Gendered Mobilities and Kerala Modernity: Relocating Malayali Women's Creative Writings in English

Abstract

This thesis explores the history of English creative writings of Malayali women, situating their works within the trajectories of migration, modernity and gendered experience in Kerala. The research problem addressed is the absence of a holistic approach to the history of female creative praxis from Kerala. The central hypothesis underlying this study is that migration as a phenomenon has been one of the primary catalysts enabling women from Kerala to venture into creative writing. Through a textual analysis of fourteen major writers—including Kamala Das, Anna Sujatha Mathai, Meena Alexander, Arundhati Roy, among others—supported by personal interviews and secondary literature, the thesis records the evolution of women’s writing in English from Kerala across different migratory contexts and generations. A key contribution of this research is the categorisation of Malayali women writers into four groups based on their migratory experiences: pre-global writers who migrated or stayed within India, preglobal writers who migrated abroad, post-global writers who migrated within India and post-global writers who migrated abroad. Employing the theoretical frameworks that connect migration and gendered experience, as proposed by theorists such as Kimberlé Crenshaw, Gloria Anzaldúa and Édouard Glissant, the work analyses how these varied mobilities shape the writers’ identities and literary productions. The first chapter presents an overview of Kerala writing in English and categorises female creative writers into four major groups. Chapter two traces Kerala’s migration history with focus to female mobility and presents the theoretical framework. Chapters three to six analyse the creative works of each group, examining how migration and gender intersect and manifest in their writings. The seventh chapter consolidates inferences, synthesising findings through comparative analysis, while chapters eight and nine offer recommendations and conclusion. The findings reveal that migration and modernity are deeply intertwined in the formation of a distinct female literary identity from Kerala, with creative works often reflecting autobiographical elements and negotiations of gender, displacement and belonging. This study contributes a comprehensive historical and theoretical framework for understanding Malayali women’s English writings, establishing them as central to the ongoing project of Kerala modernity, and in doing so, becomes a pioneering attempt in this field.