Death, beauty, struggle : untouchable women create the world /

Knowledgeable and empathetic, linguistic anthropologist Trawick (Massey Univ., New Zealand) presents songs of untouchable (lowest caste) women in Tamil Nadu, South India, as a pathway to understanding their self-images and concerns. Using song texts recorded mostly in the 1980s, Trawick translates and analyzes linguistic features, references, emotions, and revelations of selfhood. Though she notes that the music of the texts is important in understanding meanings, Trawick fails to include any music. Focusing on laments of sorrow and protest, songs of work and love, and two lengthy story-songs about women who are powerful touchstones for their singers, the book is partly composed of earlier papers, and thus occasionally repetitive. Women's songs, often using improvised texts in structured forms, are pathways into their cultures and provide a window to emotions and cries, heartaches and celebrations, teasing and fury. Unlettered but not unaware, Tamil women express their boundaries and restrictions, their ambitions for themselves and their daughters, their assessment of men and men's behaviors, and the ways they deal with everyday expectations. Ann Gold's substantial foreword delineates the strengths of Trawick's analyses and recognizes the ways in which these women's songs are empowering. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --Joan L. Erdman, Columbia College Chicago