Negotiating Gender and Marginality: Representation of Subaltern Women in Contemporary Indian English Fiction

This article examines the representation of subaltern women in contemporary Indian English fiction, exploring how literary narratives negotiate intersecting oppressions of gender, caste, class, and ethnicity. Focusing on select works by Meena Kandasamy, Arundhati Roy, Annie Zaidi, and Easterine Kire, this study employs an intersectional framework informed by postcolonial feminist and subaltern theories. The analysis unveils how these authors engage innovative narrative strategies to address Spivak’s (1988) seminal question about subaltern speech, not by claiming transparent representation but by meta-textually foregrounding conditions of silencing while creating spaces for agency. Through close reading of texts, dealing with Dalit, tribal, religious minority, and transgender experiences, the article demonstrates how fiction serves as counter-history against dominant patriarchal and casteist narratives. This research contributes to feminist and postcolonial scholarship by bridging theoretical gaps between subaltern studies and Dalit feminist perspectives, while highlighting literature’s potential as a tool for social justice and visibility. It ultimately argues that contemporary Indian English fiction performs crucial political work in imagining more inclusive social realities amidst persistent structural inequalities and injustices.