employ coupling metaphors of roots and routes in order to understand a way of life that Mamang Dai portrays in her novel Escaping the Land. The paper would also look into the intricacies of rooting in a culture and routing out of a culture or a particular way of life practised by a community, here, the tribal people of Arunachal Pradesh.
Keywords: Arunachal Pradesh, Political novel, History, Myth, Identity
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Erasure of the Intellectual Feminine in Biopics: The Politics
of Representation in Iris and The Iron Lady
Dr. Poulomi Mitra
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 210-219 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.27
Memory is central to our sense of self, it serves as an anchor, and when it begins to fade, identity disintegrates. When memory slips away, identity becomes vulnerable and maybe increasingly controlled, remembered, reinterpreted or reconstructed by others. In the absence of memory, identity becomes a contested space. This paper will focus on the cinematic representation of the cognitive decline of two iconic British women—the author Iris Murdoch and the politician Margaret Thatcher in the films Iris (2001) and The Iron Lady (2011) respectively. The study will explore how gender, power/authority and memory intersect in these biopics. It will trace how these women who once held positions of power are subtly recast into vulnerable, passive and fragile roles in cinematic depictions of their lives. Throughout history we have witnessed the cultural discomfort around the visibility and voice of formidable women in positions of power. The paper explores how it is not just dementia that marks a collapse of their identity, rather their dementia becomes a subtle tool that media uses to silence and even erase their intellectual and political contributions, thus regulating cultural memory. Their decline becomes a gendered erasure and symbolic undoing of their authority. The methodology adopted will be a close textual analysis through the lens of feminist literary criticism and memory studies.
Keywords: Gender, Power, Identity, Memory, Dementia
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Walking Through the Screen: A Comparative Study of Digital Fandom’s Influence on
Interpretations of the Jane Austen’s House Museum and Pride and Prejudice Film Sites
Dr. Ihsan-ur-Rahim Malik
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 220-227 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.28
Modern online communities often engage with digital tools to interact with and shape the mean ing of literary heritage sites. The sites constitute locations associated with an author’s life (in the present context, Jane Austen’s House, Chawton) and those linked to fictional adaptations like Lyme Park (Cheshire) and Chatsworth House (Derbyshire). The study shall endeavour to leverage paratextual theory and fan studies to demonstrate how digital platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest have reconceptualised interpretive frameworks which visitors apply to actual locales. Visits to filming locations can be motivated by genuine nostalgic connections; however, digital fans bring augmented reality into play to recast physical spaces into gateways which present such locations as immersive digital content. The paper shall engage with previous studies by Waysdorf, Williams, Rocca and others and bring together tourism focused on the life, novels, and adaptations of Jane Austen, digital paratexts and participatory fan culture to illustrate how definitive film versions, visualised for popular culture, measure up to and at times even outdo the literary canon at the actual commemorative sites. The study offers an analytical approach towards understanding that museums must depart from perceiving digital platforms as competitors and embrace them as facilitators of co-created visitor experiences. This study provides a qualitative and theory-driven analysis but at the same time it recognizes a limita tion regarding the lack of empirical sources which include visitor interviews or social media analytics. As emphasised in the conclusion, future studies should overcome this constraint by adopting both data-driven and ethnographic methods.
Keywords: Jane Austen, digital fandom, literary tourism, paratexts, heritage studies
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Alienation through Theatre: Examining the Viability of Digital Theatre
in Amitesh Grover’s The Last Poet
Shashank Shekhar – Prof. Smita Jha
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 228-235 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.29
In this digital age, where technologies powered by the Internet have become an integral part of our lives, the easiest way to revamp contemporary theatre is to digitise it with a range of tools, such as interactivity, projection mapping, virtual reality and motion capture, while also broadcasting the performance live through online platforms. Although it suits modern tastes and offers flexible space, unchecked use compromises the essence of theatre, which is to bring people together, cultivate harmony, and evoke emotions. Such performances begin to lose much of their dramaturgical texture and aesthetic integrity. Digital Theatre, thus risk evolving into a distinctly personal space, fostering a sense of alienation among individuals. Drawing on Brecht’s Alienation theory and Nadja Masura’s concept of digital theatre, this paper examines the viability of digital theatre in the Indian context through an analysis of Amitesh Grover’s production of The Last Poet, while also emphasising the need for a co herent framework and critical evaluative approach toward the digitalisation of theatre.
