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key influences and themes
Shashi Deshpande began her career with short stories, but has since gone on to write children's books and many novels. Her subjects are the realities of women's lives and the truths that lie behind their silence. She describes how, at one point in her life she realised how little women's stories were heard....
| "I was speaking to a male relative about a woman in the family who'd had a very hard life, terrible really, and I was so astonished to hear the man say that her life was ok, he said "well, she never complained did she?" And then I thought maybe she did and maybe you didn't hear her because your ears weren't tuned to her voice. I think for me that really brought women's silences and what I call the deafness of a lot of people to women's silences, that's been an important motif in all my work."
Shashi Deshpande |
Deshpande is tuned in to the voices behind the silence. One theme which recurs in many of her books is rape - both as a random violent act and within marriage. It is a subject which society prefers not to discuss.
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