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A review by half_book_and_co
When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy
4.0
This novel is narrated by a young Tamil woman, a staunch feminist writer, who marries a Communist lecturer. They move to another town, where he takes up a position, but she cannot speak the language. The husband willfully isolates the wife more and more.
When I Hit You is a candid look at domestic violence and rape in a relationship and the difficulties to escape it (even if you have a theoretical framework for what is happening). Kandasamy portrays the violence of a leftist man, who uses "political" arguments to put his wife down (for example does he complain her feminism is a sign of her (supposedly) bourgeois upbringing). The private is political, and the political private, in this novel - in the rawest sense. The writing - which is full of references to literature - is analytical and poetic at the same time. This book stays with you for a long time.
"And how do you justify that your poems can be written, but that I cannot write poems on my marriage?
Once again, a play of words to justify the duplicity. 'Your poems blame me. My poems blame me. There is a difference between the hatred that fuels your poems, and the self-criticism that forms the backbone of mine. Your poems label me and put me in a box, my poems struggle to move past my weakness.' And that is that. In this marriage in which I'm beaten, he is the poet. And one of his opening lines of verse reads:
When I hit you,
Comrade Lenin weeps.
I cry, he chronicles. The institution of marriage creates its own division of labour."
When I Hit You is a candid look at domestic violence and rape in a relationship and the difficulties to escape it (even if you have a theoretical framework for what is happening). Kandasamy portrays the violence of a leftist man, who uses "political" arguments to put his wife down (for example does he complain her feminism is a sign of her (supposedly) bourgeois upbringing). The private is political, and the political private, in this novel - in the rawest sense. The writing - which is full of references to literature - is analytical and poetic at the same time. This book stays with you for a long time.
"And how do you justify that your poems can be written, but that I cannot write poems on my marriage?
Once again, a play of words to justify the duplicity. 'Your poems blame me. My poems blame me. There is a difference between the hatred that fuels your poems, and the self-criticism that forms the backbone of mine. Your poems label me and put me in a box, my poems struggle to move past my weakness.' And that is that. In this marriage in which I'm beaten, he is the poet. And one of his opening lines of verse reads:
When I hit you,
Comrade Lenin weeps.
I cry, he chronicles. The institution of marriage creates its own division of labour."