Keywords: Performance, digital theatre, alienation, Indian, screens, technology
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Spaces of Confession, Sites of Resistance: Therapy Rooms as Heterotopias
in Select Films
Saumya Agarwal – Prof. Nagendra Kumar
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 236-244 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.30
Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, the paper examines the therapy room as ‘other spaces’ where normative social, familial and institutional orders are suspended, contest ed and reconfigured. Through the close reading of the films Antwone Fisher (2002) and Dear Zindagi (2016), the study argues that therapeutic spaces function as heterotopias of crisis and deviation, enabling the distressed subject to reconstruct the self. The paper further analyses the therapist-client relationship as a dynamic field of power/knowledge. Therapy spaces, therefore, emerge as heterotopic spaces of inversion, negotiation, healing and psychic transformation.
Keywords: therapy space, heterotopia, power, knowledge, negotiation
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Appropriating Narrative Agency and Accusation: A Contrapuntal Reading
of Ennodenthinee Pinakkam in Kaliyattam (1997) as an Adaptation of
Willow Song from Othello (1625)
Gopika Hari – Dr. Vaibhav Pathak
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 245-251 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.31
The paper reads the song Ennodenthinee Pinakkam from the film Kaliyattam (1997), a
Malayalam film adaptation of Shakespeare, as an adaptation of the Willow Song from Othello
(1625). It situates the Willow Song within the existing critical discourse on its relation to
Desdemona’s sense of agency and individuality, and explores how the film song appropriates
the context of the song in extending narrative agency to the Desdemona-equivalent, Thamara. It
also undertakes a contrapuntal reading of the song, utilising Martin Oja’s (2024) framework of
conflicting modalities in feature films, to argue that the film song’s use of conflicting modalities,
including body-painting of snakes used in the murder scene, lead to clear accusation of the
hero by the heroine.
Keywords: Kaliyattam, Othello, Regional Shakespeare Adaptation, Indian Shakespeare
Adaptation, Contrapuntal Film Analysis.
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Losing Voice, Reconstructing Selfhood: Journey of a Laryngeal Cancer
Patient in the Bengali Film Konttho
Ankita Nandi
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 252-257 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.32
The article presents a cinematic representation of bodily loss and identity reconstruction after laryngectomy through an examination of the Bengali film, Konttho (2019) by Nandita Roy and Shiboprosad Mukherjee. Arjun, the film’s protagonist, is a radio professional. He is diagnosed with laryngeal cancer and needs to undergo a treatment called laryngectomy. The surgical process requires the removal of the larynx, resulting in the loss of his natural voice. Using Michael Bury’s concept of “biographical disruption,” the study shows that for a person whose personal and professional identities are deeply connected to voice, laryngectomy is not merely a bodily loss. It creates an identity crisis. The article also uses Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s theory of the ‘Five Stages of Grief’ to examine Arjun’s journey toward embracing his new self after bodily changes resulting from a laryngectomy, through emotional and psychological negotiation. The article emphasizes the significance of encountering people living their lives after laryngectomy, as it enables Arjun to consider his life beyond the loss. Furthermore, this article highlights the role of caregivers and physicians in helping patients navigate grief and adapt to a new life. Situating the study within the interdisciplinary field of health humanities, this article shows how regional cinema can portray the psychosocial dimensions of cancer, survivorship and adaptation, which often remain neglected within biomedical discourse.
Keywords: laryngeal cancer, laryngectomy, health humanities, Bengali cinema, identity
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From Screen to Green: Cultivating Ecological Consciousness in Children
through the Indian Series Chhota Bheem
Keerthana Sridhar – Padma Priya R
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 258-267 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.33
This study investigates the role of the Indian animated TV series Chhota Bheem in inducing the awareness of Environment among children. It is framed in eco-pedagogy, focussing on the themes the show incorporates, e.g. forest protection, water preservation, wildlife protection. Thematic analysis of selected episodes is the method used for the qualitative evaluation of the impact of the show as an effective tool for promoting eco-conscious attitudes. The results indicate that Chhota Bheem is a medium that can be used to teach ecological values to children, which shows that animation has a capability to influence the understanding of children about ecological sustainability. The study highlights ten episodes that explicitly represent pro environmental behaviours, ranging from tree planting to anti-poaching activism, and examines the function of the character Jaggu as a symbol of ecological stewardship.
