Tales of the Invisible: The Untold Stories of Women Who Have Overcome

By Aparna Parthasarathy

Aparna Parthasarathy's Tales of the Invisible tells the stories of four women, across countries, oceans and years. They are united by the oppression they are forced to endure. Each story follows the harrowing experiences of women in patriarchal societies...societies determined to control them.

Sagnika, a teenager in Ne

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Aug 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885046497

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Tales of the Invisible

Tales of the Invisible

The Untold Stories of Women Who Have Overcome

Aparna Parthasarathy

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2022 Aparna Parthasarathy

All rights reserved.

Tales of the Invisible

The Untold Stories of Women Who Have Overcome

ISBN

979-8-88504-533-9 Paperback

979-8-88504-859-0 Kindle Ebook

979-8-88504-649-7 Ebook

For my mother, the strongest woman I know.

Contents

Author’s Note

Story 1: Strength

Story 2: Power

Story 3: Fearlessness

Story 4: Courage

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Dirty sneakers, caked in grass stains and soil, squeaked against the smooth wooden floor beneath me. The rest of the kids and their parents shuffled around tables, angling poster boards and re-shifting costumes. This was the first big project I would have; teachers, students, and parents would all walk through the swinging, wooden gym doors excited to hear what I had to say. Worst of all, I was placed right by the door, not near the stage or the fire exit like the other kids. I was the first person they would see when they stepped into the room. The sounds of kids practicing their speeches and parents taking pictures drove me crazy, amplifying my already escalating nerves.

When my fourth-grade teacher announced the project to the class, I was excited. We were going to be wax figurines for the evening. Each of us picked a person, researched their life, and dressed up like them, patiently waiting for people to come up to us and press the garish yellow stickers on our palms, signaling for us to talk about the people we represented. It was a rite of passage at school—all the older kids did this, and I was ready to be like them. Confident. Poised. Smart.

Standing there, in that crowded gym, with the green circles and gray plastic tables, I wasn’t sure if I could do all of that. I adjusted the makeshift blue and pink scarf around my head for the hundredth time and shifted my pink note cards, scribbled with my three-minute speech, from my right hand to the left, and back to the right again. My mouth was dry, and the words I was saying came out like a rough piece of tin as I practiced the parts that I forgot repeatedly. The sweat from my palms caused the Malala Yousafzai biography to slip from my hands onto the floor, landing with a thud that could be heard from the moon. Bending down to pick it up, I stared at Malala’s face on the cover, and it finally hit me that this was it. All of my work had culminated to this point.

The other kids in my fourth-grade class picked people they knew from pop culture or companies they liked. Half our grade wanted to be Milton Hershey, just so they could bring in boxes of chocolate, wrapped in crinkly aluminum and plastic. Girls fought over who got to be Taylor Swift, and they hid their speeches on music stands, awkwardly glancing at them every few moments. But my inspiration came from a different place than just wanting to represent someone that I knew or liked.

Malala was one of the only South Asian people that had a book on the creaky, gray metal cart that my teacher wheeled into class the day after announcing the project. I was immediately drawn to her for her background and age, despite being from different countries. I’d seen her struggle with my own eyes during trips to India to visit my grandparents. Young girls and their mothers were often the ones who worked: cooking, cleaning, and doing the laundry. Their education wasn’t prioritized, unlike their male counterparts. Malala reminded me a lot of my mother. The latter left India in her twenties to pursue higher education and get her PhD. She had to fight every step of the way. As a south Asian female immigrant in STEM, she had to fight against the men in her labs for equal opportunities. She had to fight against her family as they wanted her to come home and get married early. She went through so much for learning and knowledge, much like Malala. As I flipped through the pages of Malala’s book, I felt drawn to her. Her struggle, her fight, and her passion.

Although my project was to create a biography of Malala, I found myself more enthusiastic about the issues she believes in. Tears and yelling would be common occurrences in my room as I read about her fight with the Taliban. Nothing enraged me more than knowing that women were facing persecution for wanting equality. I desired to learn more about women in developing countries and the problems they faced.

That passion for women’s rights has stayed with me through loud debates on the back of the bus with boys who thought the wage gap was fair. It stayed with me in my freshman year government class when we watched movies about the suffragettes. I wanted to yell every time those women on screen faced attacks by the police for protesting or were abused for asking for equality.

I believe that I am qualified to write this because of my experience advocating for equality for women. Specifically, I was driven to write these stories because of my experiences helping weavers in Peru fight against inequitable economic changes. After seeing the hardships these women endure, I knew something had to be said. In addition, I am an active member in organizations that push to further equality and acceptance in society.

The inspiration for this book comes from the little spark in me when I was a couple of inches shorter and my world was a couple inches smaller. Having more knowledge now than I did back then, the desire to write about the lives of women is something that strikes a deep chord in my current heart and that clumsy, nervous ten-year-old’s heart as well.

I want young women from all over the world to learn about the planet-wide similarities in inequality and start talking about these issues. There is never going to be a right time or a wrong time to speak up for women everywhere, women who are not allowed to speak up for themselves because their culture prohibits them from doing so. As the world continues to develop and countries become more advanced, we need to leave these injustices in the past.

As these issues come to light, it is important to note how culture affects women. In some villages, women have specific jobs they can do or rules they need to follow. Instead of writing a book where all of these characters go against their culture and history, I wanted to showcase how it is beautiful but can reach extremes in society. I wanted to focus on portraying realistic women in my book. Not all of them want an education or to go abroad for a high-paying job. Some women want to carry on their ancestral gifts without carrying the misogyny that comes with them. Gender inequality is deeply ingrained in cultures, especially in developing countries where there will always be people who believe that a woman must give everything up for her family or husband or father. The time to show that these issues exist everywhere in the world is now.

I want young women worldwide to know that they are not