Gender and Class Intersections in Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp: A Feminist Reading of Patriarchy and Resistance

Banu Mushtaq’s International Booker Prize-winning short story collection Heart Lamp: Selected Stories for the Year 2025, originally written in Kannada and later translated into English by Deepa Bhasti, illuminates the intersections of gender and class in Muslim narratives. The 12 stories highlight the subversion of women’s identities within the Muslim community in Karnataka and the intersection of class and gender that reinforces patriarchal structures. Gendered violence projected in the stories is linked to financial status, with impoverished women experiencing abandonment, institutional betrayal and bodily suffering. In contrast, relatively privileged women adopt various resistance strategies, including ironic commentary on gender inequality, collective cursing and theological protest. Women are portrayed as child-producing machines and replaceable entities at men’s discretion. This paper applies Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectionality, Chandra Talpade Mohanty’s postcolonial feminism, Judith Butler’s performativity and James C. Scott’s concept of the “weapons of the weak” to validate the thesis that class is not merely a framework but a multiplier of gendered violence and a basis for resistance.