A Flowering Tree: A Woman's Tale by A.K. Ramanujan

ABOUT THE AUTOR: A. K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) was a prolific and versatile writer of Indian origin. He was a scholar at Indiana University during1960. He worked as a professor of Dravidian Studies and Linguistics at the University of Chicago. His oeuvre Includes remarkable works like Samskara, The Interior Landscape, Speaking of Siva, Relations and many more.
ABOUT THE STORY:
A Flowering Tree" is folklore of Kannada, translated in English by A. K. Ramanujan in his book A Flowering Tree and Other Folk Tales From India, published in 1997.. The story was the result of the endeavour of  Ramanujan and his fellow folklorists who collected different versions of the story available in the region for twenty years. Despite its ancient origin, the story offers a feminist perspective, attempting to establish a sisterhood between women and nature. As a typical folklore, A Flowering Tree  is an amalgam of two distinct components: unreasonable storyline (a girl turns into a tree; a prince marries a peasant), and mythic archetypes which can  incredibly resonate to our lives. As Ramannujan himself puts it - "It is a story of woman's ecology and vulnerability of her emerging sexuality..."
The book was published posthumously and edited by Stuart Blackburn and Alan Dundes along with other folktales compiled and translated by Ramanujan The story was also adapted  by John Adams in 2006 for his opera.

The author argues that for decades, women have been represented in stereotyped roles in literature. Most of the time they are deprived of the position to narrate the story from their point of view. Woman’s creativity and capacity of speech when she finds her own voice and power to narrate can astound the reader with an incredibly different perspective. The author summarizes the popular folktale of a girl with supernatural ability to transform into a tree and recounts the tale with an ecofeminist perspective.

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