Haram in the Harem

The Author: Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar is a writer, educator, and scholar of literature. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Florida with a focus on gender and postcolonial theory. She publishes short stories, academic articles, and travel essays in a variety of journals and literary magazines. Rajakumar also reviews audio books for Audiofile Magazine and regularly contributes to Woman Today. She is currently working on a collection of essays related to her experiences as a female South Asian American living in the Arabian Gulf. Rajakumar is the Reading and Writing Development Director for the joint venture, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing based in Doha, Qatar.

«What makes Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar’s approach unique is her use of women authors from India and Algeria, a comparison almost nonexistent in the body of feminist literary criticism. Of particular insight is her description and analysis of violence inflicted on women’s bodies within these two cultures, a concept developed by René Girard through the expiatory victim, or her description of the home as it relates to women’s bodies. ‘Haram in the Harem’ is a must-read to all students and teachers of literature, women’s studies, and activists in general!» (Evelyne Accad, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois; Author of ‘The Wounded Breast’ and ‘Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East’)«Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar examines the writings of three Muslim women, two Indian, one Algerian, who are writers crying out against the use of women’s bodies as ‘sites where opposing communities exerted their dominance or retaliated for injuries suffered’; writers resisting the ‘prevailing logic for the domestic as private, unpolluted, and different from public activity’; brave authors who show both men and women how much society is strengthened by gender equality. The book is simultaneously reasoned and passionate. Any man or woman, from any culture, who envisions a finer world will be deeply moved.» (Sidney Homan, Professor, University of Florida; Author of ‘A Fish in the Moonlight: Growing Up in the Bone Marrow Unit’, ‘Directing Shakespeare’, and ‘Beckett’s Theatres’)