ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Easterine Kire’s (2010) Mari as life writing, particularly as historico-biographical fiction. Mari foregrounds the memories of Mari and her people during the Battle of Kohima in the Naga Hills. This chapter analyses how Kire pushes the boundaries of life writing and further complicates a simplistic reading of Mari as a fictional narrative. What is the centrality of narrativizing (Mari’s) memories of the war in (auto) biographical manner? Can Kire’s novel be read as a corrective to “official” history that finds little resonance of local participation during the war. These are some questions addressed in this paper. It also postulates how Mari assumes the form of hetero-emotive site – a site that memorialises and evokes memories of the tumultuous yet exciting times during the Second World War in North-East India.
