ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that recent stories by Telugu Dalit women writers deserve recognition for effectively revolutionizing form and content. Along with establishing the seriousness and appropriateness of the short form, these writers present new content: many women writers convey a noticeably expansive relationship to the body and honor bodily knowledge. For centuries philosophical traditions from both East and West have elevated men by claiming men represent the mind and women the body. Dalit women authors tend to suggest a new understanding of the body as a spiritual teacher in itself. Stories such as M. M. Vinodini's "Block" and "The Parable of the Lost Daughter" and Jupaka Subadra's "Horror in the Bathroom" oppose somatophobia. They show the possibilities of a transpersonal lived body, a body that can be experienced as dominantly unitary and companionate with other bodies in the world.
