Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6275-2042
Date of Award
Fall 2024
Document Type
Thesis (Master's)
Department or Program
Master of Arts in Liberal Studies
First Advisor
Vievee Francis
Second Advisor
Matthew Olzmann
Third Advisor
Anna Minardi
Abstract
This thesis reimagines the consequences of my great-grandmother’s life. It is an attempt to demystify women’s conditioned roles within private and public spaces and note how, through this conditioning, their identity is repressed to the point of diffidence and eventually, abhorrence towards their own bodies and the physical spaces they occupy. This is portrayed in poetry form through the voice of my great-grandmother as the primary speaker, and is interspersed with the voices of the grandmother, the mother, and the great-granddaughter.
My great-grandmother’s lived experience consisted mostly of her life as a young wife, mother, devotee, and storyteller. She told me her stories before she passed away at age 90 after having forgotten almost everyone important in the various lives she lived. Incorporating stories of some of the women in my family though gently blurring the lines between reality and fiction, this poetry collection presents the different shapes womanhood has taken within our family, in its movement through almost a century.
The collection confronts questions about motherhood, body dysmorphia, forgiveness, the domestic and nature, and the problems that arise with carrying these questions in neat, presentable vessels. Further, this collection uses the examples of goddesses in Hindu mythology and women in history, to place these questions and, by extension, my own family, within a larger cultural context.
Recommended Citation
Shiv Kumar, Sanyukta, "My Soul, She Walks Behind Me" (2024). Dartmouth College Master’s Theses. 177.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/masters_theses/177
Included in
Hindu Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Poetry Commons, Women's Studies Commons
