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
