The Bandit Queens

There are times when I crave a book that makes me laugh. The Bandit Queens tells the darkly funny, madcap adventures of a group of women in a small Indian village.

Geeta, our protagonist, is rumored to have murdered her husband – and now the other unhappy wives in the village want her to do the same for them. Serious issues of misogyny and violence against women, as well as caste and religion, are handled lightly.

Nothing goes as planned, but in the end, Geeta, along with a lovable cast of lively women friends, somehow triumphs over the obstacles stacked… show more.

One of the ways writers of color are restricted by the world of publishing is through the pressure to create only narratives of suffering and trauma. There’s little room for the idea that you can tell a story about people who are poor or marginalized or outcast, and it can still be, you know, funny.

That’s what I loved about The Bandit Queens. The main character, Geeta, may be poor and relatively powerless as a woman in rural India. But in this hilarious tale, the rest of the women in her village decide Geeta’s the one to go to… show more.