Stories of Alienation and Resistance: Meena Kandasamy's Dalit Women.

This paper titled “Stories of Alienation and Resistance: Meena Kandasamy’s Dalit Women” examine the complex relationship between marginalization and defiance by examining Meena Kandasamy’s literary portrayals of Dalit women. The study highlights both their acts of resistance against oppressive patriarchal and caste systems and their experiences of alienation within them and explores how Kandasamy’s narratives contest systemic violence, reclaim marginalized identities and celebrate resilience through an examination of her prose works (The Gypsy Goddess and When I Hit You) and poetry collections (Touch and Ms. Militancy). According to the study, alienation is a major theme in Kandasamy’s writings and shows up as gendered oppression, caste-based discrimination and exclusion from the mainstream feminist discourse. At the same time, it emphasizes how her portrayal uses this alienation as a catalyst for resistance, developing intersectional identities, reimagining mythological stories and rebelling to assert their agency making her literature a potent critique of social hierarchies because of the way she amplifies these themes through the use of bold unfiltered language and poetic devices like vivid imagery and intertextual references. Additionally, this study places her contributions in the larger framework of feminist theory and Dalit literature highlighting her work as an activist-writer who reclaims language and narratives as instruments for social justice. Through shattering taboos surrounding gender oppression and caste Kandasamy’s writings present a revolutionary idea for inclusive advocacy and literature.