Voices Behind the Veil: Mapping the Journey of Indian Muslim Women Through Literature and Autobiography

Book: Mapping the Trajectory of Indian Muslim Women's Life-Writings: An Autoethnographical Approach from India by CSMFL Publications

Nasreen Sultana K. A.
Assistant Professor, Post Graduate Department of English, Shrimathi Devkunvar Nanalal Bhatt Vaishnav College for Women, Chennai, India.

10.46679/9789349926509ch04
This chapter is a part of: Mapping the Trajectory of Indian Muslim Women’s Life-Writings: An Autoethnographical Approach from India
ISBN (Ebook): 978-93-49926-50-9
ISBN (Hardcover Print): 978-93-49926-84-4
ISBN (Softcover Print): 978-93-49926-34-9

© CSMFL Publications & its authors.
Published: April 15, 2026

A., N., S., K. (2026). Voices Behind the Veil: Mapping the Journey of Indian Muslim Women Through Literature and Autobiography. In N. Safrine, Mapping the Trajectory of Indian Muslim Women’s Life-Writings: An Autoethnographical Approach from India (pp 45-51). CSMFL Publications. https://dx.doi.org/10.46679/9789349926509ch04

Abstract

This paper conducts a comparative literary analysis of A Life in Words by Ismat Chughtai and Zeba: An Unveiling by Anees Jung to explore how Muslim women authors employ contrasting narrative modes, autobiography and prose fiction, to create and narrate their life narratives. By placing the authors’ generic and representational choices under critical examination, the book reveals how each text negotiates identity, agency, and embodied life in opposition to specific configurations of a socio-political and cultural order. Based on autoethnography and feminist literary theory, the research illustrates how the authors navigate constructs of identity, desire, resistance, and the public-private split of the female self. Based on the argument in the paper, it is not merely individual works of storytelling for Chughtai and Jung but powerful socio-cultural texts that shed light on the changing place of Indian Muslim women. The longer quotes from the text allow a close reading of how these texts reflect their era, resist patriarchal limitations, and establish a canon of literary resistance.

Keywords: Indian Muslim Women, Autobiographical Fiction, Ismat Chughtai, Anees Jung, Feminist Narrative, Cultural Identity, Resistance, Postcolonial Literature, Gender Studies, Autoethnography

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