Name: WHEN I HIT YOU OR A PORTRAIT OF THE WRITER AS A YOUNG WIFE.
ISBN: 9789386228307

MEENA. KANDASAMY

WHEN I HIT YOU OR A PORTRAIT OF THE WRITER AS A YOUNG WIFE.

Meena Kandasamy

Seduced by politics and poetry, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor and agrees to be his wife, but what for her is a contract of love is for him a contract of ownership. As he sets about reducing her to his idealized version of a kept woman, bullying her out of her life as an academic and writer in the process, she attempts to push back--a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape. Smart, fierce and courageous, When I Hit You is a dissection of what love meant, means and will come to mean when trust is undermined by violence; a brilliant, throat-tightening feminist discourse on battered faces and bruised male egos; and a scathing portrait of traditional wedlock in modern India.

When I Hit You, Or, A Portrait of the Writer As a Young Wife

Deepika Ramesh

TW: Mentions of gender-based violence, and sexual harassment. 

Quite strangely, I read Meena Kandasamy’s ‘When I Hit You’ on the day when I read a string of comments on Facebook, posted by a man, mentioning that domestic violence is a personal thing. What happens between two partners shouldn’t pique anybody’s curiosity, he wrote. 

I read the book on the day when I watched the interview of a politician dismissing Chinmayi’s, and more than 10 women’s accusation against lyricist Vairamuthu. The politician, who is a lawyer, demanded evidences, and chose to believe what the lyricist calls a political conspiracy schemed against him. 

I read the book on the day when I saw a woman make plans to move out of the house where she is abused by her husband. While discussing her situation, I heard a question that someone quietly released — “Are there any bruises on her face? Are those visible?”

I read the book, and thought of a man, who wrote in his review that he wasn’t sure of the authenticity of Kandasamy’s story because the husband hadn’t spoken. He wondered, without flinching, without questioning his misogyny, if Kandasamy’s narrator was a liar. He made that remark despite knowing that the book is an auto-fiction. 

I read the book, and thought of a woman who breached my boundaries over and over again, thinking that she needed to save me from what she thought was an abusive relationship. She made me realise that many friends, despite their good intention, don’t respect women’s agency. They want to be heroes in someone else’s story. 

Like Kandasamy mentions in her book, the questions are always directed toward the survivors. And then they are blamed for many things — for screaming too much, for not screaming enough, for staying, for leaving, for enabling, for enduring, for ‘provoking’, for submitting, and for everything. Like Kandasamy’s protagonist they are nameless, and they suffer in silence.

Shreerag Plakazhi

Angry. So angry. The prose is delightful but its so real that it hurts.

Seduced by politics and poetry, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor and agrees to be his wife, but what for her is a contract of love is for him a contract of ownership. As he sets about reducing her to his idealized version of a kept woman, bullying her out of her life as an academic and writer in the process, she attempts to push back--a resistance he resolves to break with violence and rape. Smart, fierce, and courageous, When I Hit You is a dissection of what love meant, means, and will come to mean when trust is undermined by violence; a brilliant, throat-tightening feminist discourse on battered faces and bruised male egos; and a scathing portrait of traditional wedlock in modern India.

Or, a Portrait of the Writer As a Young Wife

When I Hit You

 Bruna Acioly Leão

I came across this book because it was included in the Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist for 2018, and once I read the first chapter I was immediately drawn to the story and the author's poetic and rich writing style.

When I Hit You tells the story of an unnamed narrator, an Indian woman struggling to find who she is and to find love, while also pursuing a career as a writer. In the midst of this she meets a man, who at first seems to be someone who could challenge and teach her in a good way, but after their marriage, she soon learns that he is more interested in controlling her and shaping her to be what he idealizes a woman should be. 

The book gradually exposes each stage of an abusive relationship, starting with simple things like him wanting her to give up Facebook, which isolates her from her friends who live in a different town and from her work and evolves into more and more violence, both physical and verbal. It is not exactly an easy or enjoyable book to read, but Kandasamy's writing flows smoothly and keeps you hooked into every line, every painful point. It doesn't shy away from the awful things that women suffer when in an abusive relationship but it also manages to send a message of hope in the end.

Our protagonist learns throughout the book that the only way for her to escape her abuser is for her to decide to save herself. The message here isn't that every victim is capable of saving herself on her own or that they don't need help from the outside. The message, the way I saw it, is that we must first find ways to save ourselves. Afterward, others can help us.

The end of the book contains a review (which you can find here: https://thewire.in/books/list-people-...) that showcases who should read this book. Essentially that means everyone, but more importantly, for people who think victims of domestic abuse "let" the violence happen to them.

Paige Cronje 

Beth Cordall

arwen

Isla Mckenna

The widely acclaimed novel of an abused woman in India and her fight for freedom: “A triumph.” —The Guardian Named a Best Book of the Year by the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the Observer Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize Based on the author’s own experience, When I Hit You follows the narrator as she falls in love with a university professor and agrees to be his wife. Soon, the newlywed experiences extreme violence at her husband’s hands and finds herself socially isolated. Yet hope keeps her alive. Writing becomes her salvation, a supreme act of defiance, in a harrowing yet fierce and funny novel that not only examines one woman’s battle against terror and loneliness but reminds us how fiction and stories can help us escape.

WHEN I HIT YOU OR A PORTRAIT OF THE WRITER AS A YOUNG WIFE.

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