Suniti Namjoshi (born 1941 in

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the secon ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

) is a poet and a fabulist. She grew up in India, worked in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

and at present lives in the southwest of England with English writer Gillian Hanscombe. Her work is playful, inventive and often challenges prejudices such as racism, sexism, and homophobia. She has written many collections of fables and poetry, several novels, and more than a dozen children's books. Her work has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Chinese, Korean, Hindi and Turkish.

Early life

Suniti Namjoshi was born in

in 1941. Her father, Manohar Vinayak Namjoshi, was senior test pilot at Hindustan Aircraft in

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

. He was killed when his plane crashed in 1953. Her mother, Sarojini Namjoshi, née Naik Nimbalkar, was from

Phaltan Phaltan () is a town, a tehsil, and a municipal council in the Satara district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The town is about northeast of the city of Satara and about 110 km from Pune. History Phaltan was one of the non-salu ...

. Suniti was sent to Woodstock, an American mission school in the

Himalayan foothills The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

, and then to Rishi Valley in

Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...

where

Jiddu Krishnamurti Jiddu Krishnamurti (; 11 May 1895 – 17 February 1986) was a philosopher, speaker and writer. In his early life, he was groomed to be the new World Teacher, an advanced spiritual position in the theosophical tradition, but later rejected th ...

used to come and talk to the children for a couple of months each year.

Career

Having passed the IAS in 1964, she worked as an officer in the

Indian Administrative Service The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the Public administration, administrative arm of the All India Services of Government of India. Considered the premier civil service of India, the IAS is one of the three arms of the All India Services ...

before pursuing further education. She studied Public Administration and earned her

Master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

from the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded in ...

and earned a PhD from

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Univer ...

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

. Namjoshi taught in the Department of English at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

from 1972 to 1987. She wrote ''Feminist Fables'' in 1981. It was described in ''Feminism, one of her voices'' as a minor feminist classic and the work for which Namjoshi, who the article said produced a "brilliant body of work, marked by sparkling wit, word play and inventive power, emerged", is best known. She began writing full-time in 1987, publishing fiction and poetry works. ''Kaliyug - Circles Of Paradise'' (play) and ''Flesh And Paper'' (poetry) were written in collaboration Gillian Hanscombe. Namjoshi has been influenced by

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born ...

, Adrienne Rich, her friend Hilary Clare, and

Kate Millett Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors ...

's ''

Sexual Politics ''Sexual Politics'' is the debut book by American writer and activist Kate Millett, based on her PhD dissertation. It was published in 1970 by Doubleday. It is regarded as a classic of feminism and one of radical feminism's key texts. ''Sexu ...

''. She has been active in the

feminist movement The feminist movement (also known as the women's movement, or feminism) refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for radical and liberal reforms on women's issues created by the inequality between men and women. Such ...

and

gay liberation The gay liberation movement was a social and political movement of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s that urged lesbians and gay men to engage in radical direct action, and to counter societal shame with gay pride.Hoffman, 2007, pp.xi-xiii ...

movements. Namjoshi was Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Women's Studies at

Exeter University , mottoeng = "We Follow the Light" , established = 1838 - St Luke's College1855 - Exeter School of Art1863 - Exeter School of Science 1955 - University of Exeter (received royal charter) , type = Public ...

in England from 1995 to 2001, and was a member of the Literary Panel of the Arts Council of England from 1993 to 1996. In 1996 Namjoshi published ''Building Babel'', a postmodern novel about building cultures, whose story continues online with a collaborative project that enables readers' contributions. Namjoshi currently lives and writes in

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devo ...

, United Kingdom.

Published works

Fiction

*''Feminist Fables''. London: Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1981. *''The Conversations of Cow''. London: The Women's Press, 1985. *''The Blue Donkey Fables''. London: The Women's Press, 1988. *''The Mothers of Maya Diip''. London: The Women's Press, 1989. *''Because of India: Selected Poems and Fables''. London: Onlywomen Press, 1989. *''Feminist Fables'', Spinifex Press, North Melbourne, 1993 *''Saint Suniti and the Dragon''. North Melbourne: Spinifex, 1993; London: Virago, 1994. *''Building Babel''. North Melbourne: Spinifex, 1996. *''Goja: An Autobiographical Myth''. North Melbourne: Spinifex, 2000. *''Sycorax: New Fables and Poems''. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006. *''The Fabulous Feminist: A Suniti Namjoshi Reader''. Delhi: Zubaan, 2012; North Melbourne: Spinifex, 2012. *''Suki''. Delhi: Penguin India, 2012; North Melbourne: Spinifex, 2013. *''Foxy Aesop'' aka ''Aesop the Fox''. Delhi: Zubaan, 2018; Melbourne: Spinifex, 2018

Poetry

*''Poems''. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1967. *''More Poems''. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1971. *''Cyclone In Pakistan''. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1971. *''The Jackass and the Lady''. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1980. *''The Authentic Lie''. Fredericton, N.B.: Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1982. *''From the Bedside Book of Nightmares''. Fredericton, N.B.: Fiddlehead Poetry Books & Goose Lane Editions, 1984. *''Flesh and Paper'' (with Gillian Hanscombe). UK: Jezebel Tapes and Books, 1986; Charlottetown, P.E.I.: Ragweed Press, 1986. *''Because of India: Selected Poems and Fables''. London: Onlywomen Press, 1989. *''Sycorax: New Fables and Poems''. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2006. *''The Fabulous Feminist: a Suniti Namjoshi Reader''. New Delhi: Zubaan, 2012.

Children's

*''Aditi and the One-Eyed Monkey''. London: Sheba Feminist Publishers, 1986. *''Aditi and the Thames Dragon''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2002. *''Aditi and the Marine Sage''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2004. *''Aditi and the Techno Sage''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2005. *''Aditi and Her Friends Take on the Vesuvian Giant''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2007. *''Aditi and Her Friends Meet Grendel''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2007. *''Aditi and Her Friends Help the Budapest Changeling''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2007. *''Aditi and Her Friends In Search of Shemeek''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2008. *''Gardy in the City of Lions''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2009. *''Siril and The Spaceflower''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2009. *''Monkeyji and the Word Eater''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2009. *''Beautiful and the Cyberspace Runaway''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2009. *''Blue and Other Stories''. (art work Nilima Sheikh). Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2012; North Melbourne: Spinifex, 2012. *''Little i''. Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2014. *''The Boy and Dragon Stories'' (pictures Krishna Bala Shenoi). Chennai, India: Tulika Publishers, 2015

Translation

*''Poems of Govindagraj'' by Ram Ganesh Gadkari. Translated by Suniti Namjoshi and Sarojini Namjoshi. Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1968.

References

External links

Works by or about Suniti Namjoshi
in libraries (

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

catalog)
Suniti Namjoshi , The fantastic fabulist
''Mint'' article by Diya Kohli
Fashion Your Own Fables
''

Indian Express ''The Indian Express'' is an English-language Indian daily newspaper founded in 1932. It is published in Mumbai by the Indian Express Group. In 1999, eight years after the group's founder Ramnath Goenka's death in 1991, the group was split be ...

'' article by Amritta Dutta {{DEFAULTSORT:Namjoshi, Suniti Living people 1941 births University of Missouri alumni McGill University alumni University of Toronto faculty Academics of the University of Exeter Women writers from Maharashtra 20th-century Indian women writers Lesbian feminists Lesbian writers Poets from Maharashtra 20th-century Indian poets Indian women poets British LGBT poets Indian LGBT writers 21st-century British writers Fabulists