Resistance and Resilience: Naga Women’s Voices in Temsüla Ao’s <i>These Hills Called Home</i>

Abstract

 Tribal women of North East India have long endured the compounded burdens of colonial intrusion, postcolonial state violence, and patriarchal traditions. Yet their voices and lived experiences often remain marginalised in both historical narratives and literary discourse. Temsüla Ao’s These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone (2006) intervenes in this silence by foregrounding the stories of Naga women caught between insurgency and militarisation. This paper argues that Ao portrays Naga women as doubly colonised—subjugated by both patriarchal customs and militarised repression—while simultaneously reclaiming their agency through resilience, memory, and acts of defiance. Drawing upon postcolonial feminism and trauma studies, the paper analyses selected stories to show how Ao resists the reduction of women to silent victims and instead recasts them as witnesses, survivors, and cultural agents. Through close readings of narratives such as “The Last Song,” “The Jungle Major,” “The Night,” and “The Curfew Man,” the paper demonstrates how Ao’s fiction unsettles stereotypes and contributes to a feminist re-imagining of North East Indian literature.