A01=Aakriti Mandhwani
alternative citizenship imaginaries
Author_Aakriti Mandhwani
book culture in North India
Category=CJCR
Category=DSB
circulation of cheap books
commercial book markets post-1947
commercial publishing houses
consumer culture after Partition
cultural alternatives to nationalism
cultural citizenship India
cultural history of India 1950s
Delhi Press publications
democratization of reading
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
everyday life in Hindi literature
gendered readership communities
Hind Pocket Books legacy
Hindi literary marketplace
Hindi middlebrow modernity
Hindi print ecosystem
Hindi public sphere
histories of paperback publishing
India
Indian middle classes
leisure reading practices
literacy and gender in India
literary taste formation
magazine studies South Asia
magazines
mass culture in independent India
media history India
mid-20th century South Asia
middlebrow
middlebrow cultural forms
nation and consumer culture
paperback revolution in India
periodicals
periodicals and paperback studies
politics of pleasure in print
popular Hindi fiction
post-colonial
post-independence
postcolonial print culture
print and popular culture
print capitalism in postcolonial societies
print culture
publishing industry histories
readership beyond nationalism
reading
reception studies in Hindi print
reimagining citizenship through reading
sociology of literature South Asia
sociology of reading
South Asian modern print history
vernacular modernities
vernacular publishing history
women
women as readers and writers
women's magazine audiences
women's role in cultural consumption
Product details
- ISBN 9781625347916
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 08 Jul 2024
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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During the two difficult decades immediately following the 1947 Indian Independence, a new, commercially successful print culture emerged that articulated alternatives to dominant national narratives. Through what Aakriti Mandhwani defines as middlebrow magazines—like Delhi Press’s Saritā—and the first paperbacks in Hindi—Hind Pocket Books—North Indian middle classes cultivated new reading practices that allowed them to reimagine what it meant to be a citizen. Rather than focusing on individual sacrifices and contributions to national growth, this new print culture promoted personal pleasure and other narratives that enabled readers to carve roles outside of official prescriptions of nationalism, austerity, and religion.
Utilizing a wealth of previously unexamined print culture materials, as well as paying careful attention to the production of commercial publishing companies and the reception of ordinary reading practices—particularly those of women—Everyday Reading offers fresh perspectives into book history, South Asian literary studies, and South Asian gender studies.
Aakriti Mandhwani is associate professor of English in the School of Humanities and Social Science at Shiv Nadar Institute in Eminence, India.
