Vignettes of Naga Culture: A Study of Easterine Kire's Select Novels

Northeast India is one of the most culturally rich regions of the Indian subcontinent. Like the other states of Northeast India, the literature from Nagaland encompasses "an intense sense of awareness of the cultural loss and recovery" as it witnesses the issue of a systematic policy of exclusion from the mainstream national imagination and literary space. Representation of the oral culture of the diverse ethnic groups in Nagaland is one of the recurrent themes in the writings of Easterine Kire. In her novels, When the River Sleeps (2014) and Don't Run My Love (2017), Kire has tried to revive the traditional cultural practices which have been facing "the xenophobic fear" (Mishra, xiv) due to the constant invasion of the global culture. The nexus between natural and supernatural is observable in both of the novels. Through her fictional craft, Kire unlocks the door of a magical world where spirits and human beings coexist. Besides, she probes into the collective memory of her community and revives the traditional beliefs, oral stories, myths and folktales with her extraordinary talent of storytelling. Situated within this context, this paper is an attempt to bring to the fore how Kire's novels revive and revitalize the folktales and cultural practices to assert the rich oral traditions and identity of the indigenous tribes of Nagaland.