A review by audaciaray
Living the Body: Embodiment, Womanhood and Identity in Contemporary India by Meenakshi Thapan

2.0

Oh academic kool aid, how I refuse to drink you.

The snippets of women's stories are the absolute best part of this book, and the way Thapan teases out class among the women she studies is really interesting. Or, it *would* be really interesting if her writing was more accessible.

I know it's the academic format and all, but a lot of the time I think that books like this would be better if they just presented nice long passages of interviews with the people studied, without commentary. I know I'm an oral history/story junky, but I just think that would be better than the writer as ultimate authority/presenter of information.

There were just too many points in this book in which I felt like Thapan was getting in her own way or using intensely academic language to describe things that are common sense.