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Easterine Kire, known as the first Naga novelist to write in English, has a long-standing interest in the social and cultural foundations of Naga life that she depicts in her fiction. Among these, the clan occupies a central position, shaping relationships, inheritance, marriage, gender roles, and collective identity. This paper examines Sky Is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered and A Terrible Matriarchy to investigate how Kire represents clan-based social organisation across two distinct historical and narrative settings. While Sky Is My Father presents the clan as the basis of collective resistance against British colonial expansion, highlighting its role in sustaining political solidarity and military cooperation, A Terrible Matriarchy shifts attention to the domestic sphere, where the same social structure governs everyday life through gendered expectations, family discipline, and the regulation of women’s roles. Using tools from textual analysis alongside critical studies of the novels by reputed scholars, this study argues that the clan should not be understood as a static cultural institution but rather as a flexible social construct that retains its influence over Angami society while adapting to the dictates of changing historical contexts. By juxtaposing these two novels in this analysis, this study demonstrates that clan-based identity is both a wellspring of collective resilience and an instrument for preserving uneven social relations. The analysis also makes clear that Kire does not depict the clan system as idyllic or purely problematic; she depicts it instead as a complex institution that preserves culture but that requires considerable personal sacrifice from those who abide by its dictates, women in particular, under both colonial and postcolonial conditions.
Ms. Shweta Sharma, Dr. A.S. Rao. “Clan Identity and Social Organisation in Easterine Kire’s Selected Novels.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 1001-1027. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.62.
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