Keywords: Chhota Bheem; television series; eco-consciousness; children’s media; sustainability; Indian animation
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(Re)framing the Narratives of Gender and Disability in Sports: A Critical
Study of Sarah Reinertsen’s memoir In A Single Bound
Gopal Kumar Choudhary – Prof. Binod Mishra
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 268-274 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.34
This paper critically examines the interrelationship between gender, disability, and sports through an analysis of Sarah Reinertsen’s memoir In a Single Bound (2009), the memoir of an American Paralympic triathlete. The focus of the paper is on the issue of women with disabilities who undergo multiple levels of exclusion within the sports culture that is formed on the principles of both ableism and patriarchy. Women with disabilities usually go through different stages of identity checking and stigmatisation. The memoir highlights Reinertsen’s tremendous perseverance and dedication towards life. The author of the memoir seeks to shield herself from the various social stigmas and challenges that come with being a disabled woman participating in sports. Thus, in this article, through analysing themes of disability, sports and gender, the issues of stigma and stereotypes concerning women with disabilities in society and sports have been discussed. Besides, this article also seeks to reveal the issues of self and identity defined mainly by social and cultural norms. Applying Erving Goffman’s concept of stigma, Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity, and feminist disability theory, this study analyses how Reinertsen’s story reflects on the processes of identity negotiation. Using phenomenological and qualitative methods, this study shows how a personal story can be used to reclaim agency and disrupt cultural constructions of disability and womanhood. This paper also argues that Reinertsen’s memoir reframes the narrative of disability, not as a limitation but as a strength that significantly contributes to contemporary discourses on disability, inclusive sports, and identity formation.
Keywords: Disability, Gender, Identity, Narrative, Stigma, Sports
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On Surviving the Doomed Space:
A Study of Two Select Malayalam Prison Narratives
Niranjana P – Dr. Aiswarya S Babu
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 275-281 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.35
The paper examines the lived experiences of female prisoners from twentieth-century Keralam by analyzing two women’s life narratives in Malayalam: Ormakurippukal (1982) by K. Ajitha and Aathmakatha (2010) by K. R. Gauriamma. Drawing on Mary Bosworth’s Engendering Resistance, the paper examines how two women activists; one a Naxalite and the other a Communist, navigate and negotiate their agency and identity within the carceral system. In the social imagination, their political identities define them. Yet, it was their gender identity that outweighed their political selves both inside and outside the cell. Further, the paper maps the chain of disciplinary violence that women experience in their everyday lives, both inside and outside the prison, by employing Foucauldian idea of ‘carceral continuum’. Initiated outside the prison by everyday social structures like family, the violence is perpetuated within carceral spaces by the State. Thus, both the patriarchy and the penitentiary of the State resemble each other in their treatment of women. Additionally, building on Spivak’s gendered subaltern, the paper argues that the narrators, despite their political visibility, as presented in the two texts, are victims of marginalization within the carceral space and other patriarchal institutions.
Keywords: Women prisoners, Malayalam prison narratives, gendered subaltern, carceral space, women life narratives
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The Politics of Gendered Silence in Ronny Hein’s Krisia’s Silence: Writing
Postmemory and Feminist Testimony After the Holocaust
Dr. Rincy Saji
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 282-289 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.36
This article examines Krisia’s Silence: The Girl Who Was Not on Schindler’s List (2021) by Ronny Hein, a memoir that navigates inherited trauma through narrative gaps, familial omissions, and selective testimony. Focusing on the intersections of gendered memory, postwar silence, and feminist life writing, the analysis explores how the memoir frames silence as a strategic response to violence, a form of embodied resistance, and a mode of archival reclamation. Particular attention is paid to the memoir’s treatment of domestic instruction, postwar reintegration, and the politics of exclusion within both familial and institutional memory frameworks. Positioned within the tradition of postmemory life writing, Krisia’s Silence reveals how silence, when read through the lens of gender and power, can function as a form of ethical testimony. In foregrounding what remains unsaid, the memoir not only resists narrative closure but contributes to feminist historiography by recovering overlooked female experiences from within and beyond the archive.
