Stories with Oil Stains The World of Women ‘Digest’ Writers in Pakistan Kiran Nazir Ahmed How do women fiction writers articulate lived realities and imagined scenarios of being a woman in Pakistan through Urdu popular fiction (digest stories) and television plays? How do they form bonds of friendship in the absence of physical proximity (since readers and writers rarely meet each other)? How do they respond to notions of their writing as frivolous entertainment? In answering such questions, this book provides an alternative paradigm for women’s voices. Drawing on twenty months of fieldwork conducted in four urban cities and villages in two provinces in Pakistan, this work presents an ethnographic account of women fiction writers’ engagement with the digest genre and the community formed around it. These fictional stories are extremely popular but they are socially perceived as ‘low brow’ and disavowed as having no literary merit. Taboo! The Hidden Culture of a Red Light Area Fouzia Saeed The Shahi Mohalla or Royal Locality is the most infamous flesh market of Pakistan that has existed through the centuries. In the process, it has left an indelible impression on not only the social consciousness of Pakistan, but also on many arts like dancing and singing. This is a scholarly, yet sympathetic, analysis of an area no one admits to have visited, and which nevertheless flourishes under the eyes of the guardians of law and public morality. The Islamic injunction against extramarital sex adds to the complexities that prostitution has brought to Pakistani society. Women, Healthcare, and Violence in Pakistan Sara Rizvi Jafree Seeking to explore the plight of female healthcare practitioners in the country, Sara Rizvi Jafree’s Women, Healthcare, and Violence in Pakistan is an examination of the South Asian cultural approach towards the traditional and historical working woman, particularly the healthcare professional. The book describes the laws that protect or harm such women in the workplace, and the real perils of physical and verbal harassment that they face during their service. Imbued with deep insights into the role of women in Islam, their socialization and the threats to healthcare professionals like nurses, doctors, and lady health workers, this book presents anecdotes based on ethnographic research and factual knowledge which makes it an impressive resource for understanding this social issue. Exploring the perpetration of brutality through victims testimonies, the author successfully paints a panorama on the theme of workplace cruelty, an important factor in the current discourse in Pakistan on this issue. Siren Song Understanding Pakistan through its Women Singers Fawzia Afzal-Khan Fawzia Afzal-Khan’s book is an important and timely feminist intervention in the study of classical music and a cogent challenge to the prevailing antisecular orthodoxy in the academy. In this complex and sensitive study…of the careers of artistes like Malka Pukhraj, Roshanara Begum, Reshma, and of the newer music and musical space offered by Coke Studio, Afzal-Khan shows us the multiple ways in which women performers negotiated and continue to negotiate their way through the numerous challenges thrown their way in the wake of the partitioning of the subcontinent and the multiple demands placed on them. Purdah and Polygamy Life in an Indian Muslim Household Iqbalunnisa Hussain Originally published in 1944, this novel is a virulent attack on the traditional system of purdah and polygamy in which man is treated as a virtual god and women who are barely literate as chattel. It also shows how the unlettered mother of the man concerned becomes complicit in this patriarchal system because she is able to exercise power through her son, which is denied to her as a wife and as an unmarried girl. In some ways the book is an extension of her ideas on Indian life and she translates these into fiction extremely well.