Translated texts are often either uncritically consumed by readers, teacher, and scholars or seen to represent an ineluctable loss, a diminishing of original texts. Translation, however, is a cultural practice, influenced also by social and political imperatives, which can open more doors than it closes. The essays in this book show how the act of translation, when vigilantly and critically attended to, becomes a means for active interrogation.

Anuradha Dingwaney Needham is Donald R. Longman Professor of English at Oberlin College. She is the author or editor of several books including Using the Master’s Tools: Resistance and the Literature of the African and South Asian Diasporas.