Keywords: feminist historiography; Holocaust; memory; second generation narratives; textual silence
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Homes Lost and Homes Found: The Gendered Displacement and Elusive
Quest of the Colonial Women
Dr. Kakalee Das
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 290-297| DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.37
This paper interrogates colonial historiography that duly acknowledged the homecoming experiences of the colonial men to their respective nations and ignored their female counterparts. It aims at a gendered re-reading of colonial discourse and particularly focuses on the reconceptualisation of the idea of ‘home’ with reference to the colonial women. The paper draws upon Homi Bhabha’s theory of ‘unhomely’ that considers home as a fluid concept that keeps on changing depending on various factors. The study involves textual analysis of the French author Marguerite Duras’ autobiographical texts The Lover and The Seawall as primary sources. It tries to show how the ‘metropole’ (here France) which was earlier considered as home became a site of estrangement for the French colonial women. This paper gives voice to these women, their quest for a home and presents a nuanced perspective of their experiences that contradicts the mainstream narratives.
Keywords: colonial historiography, homecoming, female repatriates, home, alternative narrative.
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Divided Consciousness and the Surrealist Structure of the Unconscious in
Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Dipeshkumar B. Patel
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 298-305| DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.38
This study examines the role of surrealism in Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, focusing on how the novel represents the unconscious through its narrative structure. Drawing on the theories of André Breton and Sigmund Freud, the study employs qualitative textual analysis combined with psychoanalytic close reading. It argues that Murakami’s surrealism functions not only as a thematic element but as a structural mechanism that organizes divided consciousness. Through analysis of the split self, the Town, memory, and ego dissolution, the paper shows how identity is fragmented, displaced, and reconfigured within the narrative. The findings show that surrealism in the novel does more than represent psychological states. It shapes the narrative itself, making unconscious processes visible. While existing scholarship frequently identifies Murakami’s use of magical realism, this study addresses the critical gap regarding how surrealist ‘psychic automatism’ dictates the dual narrative architecture itself. By examining how inner experience is externalized through symbolic structures, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of Murakami’s narrative method and the continuing relevance of surrealist theory in contemporary fiction.
Keywords: Surrealism, Divided Consciousness, Haruki Murakami, Unconscious, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Narrative Structure
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Thresholds of the Self: Exploring Liminal Identity in Yukio Mishima’s
Confessions of a Mask
Chhavi Chauhan – Dr. Mudita Agnihotri
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 306-313 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.39
In Confessions of a Mask (1949), Yukio Mishima presents a protagonist, Kochan, whose identity remains in a persistent state of flux, defying normative borders of sexuality, morality, and selfhood. Kochan’s attraction to male bodies, repulsion towards his own frail physique, his violent fantasies, and performance of normative masculinity constructs a self that oscillates between inner expressions of selfhood and societal expectations. Though he attempts to mould himself to avoid scrutiny, his heightened self- awareness causes him to remain vigilant about his performativity. This study combines Victor W. Turner’s theory of liminality and Erik H. Erikson’s notions of identity formation to explore how the protagonist’s self exists as a threshold space where identity is constantly negotiated and selfhood becomes a performance that both conforms to and transgresses social norms. This study contends that as a result of constant inner conflict, Kochan fails to achieve a stable identity and exists in a state of permanent liminality.
Keywords: Identity Crisis, Performance, Homosexuality, Liminality, Yukio Mishima
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Unbordering Womanhood: Mobility, Memory, and Feminist Resistance
in Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand
Satyawati – Dr. Geetha Yadav
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page 314-320 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.40
Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand shatters fixed structures of gender, nation and identity through its feminist reinvention of ability and memory. The recent scholarship on the novel has largely focused on Partition memory, narrative experimentation and border politics. The inter-related relationship between ageing female subjectivity, movement and fragmented memory has received relatively little attention. This article contends that Tomb of Sand cultivates an “unbordering” feminist consciousness by its portrayal of later life, spatial transition and narrative instability. Using Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, Homi K. Bhabha’s notion of liminality, and Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic subjectivity, the article shows how the novel resists patriarchal and nationalist containment by reimagining womanhood as fluid, relational, and always in flux. The article explores through close textual analysis how ageing becomes a site of transformation rather than decline, how mobility deconstructs stable notions of home and nation, and how fragmented narration destabilises coherent historical and patriarchal narratives. The article concludes by contending that Tomb of Sand exceeds the limits of postcolonial feminist discourse by presenting identity as dynamic, fluid, and in perpetual flux.
