Cancer and caste inequality among rural women in South India

book, Cancer and the Kali Yuga is a dense, "critical feminist ethnographic" study of Tamil Dalit women's experiences with breast and cervical cancer, (which Van Hollen jointly refers to as "reproductive cancers'').Van Hollen's work is mainly focused on the "nexus of gender, caste and class" that produce specific forms of vulnerabilities, especially to cancer, among the sample population.Employing a critical feminist lens, Van Hollen explores how caste-based occupations, economic marginalisation and gendered conceptions of women's roles and their bodies, produce discourses around cancer and the paths adopted by women to navigate a cancer diagnosis.Through ethnographic data, this book demonstrates how a diagnosis of breast and cervical cancer acquires cultural significance, as this diagnosis has a direct impact on the reproductive function that women are culturally expected to perform in patriarchal societies.Though Van Hollen places importance on the causes of cancer and its medical implications, she is more keen to investigate the perceptions of these women diagnosed with cancer and the effects of a terminal illness on their lives.This detailed analysis of lived experiences and cancer among Dalit women in Tamil Nadu, is the most striking feature of the book and also what sets it apart from similar work on the same theme produced in the past.Borrowing heavily from Caduff et al [1], research conducted by the Cancer Institute, and Broom and Doron's [2] work on structural inequalities and cancer rates in urban India, Van Hollen attempts to bring to the forefront the voices of those targeted by intervention campaigns and make their particular conditions known to larger local, national and