Memories from Turbulence to Calm: Reading Survival, Silences and Stories from Temsula Ao's These Hills Called Home: Stories from a War Zone

Naga literature has been studied as a post-colonial response to the underpinning of colonial aftermath and as veneration to Indigenous cultural continuities. As a region that experienced the tumultuous adversities of war and insurgency it holds memories of trauma, pain, dispossession and cultural breakdown. In These Hills Called Home: Stories From A War Zone by Temsula Ao, marginalised stories are resurfaced whereby personal and communal experiences are narrated. The stories express the hurt and pain of the insurgent day where personal trauma, socio-economic losses, displacement and torture. As postcolonial literature, the collection engages in centering indigenous expression and perspective of the war days; the cultural approach to adapting and confronting the day of trials. Ao brings in her elements the atrocities in social life of the everyday disrupted by the war, people of all ages not sparing even children as victims. This resonates with what post colonial theorist Linda Tuhiwai Smith contests in her book Decolonising Methodologies, on how story telling is active remembering and countering formative histories, and historical commemoration from Indigenous cultural perspective. Ao's stories from the memories of the remembered past highlight memories of cultural survival, personal struggle and communal response to the tumultuous days. Her attempts to create a cultural imagination of the Naga's encounter with the predicament combine the projection of wits, endurance, tenacity, resilience, and resistance from the accounts and stories of the survivors. In this discussion I will examine the aspect of postcoloniality in Ao's story, locating the narratives as a cursor to understanding the present using a decolonial approach. I will further highlight some key motivations to analyze and read the text as contestations to existing notions of histories by engaging the Indigenous perspective employed to counter historical narrative; mechanizing silenced narratives, collective consciousness and shared memories, supported by personal stories and testimonials presented in the book.

Counter-Narration, Decolonization, Indigeneity, Memories, Postcolonial lives

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