Keywords: Tomb of Sand; feminist subjectivity; mobility and borders; memory narratives; postcolonial feminism; ageing and resistance
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Eco-Doctrinal Dissonance, Epistemic Myopia, and the Oligarchocene: Explaining
the Gap Between Scriptural Ecologism and Environmental Practice in India
Dr. Devendra Rankawat
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 321-330 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.41
The paper examines the paradox of environmental disequilibrium in India despite rich eco ethical injunctions within Hindu scriptural traditions. Drawing upon close readings of texts such as the Isha Upanishad, Bhagavad Gita, Atharvaveda, Upanishadic renunciatory traditions, Dharmasūtras, and Manusmriti, the paper argues that these traditions do articulate ecological and ethical insights but somehow, they do not quite seem to consolidate into binding socio-material norms—a condition that can be termed as eco-doctrinal dissonance. This dissonance is further compounded by epistemic ecological myopia, wherethrough the masses lack a full-scale systemic understanding of ecological processes and downstream effects, that generally serve to obscure the consequences of environmentally harmful practices. The paper situates these contradictions within the framework of the oligarchocene, underscoring how contemporary politico-economic structures instrumentalize religion through mechanisms of temptation, coercion, spectacle, and consumerist mobilization. The net result is a form of performative religiosity that remains scripturally anchored yet ecologically diffuse, ethically fragmented, and materially ineffective. In essence, the paper argues that India’s ecological crisis emerges not so much from the absence of environmental ethics as from the fragmentation of ethical consciousness across symbolic, institutional, epistemic, and economic domains. This study employs a qualitative interpretative methodology based on close textual reading and comparative hermeneutic analysis of select Hindu scriptures. Drawing on ecocriticism, environmental sociology, and political ecology, it attempts to examine the gap between scriptural ecological imagination and contemporary environmental realities in India. Rather than trying to establish historical causes of this crisis or measuring environmental behaviour or treating these texts as manuals for environmental governance, the paper leans more towards offering a conceptual explanation for the limited success achieved in turning scriptural environmental values into ecological practice. Therefore, the scope is limited to explaining the gap, and it does not attempt to establish any specific correlation between scriptural injunctions and environmental outcomes.
Keywords: eco-doctrinal dissonance; epistemic ecological myopia; oligarchocene; Hindu environmental ethics; ritual economy; downstream externalities; performative religiosity
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Reclaiming the Silenced: Feminist Mythmaking in Koral Dasgupta’s Ahalya (2020)
Simran Kashyap – Dr. Aditya Prakash
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 331-337 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.42
This paper examines Koral Dasgupta’s reinterpretation of Ahalya (2020), which reclaims the character’s silenced agency, particularly in relation to desire, deception, and redemption. Traditionally depicted as the wife of the sage Gautama, Ahalya becomes the subject of a complex narrative when Indra, disguised as her husband, approaches her. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theorisation of power and the regulation of sexuality, the study reads the traditional narrative as a discursive mechanism that disciplines female desire and reinforces moral authority. It further engages with Alicia Ostriker’s concept of revisionist mythmaking, which questions hegemonic representations that silence women’s lived experiences. Through these frameworks, the paper argues that contemporary retellings transform Ahalya from a passive figure defined by curse and redemption into a subject capable of articulating her own narrative and sexual autonomy.
Keywords: Ahalya; Feminist Myth Retellings;Koral Dasgupta; Reclaiming; Sexual Agency
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Silence, Responsibility, and the Limits of Dharma in the Mahabharata)
Aradhya Maria David – Dr. Mini VS
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 338-346 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.43
This article examines the ethical significance of silence in the Mahabharata through selected episodes from the Sabha Parva, Udyoga Parva, and the war books. Rather than treating silence merely as the absence of speech, the study approaches it as an ethical condition shaped by power, responsibility, institutional authority, and moral uncertainty. The article analyzes Bhishma’s hesitation during Draupadi’s humiliation, the ineffectiveness of Vidura’s counsel, the collective paralysis of the royal assembly, and the strategic ambiguities surrounding Drona’s death. Drawing upon the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault’s reflections on discourse and power, and J. L. Austin’s speech-act theory, the article argues that ethical collapse in the epic often emerges not only through visible violence, but through failures of response that permit violence to continue. Silence consequently becomes central to the Mahabharata’s exploration of dharma, authority, and human responsibility.
