Mahasweta Devi Breast Stories Author:Mahasweta Devi, G SPIVAK This cluster of short fiction has a common motif: the breast. In 'Draupadi', the protagonist, Dopdi Mejhen, is a tribal revolutionary, who, arrested and gang raped in custody, turns the terrible wounds of her breasts into a counter-offensive. In 'Breast-Giver', a woman who becomes a professional wet-nurse to support her family dies of painful br... more »east cancer, betrayed alike by the breasts that for years had been her chief identity, and the dozens of 'sons' she suckled. In 'Behind the Bodice' migrant labourer Gangor's 'statuesque' breasts excite the attention of ace photographer Upin Puri, triggering off a train of violence that ends in tragedy. Translator and scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, introduces this cycle of 'breast stories' with thought-provoking essays which probe the texts of the stories, opening them up to a complex of interpretation and meaning.« less