Resisting the Outsiders: A Historical Study of Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill

  • Trishmita Borah

Abstract

Mamang Dai from Arunachal Pradesh is a powerful literary voice from the emerging North-East Indian Literature. She has written extensively about the culture and history of Arunachal Pradesh and its ethnic groups. Her latest novel, The Black Hill has been published in 2014 and has become a great success with the winning of the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2017. It is a historical fiction based on recorded historical events of the mid-nineteenth century Arunachal Pradesh. Throughout the novel, Mamang Dai reveals the protective and possessive attitude of the tribes when it comes to their land or territory. When they are engaged in constant inter-tribe feuds over territories, their reaction to the intrusion of the people from outside the country is undoubtedly not so palpable. The novel is very much reflective of the hostility of the tribes inhabiting in the hills of Arunachal Pradesh towards the ‘outsiders’. Focusing on this aspect, the paper tries to discuss the struggles of the Hills people while resisting the slowly approaching colonizers to invade their land and everything. It attempts to highlight Mamang Dai’s use of story-telling as a means to give voice to the hitherto ignored past of her tribal community.  

Published
2020-03-31
How to Cite
Borah, T. (2020). Resisting the Outsiders: A Historical Study of Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill. International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, 29(3), 6676 - 6681. Retrieved from http://sersc.org/journals/index.php/IJAST/article/view/7257
Section
Articles