Marginalization In Tribal Literature

There is a general misconception that many people seem to have about marginalized associations, especially about marginalized literature: that they evoke sympathy and pity and use those emotions as a way of garnering attention from what is considered the mainstream culture. This negative judgment has resulted in many critics and cynical lay people slamming and condoning marginalized literature as an underhanded tactic to tug at vulnerable heartstrings. And the ongoing debate of what all can actually be considered to fall into the purview of marginalized literature remains unresolved. The Oxford Dictionary defines the term “Marginalize” as: to treat (a person, group, or concept) as insignificant or peripheral. While one may think of any class of oppressed persons as marginalized, which includes people discriminated on the basis of ethnic and cultural

To understand tribal literature, one must understand the umbrella term this genre—along with many such others—is clubbed under; and that term is “marginalized literature”. As mentioned before, the term “marginalized” deals with anything that is deemed insignificant by the society at large. Marginalized people are the ones who experience social, cultural and political exclusion from the mainstream society. Marginalized literature is, quite simply put, the literature conveying the ideas and experiences of marginalization.
An age old question that has, even today, remained inadequately answered is this—whose writing can be considered to be tribal, or in general, marginalized literature? Can only what is being written by those who have experienced marginalization personally be seen as marginalized literature? What about the people who write about the instances of marginalization they have witnessed but not experienced it themselves? Or the ones that take artistic liberty in imagining what marginalization would feel like to them, an empathetic approach to bringing awareness of these