Malathi Maithri (born 1968) is an Indian writer, activist and

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

, who is recognised as a distinguished poet in contemporary

Tamil literature Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution. Contributors to the Tamil literature are mainly from T ...

. Maithri has been the recipient of the Tirupur Tamizh Sangam Award and the State Award for Poetry by the Government of Puducherry. She is also the founder of a publishing house called ''Anagu'' () which has translated works of Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie such as ''Purple Red Poppy'' and ''

We Should All Be Feminists ''We Should All Be Feminists'' is a book-length essay by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. First published in 2014 by Fourth Estate, it talks about the definition of feminism for the 21st century. The essay was adapted from Adichie' ...

.''

Biography

Maithri was born in the Indian union territory of Puducherry in 1968, to a family of fishers. According to ''

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

'', being from a Tamil fisher family granted her some degree of independence as a woman and has been influential in her style of poetry. Her first publication, a short story titled ''Prayanam'' was featured in the premier Tamil literature magazine '' Kaniayazhi'' in 1988''.'' She rose to prominence around the same time in early 2000s as did a number of other Tamil women writers such as

Salma The South American land mammal ages (SALMA) establish a geologic timescale for prehistoric South American fauna beginning 64.5 Ma during the Paleocene and continuing through to the Late Pleistocene (0.011 Ma). These periods are referred to as a ...

and

Sukirtharani Sukirtharani is an Indian feminist poet who is widely acclaimed for her contribution to contemporary Dalit and Tamil literature. Sukirtharani is also a Tamil teacher at the Government Girls High School in Ranipet District, and has a master's d ...

. Her poems are described to allude to gender issues as a recurrent theme, and as transgressive in style. Maitri states that

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy (17 September 1879 – 24 December 1973), revered as Periyar or Thanthai Periyar, was an Indian social activist and politician who started the Self-Respect Movement and Dravidar Kazhagam. He is known as the 'Fa ...

has been one of her biggest influences in her work, that in his time, he had had called for "uterine politics" as the need of the hour which did not take off, because of which she has decided to employ aggressive rhetoric in her publications and activism, described as "vaginal politics" by her. She has also been critical of the current state of feminism which according to her has become reduced to being controlled and marketed by corporate interests and as a result compromising in search of acceptability.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maithri, Malathi 1968 births Living people Tamil poets Indian women poets Indian feminist writers 21st-century Indian women writers 21st-century Indian writers 20th-century Indian women writers 20th-century Indian writers