I was the youngest child in a family of five children. I sometimes felt I was an afterthought, and maybe Father and Mother didn’t quite know what to do with me. Also, because I was a girl after four boys, they never seemed to be sure whether to buy me girls clothing or let me wear leftover boys clothing.
Young Dielieno is five years old when she is sent off to live with her disciplinarian grandmother who wants her to grow up to be a good Naga wife and mother. According to Grandmother, girls don’t need an education, they don’t need love and affection, or time to play, or even a good piece of meat with their gravy! Naturally, Dielieno hates her with a vengeance.
This is the evocative tale of a young girl growing up in a traditional society in Indias Northeast, which is in the midst of tremendous change.
Easterine Kire sensitively writes about a place and a people that she knows well and is a part of. She brings to the storytelling a lyrical beauty which can, on occasion, chill the reader with its realistic portrayal of the spirits of the dead that inhabit the hills and valleys of Nagaland.
Easterine Kire has written and published a number of short stories and anthologies of poetry. She was a guest of Norwegian PEN from 2005-2007 and during this period, travelled and spoke extensively on the idea of self-exile, writing in another country, Naga literature and the conflicted state of Nagaland. She is author of A Naga Village Remembered, Mariand Bitter Wormwood.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
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