Like A Girl is a collection of stories of 51 women. Many of these women are not unknown to us, several of them are celebrities. The women featured in this book range from 19th century heroes like Rani Laxmibai to contemporary trailblazers such as Dipa Karmikar. Along the way you read about the extraordinary Amrita Shergill, Leila Seth and Soni Sori. Each biography is 2-3 pages long, and has an artist’s portrait of the person as well.
The choice of facts, the anecdotes and the elegantly simple style of writing make it a refreshing read. There is an energy in many of the stories that draws in the reader, though it does flag in some of the stories such as that of Indira Gandhi, and Champa Shukla and Rashida Bi. What is appealing is that even though it would have been easy to do so, Aparna Jain does not fall into the trap of overly dramatizing these women’s struggles nor their achievements. Whether family disapproval, physical torture, mental trauma or victory—it is written about with restraint. This is a welcome treatment of the material.