Digital Object Identifierhttps://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.29
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-0028-5194Dalit women’s autobiographies chronicle lives shaped by multiple forms of marginalisation while articulating a distinct Dalit feminist sensibility that transforms personal experiences into acts of resistance and testimonial history. Karukku by Bama and Coming out as Dalit by Yashica Dutt are examples of this trajectory that challenge institutional religion, patriarchal control, socio-economic oppression and cultural norms that silence Dalit women, denying their voice and subjectivity. Both the narratives foreground moments of epiphany that function not merely as self-awakening but as an intersectional political consciousness. This self-realisation transforms embodied oppression into collective resistance. The close study of these seminal works enables the paper to argue that such epiphanic moments entitle the narrators to choose a redemptive path and articulate their resistance. The article further employs an intersectional framework proposed by Kimberlé Crenshaw to analyse how caste, class and gender intersect to intensify their marginalisation. Bama and Yashica Dutt expose the systemic discrimination, exclusion and humiliation through regional dialects and nonlinear narration. The findings reveal that, despite emerging from two different socio-geographical and temporal contexts, the shared struggles of both writers within a patriarchal and casteist structure shaped their literary expression into a powerful means of reclaiming agency, pursuing healing, and confronting defiance.
Verma, Tripti, and Aditi Bhardwaj. “From Silence to Voice: Epiphanic Realisations in Bama’s Karukku and Yashica Dutt’s Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 5, Oct. 2026, pp. 525-37, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.29.
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by the Research Centre for English Language and Literature (RCELL) under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
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