Keywords: Mahabharata, Dharma, Ethical Silence, Political Power, Speech Acts, Institutional Ethics
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Negotiating Power and Resistance in Such a Long Journey: A Postcolonial Reading
Randeep Kaur – Prof. Mahesh Arora
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 347-354 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.44
Postcolonial literature frequently engages with the task of unravelling the inherited association between state power and individual agency. This research paper examines the interplay of power, resistance, and minority issues in postcolonial India through the thought-provoking journey of Gustad Noble in Such a Long Journey (1991) by Rohinton Mistry. The novel serves as a biting critique of the state apparatus under Indira Gandhi’s tenure during the national crisis of the 1971 war. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s notion of power and discourse, it investigates the dwindling position of the Parsi community in postcolonial India and how they navigate and resist dominant ideologies. The study also explores how the authoritarian powers try to legitimize their corrupt tactics by intervening in the domestic sphere of ordinary citizens. Due to his Parsi roots, Mistry’s fiction explicitly represents the anxieties of the minority community related to political insecurity and cultural marginalization amid political conspiracies.
Keywords: political power, resistance, postcolonial, minority, marginalisation
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Feminist Agency as Killjoy Misalignment in Indian Diasporic Women’s
Narratives: Embodiment, Refusal and Digital Circulations
Kakoli Debnath
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 355-363 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.45
This article explores the issue of feminist agency in Indian diasporic women’s narratives of the twenty-first century, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s concept of the feminist killjoy. It posits that agency does not merely appear through self-liberation, but through continuous misalignment with socially constructed notions of happiness, relationality, and gendered expectations. Through close textual analysis, this article demonstrates how feminist agency becomes legible through affective discomfort, hesitation, refusal, exhaustion, and disruptive speech that unsettles familial and cultural scripts of marriage, obedience, and belonging. Drawing on feminist theory with an affective orientation, feminist diaspora studies, and digital diaspora scholarship, the article further examines how feminist agency becomes legible through killjoy politics embedded across embodied and digitally mediated contexts. While the embodied dimension foregrounds relational negotiation and affective friction, digital contexts intensify feminist disruption through visibility, fragmentation, surveillance, and networked circulation. Ultimately, the article argues that feminist agency operates as a continuous politics of misalignment across embodied and digital relational spaces.
Keywords: agency, diaspora, digital relationality, embodiment, killjoy politics, misalignment
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Stories Silenced by the Social Stereotypes: Foregrounding Narrativity
in Jayanta Mahapatra’s Lyrics with Special Reference to “Summer”
B Sai Vaishnavi – Dr. Maitali Khaanna
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 364-372 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.46
Jayanta Mahapatra, a legend in Indian English Poetry, is celebrated for mirroring society in short lyrics. Mahapatra’s poetry is rooted in Odisha’s culture and reflects the complexities of human existence in India. While his poems have been explored for socio-cultural themes and his poetic style, subtle narratives of social issues remain veiled in the silent spaces of his verses. This paper foregrounds the subtle narrative in Mahapatra’s “Summer” by employing H Porter Abbott’s comprehensive narrative theory, as explicated in The Cambridge Introduction to Nar rative. Employing Abbott’s conceptualisation of setting, characters, sequence of events, narrator, and narration, this paper proposes to unravel Mahapatra’s empathetic narrative of rural women, their identity crises, and the dominance of social stereotypes over her volitions. By synthesising Abbott’s theoretical explanations of narrativity with close readings of Mahapatra’s poem, this paper aims to offer a new dimension to the dynamics of storytelling within the realm of poetry.
