Dimapur, June 9 (EMN): A remarkable new book by Nzanmongi Jasmine Patton highlights Lotha Naga stories. In the words of renowned Naga author Easterine Kire, the book is a ‘marvellous brave book which should be used like a pathfinder for other books on oral narratives’.
Kire has extolled the book as ‘retaining the flavour of oral storytelling including Lotha words that are culturally untranslatable in theory original forms and taking us back to an age when all animals and insects could talk and streams could babble and all creation had the gift of language.’ ‘A girl swallowed by a tree’ consists of 30 tales.
Nzanmongi Jasmine Patton is an assistant professor at Gargi College, University of Delhi. The book was launched in Dimapur on Friday by retired principal of Eastern Theological College at Jorhat, Reverend Dr. Ezamo Murry, during a programme at the Lotha Hoho Ki in Dimapur.
The author quoted 19th century political leader, journalist and active proponent of Pan- Africanism movement “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”.
Nzamongi identified herself as a facilitator and not an author because she believed that the stories she had translated were of common heritage to all of us from our forefathers.
Laying emphasis on the two sets-external and internal impetuses that had escalated her with a book, she pointed out that Nagas do not have a defined identity and that there is no absolute mention or representation about Nagas in books and literature. And, instead people have a fixed notion about who we are-such as head hunters, violent, savage to name a few.
“The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story” She added. The author Nzanmongi lamented ‘we have no written history of our own, we have versions of our history as written by others but not one by ourselves’.
Identifying why she chose to write in English, she remarked it as a way of challenge to establish stories about ‘us’, a version of ‘one kind of history’.
Nzamongi affirmed if she had written in Lotha, the book and tale would have stayed limited within the tribe without creating the alternative narrative that is supposed to contest the “established” narrative. The author confided that she purposefully retained Lotha words so that that instead of ‘us’ always learning about others, for a change they should also learn about us.
Quoting “I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do whatever I can” the author Patton concluded her address on her book.
‘A girl swallowed by a tree’ was earlier released in Delhi on April 29, 2017 with various academicians and scholars from the University of Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Delhi, Jamia Millia Islamia, Amity and Ambedkar University to name a few and also had a discussion with the Naga Scholars Association Delhi.
About the author:
Nzanmongi Jasmine Patton-a mother of two daughters is an Assistant Professor, Department of English, Gargi College, University of Delhi. She has diverse interests ranging from oral literature and history, translation, gender studies, women’s autobiographies to name a few.
She has written chapters for the texts of the literature-culture specialisation, IGNUO 2013. She has also co-authored a book titled “A handbook for academic writing and composition” by Pinnacle Learning 2014 and has published papers on folklore and oral history in national and international conferences and journals.
