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I Belong to Nowhere: Poems of Hope and Resistance
The first English-language collection from one of India’s most hard-hitting writers, these poems brilliantly exemplify writing as an act of resistance. Militant, satirical, and biting, Kalyani Charal pulls no punches in eviscerating paternalistic—and patriarchal—bourgeois socialists who speak on behalf of others.
Writing from lived experience, Charal delineates the bourgeois values that fuel the social machinery of caste oppression, while drawing parallels with social and racial marginalisation around the world. Thus, in her poetry, the specificity of Dalit lives in Bengal, a region which prides itself on its Leftist history and enlightened culture, and whose partition into India and Bangladesh has left a legacy of communal tension, refugees, and statelessness, is at the same time the universality of precarity, marginality and dispossession. Finally, there is space for love—wistful and full-throated, with an attentiveness to the natural world that speaks to her claim that “all Dalit woman writers are eco feminists.”
This is how birds and people of colour become one and the same
An adjective blossoms, ‘migrants’.
Writing from lived experience, Charal delineates the bourgeois values that fuel the social machinery of caste oppression, while drawing parallels with social and racial marginalisation around the world. Thus, in her poetry, the specificity of Dalit lives in Bengal, a region which prides itself on its Leftist history and enlightened culture, and whose partition into India and Bangladesh has left a legacy of communal tension, refugees, and statelessness, is at the same time the universality of precarity, marginality and dispossession. Finally, there is space for love—wistful and full-throated, with an attentiveness to the natural world that speaks to her claim that “all Dalit woman writers are eco feminists.”
This is how birds and people of colour become one and the same
An adjective blossoms, ‘migrants’.
112 pages, Paperback
Published March 30, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 4, 2025
Political poetry is often deliberately blunt, a quality that can be blessing or curse. In Charal's collection, this quality is most assuredly a blessing, with her verse critiquing the caste system, discrimination against Dalits, and flawed responses to these injustices, with a clear-eyed fury.
This might take the form of a metaphorical parable, like the brief and cutting "Rice-Slaves", or direct comments on political controversies throughout India. Poems such as "Chandalini's Poetry 1" and "The Fat Cats Get The Cream, Always" are presented by Charal and her translators in innovative visual layouts, using these experimental elements to supplement her formidable poetic and political voice.
This might take the form of a metaphorical parable, like the brief and cutting "Rice-Slaves", or direct comments on political controversies throughout India. Poems such as "Chandalini's Poetry 1" and "The Fat Cats Get The Cream, Always" are presented by Charal and her translators in innovative visual layouts, using these experimental elements to supplement her formidable poetic and political voice.
April 6, 2026
This tiny book of poetry introduced me to a whole tradition of writing that I knew nothing of: Dalit feminism. Despite the fact that discrimination based on caste had been prohibited in India since the Constitution of its independence in 1950, that discrimination is still alive and well. As a way of forcing people to look at what they would rather not see, Kalyani added 'Charal' to her name - a "softer" version of the name Chandal, the pre-independence name for her community, used by those who can't quite bring themselves to say Chandal.
This book knows that most of its readers will be unfamiliar with the context that Kalyani is writing in, and it comes equipped to meet that challenge. There is a translators' forward (I LOVE forwards from the translators!), an introduction, and editorial note at the end. And even better, after each poem that may have unfamiliar references, there are notes on the following page explaining history, locations, people. I think that this poetry is strong enough to stand on its own, but it is SO MUCH STRONGER with all of that context.
This poetry is political. It is activism. It is intersectional. As Kalyani says "all Dalit woman writers are eco feminist," and I cannot speak to all writers, but I can speak to her poetry making all the connections. In "The Fat Cat Gets the Cream, Always," you feel her anger at the exploitation of farmers, the workers by those seeking political power. Her recognition that the people who actually work the land and grow the food are valued only as "vote banks." In "Chandalini's Poetry 44" she writes from "no-citizen's lands" in Bengal, where people have no state, no leader, no right to vote, living in the grey lands of ill-defined border drawing of Partition, that are still undefined. In "To Chuni" she castigates colorism and the exoticization and sexualization of dark skin girls.
But there is also hope, and belief in the power of the people, best exemplified in "Towards You, Babasaheb."
But I lifted them because you did not, I
say, and then I see
one by one,
in slow but sure succession,
more flags get picked up from the side street
and we begin to walk
A treasure of a book.
This book knows that most of its readers will be unfamiliar with the context that Kalyani is writing in, and it comes equipped to meet that challenge. There is a translators' forward (I LOVE forwards from the translators!), an introduction, and editorial note at the end. And even better, after each poem that may have unfamiliar references, there are notes on the following page explaining history, locations, people. I think that this poetry is strong enough to stand on its own, but it is SO MUCH STRONGER with all of that context.
This poetry is political. It is activism. It is intersectional. As Kalyani says "all Dalit woman writers are eco feminist," and I cannot speak to all writers, but I can speak to her poetry making all the connections. In "The Fat Cat Gets the Cream, Always," you feel her anger at the exploitation of farmers, the workers by those seeking political power. Her recognition that the people who actually work the land and grow the food are valued only as "vote banks." In "Chandalini's Poetry 44" she writes from "no-citizen's lands" in Bengal, where people have no state, no leader, no right to vote, living in the grey lands of ill-defined border drawing of Partition, that are still undefined. In "To Chuni" she castigates colorism and the exoticization and sexualization of dark skin girls.
But there is also hope, and belief in the power of the people, best exemplified in "Towards You, Babasaheb."
But I lifted them because you did not, I
say, and then I see
one by one,
in slow but sure succession,
more flags get picked up from the side street
and we begin to walk
A treasure of a book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews