You grew up in Kuriachira, Thrissur. What are your earliest memories of reading and storytelling in that environment, and how did they shape your love for literature?

I come from a very traditional Catholic family. Our home operated like a joint family. Under one roof lived my parents, my four siblings, my father’s brother and sister, and their children. My father’s three other sisters and their families were frequent visitors. The household was a real mix of personalities and beliefs—we had deeply devout Christians closely tied to the church alongside atheists, rationalists, and people who openly mocked religion. My grandfather, who took part in the freedom struggle, passed away early. My father was a supporter of the early communists. Among our relatives, you could find Congress supporters, communists, Latin Catholics, and Syrian Catholics.

Financially, we were below average. Despite that, many in the family—especially my father—were avid readers. I grew up seeing books everywhere, and we regularly subscribed to several newspapers and magazines. My childhood was in the early 1950s, in post-Independence India. I absorbed the values of that era, and reading deepened them. We hosted a charkha (spinning wheel) class at our house—people would come over, sit together, and spin yarn. My uncle ran those classes, and through them I developed a deep respect for Gandhian ideals. My father, however, was a communist. His beliefs, and the books he brought home, sparked my passion for socialist ideas.

As a young teacher, what experiences shaped your understanding of womanhood, gender discrimination, and resilience—themes that echo through your fiction?

I had a deep craving for reading; it was almost like an addiction. As soon as I finished one book, I would desperately long for the next. Unlike today, books were not easily available then. Every book I managed to get felt like a precious find. For a girl in those days, going to a library was completely unimaginable. It was reading itself that guided me into the world of language and onto the path of writing. My early works revolved around a woman’s world and her experiences—love, marriage, extramarital affairs, children, family. It was a kind of writing that plunged into personal experience, intense and searing.

Those stories reflected the loneliness, boredom, and despair of women, especially married women. But I also began seeing these things politically. The realisation that “the personal is political” grew into a solid perspective in the next phase of my writing. Wondering why a woman’s body, her life, and her social standing are treated differently made me feel the need to document these thoughts in my work.

To do this, I had to understand the harsh realities faced by women living with social inequality, denial of basic rights, and gender discrimination in a patriarchal society. These searches and realisations walked hand in hand with my writing, eventually becoming its driving force. Everything—from language, grammar, and metaphors to myths and moral values—shapes a woman’s life. To bring the unique experiences of women into mainstream writing, all these existing structures had to be broken down and rewritten.

You founded the Manushi collective for women’s activism while teaching at Sanskrit College in Pattambi in the 1980s. How did that come about, and in what ways has activism informed your writing?

For a long time, mainstream efforts to address women’s problems were treated as secondary issues—minor reforms tacked on to larger movements like the freedom struggle, the anti-caste protests, and the communist and naxalite uprisings. It soon became clear, however, that these supplementary reforms were not real solutions. This realisation set the stage for a major shift in the 1980s. When a powerful wave of global feminist thought reached Kerala, women began to firmly reject these inadequate compromises. They made clear that they were no longer willing to settle for minor reforms; they demanded true liberation, individual freedom, and constitutional equality.

The 1980s was also a time when dowry deaths, suicides, female foeticide, and female infanticide were spreading like an epidemic in Kerala. Deeply troubled by this, a group of students and teachers at Pattambi College came together to discuss what could be done. Out of these discussions was born “Manushi—The Organisation of Thinking Women”. Students, teachers, and supportive young men stepped out into the streets and public spaces, speaking out against gender discrimination—something that was almost unimaginable at the time. Manushi became the main voice of the women’s liberation ideas that shook Kerala society in the 1980s. The feminist movement remains a driving force pushing Kerala forward even today. These political awakenings, strong convictions, and grassroots activism naturally went on to form the very core of my own writing.

Your novels explore the struggles women face in negotiating faith and personal freedom, and many of your women characters confront religious orthodoxy. Does this stem from your own encounters with women challenging patriarchy within Kerala’s Christian communities?

Almost 99 per cent of women live as the guardians of religion, caste discrimination, faith, rituals, blind beliefs, and harmful practices. They pass these ideas on to their children, feeding them to the next generation. Religion and community keep families as a medium for transmitting these negative values. Patriarchal society does not allow women to recognise this truth and free themselves from it. In a society where all institutions—the family, religion, education, the justice system, the media, political parties—are controlled by male dominance, women can only escape through self-awareness and their own proactive efforts. It is far from easy to help women understand the realities when they are deeply trapped in harmful beliefs—such as the conviction that menstrual blood is impure.

This is the reality of a woman’s life where she is stripped of personal freedom. The reflections of this personal and social oppression can be seen throughout my writings. The conflict between religion and women, as well as the conflict between personal faith and religion as an institution of power, is clearly visible in my 2005 novel, Othappu. This theme is also present in many of my early short stories and in novels like Nanmathinmakalude Vriksham, Vishudha Rangoon Punyalan, Aalahayude Penmakkal, and Mattathi.

The lives of marginalised people—oppressed castes, Adivasis, and Dalits—are portrayed in my short stories like Viyarpadayalangal, Karutha Nirmitikal, and Karuppu, as well as in my novels Aadi, Oorukaval, and Budhini.

I have long been struck by the vast gap between institutionalised religion and the actual teachings of Christ. The only way I found to understand this contradiction was to study Christ deeply. Throughout my work, regardless of caste, religion, or gender, my characters undergo a kind of spiritual quest—one I connect not to religion, but to socialist concepts like Marxism, Gandhism, and Buddhism.

Sarah Joseph says Aalahayude Penmakkal would be the book she’d suggest to an international reader as an entry point to her work. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

Your activism and writing seem to complement each other. Do you see storytelling as a political act in itself?

Being an activist and a writer at the same time is no easy feat. While I am a 100 per cent writer, I am not a 100 per cent activist. I believe only extraordinary figures like Mahasweta Devi have been able to carry both roles with equal commitment. Yet, in my experience, activism and writing complement each other perfectly—it is like molten lava flowing from writing into society, and from society back into writing. The activism I engaged in during my work with Manushi provided the energy and the language for all the short stories in my collection, Papathara. It is about stepping into the heart of society, understanding what life truly is, and raising a voice against oppression. Stories are simmered to perfection in the intense heat of those very experiences. In turn, the impact such writing leaves on readers can become the catalyst for real change.

You have reinterpreted myths and religious texts like the Ramayana in works such as Ramayana Kathakal. What motivated you to revisit these stories from a feminist perspective?

Myths and epics serve as the cultural mirrors of a society, linking the values, morals, aesthetic sensibilities, laws, and caste-gender dynamics of the era in which they were created. As human civilisation progresses, however, the connection to these ancient frameworks often shifts. Many concepts these narratives once presented as absolute truths may no longer hold, and what was historically considered an ultimate value might not carry the same weight in a modern context. Because our views on life, values, human relationships, and laws are constantly changing, re-reading myths and epics yields deep insights. They remain timeless precisely because they are continuously reinterpreted in every era.

Countless works have been written in almost all Indian languages based on the Ramayana and Mahabharata. From one original Ramayana, many different versions have emerged across the Asian continent. I have written stories looking at the Ramayana from a woman’s perspective—Ashoka, Thaikulam, Karutha Thulakal (Black Holes), Kathdyal Illathavar, Kaadithu Kandayo Kantha, and Araja. Each woman in these stories speaks from the depths of her own experience. I tried to open up a new world—the untold experiences of characters like Sita, Surpanakha, Manthara, and Araja.

Karutha Thulakal, for instance, looks closely at Manthara. She is usually written off as a hunchbacked, jealous woman. My story focuses on her political plotting, her contempt for the rulers, and her lack of true loyalty even towards Kaikeyi. My novel Oorukaval (translated into English as The Vigil and published by HarperCollins) is written as the story of a marginalised, betrayed, and exploited race and kingdom. It explores the political conspiracies behind how the kingdom of Kishkindha was deceived, and how its people were insulted by being labelled as “monkeys”. What do the values of these epics mean today, especially against growing Brahminical dominance and caste and gender discrimination? These are the questions my works like Oorukaval, Retelling Ramayana (Oxford University Press), and the play Bhoomirakshasam set out to explore.

Your works have been translated into English and other languages. How significant is quality translation for writers working in regional languages?

What is Indian literature? Can Indian English writing be called Indian literature? The very concept of India is rooted in the plurality of its many diverse languages. Indian literature refers to the sum total of literary works produced across all these various languages. The true soul of Indian literature must be sought in its regional literatures. Because of this, translation becomes important—the extensive translation of regional works into other Indian languages and into English. Linguistic boundaries are slowly being erased, and this has created significant progress in the literary sphere.

However, a decline in authenticity, quality, and literary value will detrimentally affect the original work. Language is a constantly growing and evolving phenomenon. If today’s readers are handed a work translated into a century-old linguistic style, that book simply will not be read. A translator must understand the pulse of the target language just as clearly as that of the source language. In the name of “transcreation”, translators sometimes take liberties so far as to produce a work quite different from the original—a freedom that can distance a translation from its source.

I personally feel that if a good translation is not possible, it is better for the work to remain untranslated. At the same time, as a door that opens out to the rest of the world, translation is of the utmost importance. True translation only happens when the translator possesses creative talent in addition to linguistic mastery.

In 2015, you returned your 2003 Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award amid protests over freedom of expression. How do you reflect on that decision today?

I joined the protest of returning awards. I returned the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award I had received for Aalahayude Penmakkal. Before that, I had also returned the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award given for the same book, in protest against the Muthanga police firing on Adivasis in Kerala. The honours given by the government are funded by public money. When the government attacks and kills its own people, and strangles their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression, I see returning these awards as the most powerful way to protest on behalf of the public. The Award Wapsi movement did not grow stronger for several reasons. Today, people in India live in the shadow of fear. Because of this, I believe the Award Wapsi movement is even more relevant now than it was then. We are living in far more dangerous times. Their Ghar Wapsi movement, which started back then, has now escalated to current extremes.

The cover of Othappu. The conflict between religion and women, as well as the conflict between personal faith and religion as an institution of power, is clearly visible in the 2005 novel. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

If you were introducing an international reader to your work, which novel would you choose as the entry point, and why?

Without a doubt, it would be my first novel, Aalahayude Penmakkal. However, it does not translate easily, and it has not been translated into English yet. That short novel is rich with the distinct flavours of the local dialect—its spice, sourness, bitterness, and sweetness. All of that would simply be lost in another language. Fortunately, my recent novel Kara, which many have praised as a classic and an epic, has received an excellent translation. Translated by Sangeetha Sreenivasan as Stain and published by Penguin India, this is the book I would present to global readers.

There are other reasons for this choice too. The theme is something international readers will already find familiar. Stain is set in the world of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is a novel that travels deep to find the historical roots of today’s Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The final part deals with the worshippers of children. Stain portrays the 3500 BCE prototypes of what we see in the modern-day Epstein files—the horrifying scenes of child worship and child sacrifice from that era.

Your debut novel Aalahayude Penmakkal was published when you were in your early fifties. What would you say to young writers who feel pressured to rush into early literary success?

A writer is alone on her journey. That loneliness is different for every writer. You must walk your own path. If your work lacks substance, you might simply fade away. But this is what I will say: it is not good to believe that everything you write is a masterpiece. In the age of social media, fame is a hollow achievement that comes easily. Rather than chasing that illusion, what a writer truly needs is the constant dissatisfaction of thinking, “No, this is not it; this is not what I am meant to write.”