Memoir in Water-Speaks the Wah Umkhrah
by Esther Syiem
ISBN: 9789386949004
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Imprint : Regency Publications
Year : 2018
Price : Rs. 4995.00
Biblio : xii+122 p., 25 cm
Author Profile
Esther Syiem has touched an open nerve. The river Umkhrah in Shillong has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Through the river Umkhrah, Esther takes us into the soul of all flowing, living rivers in the planet..... whose fate is inextricable from the travails of the human race.
Esther Syiem teaches in the Department of English at the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Her publications include two volumes of poetry: Oral Scriptings and of follies and frailties of wit and wisdom. Her third volume, Many Sides of Many Stories will be published shortly. She also writes in Khasi and has published a play entitled Ka Nam. Her book The Oral Discourse in Khasi Folk Narrative is an important resource for understanding Khasi culture. Ka Jingïamareh Kob ki Wah, published by Tulika Publishers is her retelling of a Khasi folktale that she has also translated into English, The Race of the Rivers.
She is a member of the PLSI’s National Editorial Collective, a grass-root initiative to document the languages of India headed by Prof Ganesh Devy and is the editor of the Meghalaya Volume, People’s Linguistic Survey of India Vol. 19, Pt II, The Languages of Meghalaya which has also been translated into Khasi. She is founder member of the Shillong Forum for English Studies.
About The Book
If a river were to speak, it will have its say: excruciating stories of human love and strife..... the River Umkhrah that runs through Shillong speaks about Shanbor’s sorrowful drowning, about village girls who chase city experiences but/and end in tragedy, reflections upon Khasi matrilineal society that supposedly empowers women, about mothers who don’t know how to love, mothers who love their children too much, about the dark days of insurgency in 1990’s Meghalaya.
Table of Contents
Foreword v
Introduction vii
Prologue ix
Chapter One 1
Chapter Two 15
Chapter Three 21
Chapter Four 33
Chapter Five 48
Chapter Six 63
Chapter Seven 72
Chapter Eight 89
Chapter Nine 104
Epilogue 119
Glossary 121
