Wonderland or Not

To love. To be loved. To never for­get your own insig­ni­fi­cance. To never get used to the uns­pea­ka­ble vio­lence and the vul­gar dis­pa­rity of life around you. To seek joy in the sad­dest pla­ces. To pur­sue beauty to its lair. To never sim­plify what is com­pli­ca­ted or com­pli­cate what is sim­ple. To res­pect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and unders­tand. To never look away. And never, never, to for­get.

Arundhati Roy

The last ins­tall­ment for this women’s week is in 1997 Boo­ker Prize win­ner for “God of Small Things”, and sub­se­quent Indian acti­vist, Arun­dahti Roy.

Roy is above all things, what she calls, a “world citi­zen”. What I appre­ciate most about her and her work is that she is a public inte­llec­tual not bound to the agenda of a think tank, uni­ver­sity, or govern­ment. There is no govern­ment pre­ven­ting her from using her voice, no think tank or uni­ver­sity abs­con­ding her thoughts to their own end.

Born in India, the for­mer archi­tec­tu­ral stu­dent wrote movies and screen­plays before wri­ting her Boo­ker Prize win­ning fic­tion novel. Sub­se­quently she deci­ded to use her voice another way, she con­cen­tra­ted on acti­vism, non-fiction books and essays. She became an outs­po­ken cri­tic of India’s nuc­lear wea­pons tes­ting and envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies, a vocal cri­tic of the Nar­mada Dam pro­ject, wri­ting The Grea­ter Com­mon Good an essay which can be seen in full in her non-fiction book “The Cost of Living” — a book of two essays on India’s mas­sive dam and irri­ga­tion pro­jects and its suc­cess­ful deto­na­tion of a nuc­lear bomb. She dona­ted her Royal­ties from her Boo­ker Prize win­ning book to Nar­mada Bachao Andolan.

Cri­ti­ci­zed by many, inc­lu­ding envi­ron­men­tal his­to­rian Ramachan­dra Guha who called her tone “hec­to­ring shrill and her work self indul­gent” she res­pon­ded that
“her wri­ting is inten­tio­nal in its pas­sio­nate, hys­te­ri­cal tone: “I am hys­te­ri­cal. I’m screa­ming from the bloody roof­tops. And he and his smug little club are going ‘Shhhh… you’ll wake the neighbors!’

I heard her speak at my uni­ver­sity the spring after Bush was elec­ted for the second time. I found her not at all hys­te­ri­cal but res­pon­si­ble and wan­ting to shake the world awake. She is a harsh cri­tic of the U.S. led inva­sion of Afgha­nis­tan in reac­tion to the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, Impe­ria­lism and the abuse of power, of Israel, and US mili­tary activity.

In 2002, she won the Lan­nan Foundation’s Cul­tu­ral Free­dom Award for her work “about civil socie­ties that are adver­sely affec­ted by the world’s most power­ful govern­ments and corporations,”

Roy was awar­ded the Syd­ney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social cam­paigns and her advo­cacy of non-violence.

She was also awar­ded the Sahitya Aka­demi award, a natio­nal award from India’s Aca­demy of Let­ters, for her collec­tion of essays on con­tem­po­rary issues, The Alge­bra of Infi­nite Jus­tice, but she dec­li­ned to accept it “in pro­test against the Indian Govern­ment toeing the US line by ‘vio­lently and ruth­lessly pur­suing poli­cies of bru­ta­li­za­tion of indus­trial wor­kers, inc­rea­sing mili­ta­ri­za­tion and eco­no­mic neo-liberalization.”

You may read her work at a variety of pla­ces, lis­ted below are just a few.

Explo­ra­tory Links:

Out­look India/Arndhati Roy, carries much of her shor­ter works with links to her lon­ger works. It is sign up but free and worth it.
Salon piece from 1997
arundhati roy dot com, a great site where you can access some ver­bal essays, speeches/lectures and access a link to the WE docu­men­tary which visua­li­zes the world of Arundhati Roy, spe­ci­fi­cally her famous Come Sep­tem­ber speech, where she spoke on such things as the war on terror, cor­po­rate glo­ba­li­za­tion, jus­tice and the gro­wing civil unrest.

Links to some of her works:
9 IS NOT 11
Baby Bush Go Home (March 2006)
Book List

Arundhati Roy is said to be wor­king on her 2nd non-fiction novel.

Pre­vious women’s week posts:
Zai­nab Salbi
Dorothy Par­ker
Octa­via Butler