Keywords: Porter Abbott, Jayanta Mahapatra, Narrativity, Narrative Elements, “Summer”
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Tracing the Threads: Nostalgic Memory in Mourid Barghouti’s
I Was Born There, I Was Born Here
Lekshmi Chandra – Prof. Rani P L
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 373-379 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.47
Nostalgia emerges as an emotion and expands itself into memory. For Palestinians, forced into exile for centuries, nostalgic memory is a tool to explicate their traumatic past. Through their memories of nostalgia, they re-establish and re-stabilise their connection with Palestine as their lost homeland and dreamland of return. They mould nostalgia into an effective platform to make their unending struggles pellucid to the world. Nostalgia succours the Palestinians scattered in different parts of the world to erase their spatiotemporal distances. Svetlana Boym, in her theory of nostalgic memory, revolts against the autonomy of time over human lives. ‘Nostalgia’, for her, is a historical emotion that can create profound impacts on the future of the past. Most Palestinian memoirs clearly reflect one or the other type of nostalgic memory proposed by Boym. This paper attempts to read the memoir, I Was Born There, I Was Born Here, written by Mourid Barghouti,through the lens of the reflective nostalgic memory proposed by Svetlana Boym.
Keywords: Memory, Palestinian memoirs, exile, reflective nostalgia, restorative nostalgia
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Shades of Lady Superstardom in South Indian Movies: A Study of Selected
Movies of Manju Warrier and Nayanthara
Bijitha P – Dr. Kekhronguu Dazo
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 380-389 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.48
Films are a mode expression implicated in discourses on gender, class and caste. The Indian film industry is generally classified as North Indian and South Indian film industries, in which Mollywood and Tollywood have a prominent place. Apart from the typical love story based on hero worship, these industries have experimented with the representation of heroines who are atypical, as they are not the normal feminine types, but those who display boldness, resulting in the label ‘lady super star’. Manju Warrier and Nayanthara are female heroines labelled as ‘lady superstar’ due to their heterogeneous and atypical roles. The current study analyses a few movies of Manju Warrier such as Ennum Eppozhum, Vettah, Udaharanam Sujatha, Ami, Lucifer, Prathi Poovankozhi, Chathur Mukham, and Ayisha; and of Nayanthara such as Naa num Rowdy Dhaan, Imaikkaa Nodigal, Viswasam, Mookuthi Amman, Annapoorani, Aramm, Kolamaavu Kokila, and Dora through the lens of gender roles and cultural representation.
Keywords: South Indian movies, lady superstars, atypical female characters, gender roles, Manju Warrier, Nayanthara.
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Of Boochandis, Rakshasas and Asuras: Reimagining the Monster in
Select Indian Picturebooks in English
B. Sai Harshitha – Dr Sowmya Srinivasan
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 390-396 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.49
For a long time, children’s stories have incorporated mythical monsters and magical creatures that are a product of the imagination. In contemporary Indian children’s picturebooks, there has been a paradigmatic shift in the characterization of such monstrous entities created as empathetic, friendly companions of amusement and fun in contrast to the traditional figures of fear and repulsion. Considering this trend shift, the paper analyses three picturebooks that feature three uniquely Indian monster-figures, namely the boochandi, the rakshasa and the asura, as their protagonists. Through a close examination of these representations, the paper aims to establish the progressive and inclusive humanitarian leanings found in the contempo rary Indian picturebooks that reimagine these monsters, pointing to a change in the adult-child power dynamics wherein the child is given autonomy and agency to develop emotional resilience through these narratives.
Keywords: Monsters, Asura, Rakshasa, Emotional Resilience, Adult-Child Dynamics, Indian Picturebooks in English.
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Still Pond of Silence: Metaphor, Myth, and Resilience
in Tamali Neogi’s Ripples in Silence
Prof. Pradeep Trikha
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 397-400 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.50
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Jim Morrison – The Poet in Exile
Dr. Dwaipayan Roy
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 401-403 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.59136/lv.2026.27.1.51
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The Curriculum
I Have No Plans Now
The Hidden Grammare
Parneet Jaggi
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 404-406
Guardian of the Treasure
Himself Seen
Darkly Suffered
Dawn Will Always Vanquish Dusk
However
Paul Mirabile
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 407-408
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Punctuated
A Parent in Search of Y
Pain to Panacea
Kun fayakun – Be, and It Is
Despite …
Between a Couple of Punches and Lunches
Dr. Shalini Sharma
Literary Voice | Number-27, Volume-1 | September 2026 | Page: 409-412
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