Becoming, agency, and the female body: reading embodiment in Vandana Singh’s select stories
Abstract
Vandana Singh’s speculative fiction devises new literary and philosophical strategies to challenge the conventional ways of thinking about bodily limits, spatially and temporally. This article offers a new way of looking at three select short stories by Vandana Singh in which she asserts fluidity and relationality of the body by boldly relinquishing its material limits. These three stories have women as their central characters, women who are struggling to break free of the limits imposed by patriarchy. Singh’s understanding of patriarchy is rooted in the Indian context; the tropes she uses are either historical or cultural/mythical. In their resistance to fit into the normative models of patriarchy, these women protagonists ‘transgress’ the idea of bodily, physical, and temporal limits.
Fields of Study & Subjects
South Asian Cinema and Culture
South Asian Studies and Diaspora
Indian and Buddhist Studies
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Global South Literary Studies
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 18–27
- Publication date
- 2 January 2026
- Language
- EN