Junglee Girl by Kamani, Ginu - 1998-01-01

Junglee stemming from the Sanskrit root, "junglee" is used in India to label the wild, the uncivilized, the untamed. Used most commonly as condemnation or censure, it aims to break the spirit of women yearning for personal power. The female protagonists in these eleven stories recklessly pursue their sensual paths through a complex social world that seeks to shut them out. With wily irreverence and a willful rawness, Kamani pulls back the veil of convention, inch by inch, and draws the reader into the disquieting truth of women's lives, charting territory both intimate and bizarre."In these 11 short stories, characters span the gamut of women, the irony being that in India's sexually repressive traditional society, this pejorative term [junglee girl] could be applied to any self-aware woman. But Kamani, a gifted, savvy writer, combines such precarious, complex elements as class, caste, gender and eroticism into readable, imaginative and often hilarious tales."-Publishers Weekly"Kamani is a gifted writer able to tackle harsh, provocative subjects while maintaining a lyrical quality and an engrossing ambiguity."-San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Book ReviewAn interview with Ginu Kamani:It has been three years since the publication of Ginu Kamani?s highly successful short story collection Junglee Girl, and thinking it might be interesting for readers to hear Ginu reflect on what the book has meant for her and what she?s up to now, Aunt Lute dispatched staffer Livia Tenzer to interview Ginu.Livia Tenzer: Did the publication of Junglee Girl cause any changes in your life?Ginu Kamani: Not only has the book changed my life, but in many ways it has made my life. Beyond the physical fact of having a book out in print, and laying claim to the category "published author," what I deal with on a regular basis are the ripples that have spread out from negotiating intersections of culture, gender, sex and class in a public forum. Junglee Girl has very much fulfilled the role of the proverbial rock thrown into the bush, and has made room for me, as a thinker, doer, writer, on a spectrum of excavation, investigation, and a