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• 1 2025-06-26T10:32:07-04:00 Mamang Dai (1957- ): Author Profile 12 Author Profile for Mamang Dai, a writer from the Adi tribe in Arunachal Pradesh plain 2025-07-07T13:45:04-04:00 This profile was written by Srishti Raj. 
  Community: Adi Tribe from Arunachal Pradesh (sometimes referred to as the "Abor": this is an exonym that the Adi people have largely rejected)
  
  Wikipedia Page: English / Hindi
  
  Mamang Dai was born in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh into the Adi community. She has worked as an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, a journalist, and a program officer for the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature), which heavily impact her writing. Dai draws on history, folklore, and contemporary politics to craft narratives that capture the spirit of the Adi people and critique its colonisation, both historical and ongoing. Her writing is also deeply informed by the oral traditions of the Adi language.
  
  Nonfiction by Mamang Dai
  Mamang Dai has written two works of nonfiction: Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land and Mountain Harvest: The Food of Arunachal Pradesh. 
  • Arunachal Pradhesh: The Hidden Land (2003) was Dai's first book. Drawing on her experience as both a government official and journalist, Dai records the culture, folklore, and customs of the many communities that live in Arunachal Pradesh. In the introduction to the text, Dai speaks to her larger project of preservation as she writes:

  Today change has come like a steam roller. The transition from unknown frontier to modern state has been sharp and rapid and the question of direction and destiny has become one of great complexity and soul searching. On the one hand, in keeping with the national agenda, the state is forging ahead with goals for progress and development. On the other – the history of our people, our origins and routes of migration remain a matter of speculation, based purely on the few recorded documents left by the early explorers. There are also specialized niches in our tribal heritage that may be erased forever if change is not assessed and negotiated carefully.

  
  Fiction by Mamang Dai
  Mamang Dai has written four novels. Dai won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2017 for her novel The Black Hill, and was longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature in 2022 for Escaping the Land. 
  • The Legends of Pensam (2006) is a series of interlinked stories that are drawn from the rich folklore and history of Arunachal, featuring (in part) a boy who falls from the sky, a remote village that gets a road that threatens their way of life, and a woman who falls in love with a British officer. The title comes from the Adi word "pensam" which literally means "in-between"; Dai explains that it "may also be
    interpreted as the hidden spaces of the heart where a secret garden grows. It is the small world where anything can happen and everything can be lived..."
  A quote from The Legends of Pensam:

  "Back then, the village heaved with life, and I expected a great welling up of revelations, a web of magic through which we would step lightly like glittering spirits crowned with speech and thought. The years stretched before us like a singing forest; we were always poised to spread wings and float through the cool bamboo."

  • Stupid Cupid (2009) is a novel about Adna, a middle aged woman from Arunachal Pradesh who moves from her hometown to the Indian capital of New Delhi because she's fallen in love with a married man. She opens a guest house as Death stalks the city streets in this moving novel about relationships and their complications. 
  • The Black Hill (2018) is a work of historical fiction that re-imagines two real events in the history of Arunachal - the disappearance of a French priest, Father Nicolas Krick in the 1850s and the execution of Kajinsha from the Mishmee tribe - and creates a narrative around the invasion of the East India Company into the area in the 1800s. The novel explores ideas of community, indigeneity, and the link between colonisation and religious missions.
  • Escaping the Land (2021) follows Maying, a woman who returns to Arunachal Pradesh after many years to write a history of her people. Blending history, folklore, and contemporary politics, the novel captures the tensions between traditional ways of life and the exploitative turn of modernisation. You can read the first chapter for free here. 
  
  Poems by Mamang Dai
  Mamang Dai has written several collections of poetry, including River Poems (2004), The Balm of Time (2008), and The White Shirts of Summer (2023). While her older poetry collections are difficult to source, some of her poems are available online:
  • "The desire of ink" (Read the full poem on Chair Poetry Evenings)
  • "Once Upon A Time In Pasighat", "I'm Going Back To Old", and "Hello Mountain" (Read the full poems in Ethos Literary Journal)
  • "Gone" (Read the full poem on Poetry International)

  An excerpt from the poem "Gone":

  How would anyone know what we have tried to do,
  when there was me, and you,
  and there was the burnt black hill
  monumental with the faces of our people,
  until the next moonrise showed us
  something about change,
  and the existence of dreams.

  Mamang Dai has also written children's books that draw from Adi folklore, including Once Upon A Moontime (2005), The Sky Queen (2005), and Hambreelmai's Loom (2014).  
  
  Interviews with Mamang Dai
  
  In Conversation with Jaydeep Sarangi (Writers in Conversation, 2017)
  "Certainly I am influenced by the oral narratives. Knowing the stories gives me a sense of identity. It inspires my writing – after all it is a world of myth, memory, and imagination. Oral narratives are generally perceived as a simple recounting of tales for a young audience but I think their significance lies in the symbols embedded in the stories about the sanctity of life, about what makes us human."
  
  Interview: Critical Dialogue with Mamang Dai (Rupkatha Journal, 2022)
  In this interview, Mamang Dai discusses Abang, the "classical Adi literature" of the Adi tribe, and the impact that traditions of oral storytelling have had on her own writing. She also describes the research that went into writing her award-winning historical novel The Black Hill.