Exploring a huge variety of texts written in English from India and Canada, the eighteen essays contained in the present anthology belong to current debates on the scope and methodology of comparative literary and cultural studies. These essays speculate on their interrelatedness as they consider them in new combinations from different critical angles. Although the emphasis is mainly on feminine/feminist perspectives and on women writers, some male writers—most notably Sri Aurobindo and Amitav Ghosh—have also been studied in the anthology. There are essays on fiction and non-fiction including novels, memoirs, autobiographies, short stories, cultural criticism, author interviews, as also essays on poetry—both Indian and Canadian. Authors frequently cited are Deshpande, Desai, Das, Markandaya from India, and Atwood, Kogawa, Laurence, Munro and First Nations women writers from Canada. In addition, there are some thought-provoking comparative studies across historical periods and references to literary critics, cultural historians, Indian and Western theorists, which raise challenging questions about the appropriateness of uncritically applying Western feminist and postcolonial theories to readings of some Indian women’s fiction or to First Nations women’s poetry. Besides, some essays deal with gender issues—women’s spaces, women’s bodies and violence against them, women’s silences and their struggle to voice their subjective experiences, women’s quest for identity, and women’s relation to nature and tradition. Quilting Relationships is remarkably an original collection exploring new angles of interpretations and speculations that construct new and exciting theoretical perspectives. It will definitely serve as a guiding spirit for scholars and researchers of English literature, particularly those who want to examine new methods of approaching literary texts, thereby making the book an exciting, interesting and motivating venture.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements; Foreword; Preface; Introduction; 1. Ethnicity in Kostash’s All of Baba’s Children and Kogawa’s Obasan; 2. Scientific Development and Conservation: Women’s Articulations; 3. A Re-vision of Gender and Nationalism in Latifa’s My Forbidden Face, Thapa’s The Tutor of History, Kogawa’s Obasan and Nair’s Ladies Coupe; 4. Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Atwood’s Alias Grace: A Comparison of Gender and Genre; 5. A Comparative Study of the Minority in Select Canadian Fiction; 6. An Analysis of Violence and Resistance in Select Women’s Fiction; 7. Visualising Domestic Space: A Study of Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Shashi Deshpande’s That Long Silence and Margaret Laurence’s The Fire Dwellers; 8. Reading Feminism in Volga’s Sahaja and M.K. Indira’s Phaniyamma; 9. Interrelating Culture and Bakhtin’s Dialogism: A Study of Select Indian Fiction; 10. Reviewing Matrimony and Motherhood in Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; 11. The Journey from Spacelessness to Space: A Study of Select Fiction of Deshpande and Desai; 12. Accepting Masculinity: A Comparison of Kamala Markandaya’s and Vai.Mu.Ko.’s Select Fiction; 13. A Study of Multiple Selves in Indian Autogynographers; 14. Education through Cultural Studies: Reviewing Contexts of Gender and Space in Malls; 15. A Journey into First Nation Canadian Women’s Poetry; 16. A Re-assessment of Sri Aurobindo’s The Future Poetry; 17. Dislocation in Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace; 18. I-mage/i-mage/Image: Distinguishing the Discourse—Postmodern/colonial