Paro Anand’s The Other: Stories of Difference (2018) underscores the present-day predicament and challenges that impinge on the lives of Indian teenagers, a theme that is approached cautiously by the author for the benefit of her young adult readers. The narratives, however, are daring in the sense that they focus sharply on the hidden or suppressed, and under-represented, crises faced by youngsters, underlining the urgency of addressing these issues in a society that is still largely ignorant or apathetic. Yet, the literary representation of social malaise, psychological trauma, emotional wretchedness, and physical harm in texts intended primarily for young readers is never an easy task as there is a risk of such texts becoming overtly didactic in their desire to inform and educate. Whether Anand steers clear of this trap – for the stories need to work as stories – is one of the concerns of this essay. Another task of the writer is to depict teenagers as not entirely independent of adults and yet also as not bereft of agency. The essay examines the stories in the collection in relation to the identity formation of the young adult characters, who have to grasp as well as grapple with the complexities – along the axes of gender, class, caste, and disability – of what it means to be growing up in India.

中文翻译：

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青少年受害，生存和帕罗阿南德小说《另一种：差异的故事》中的认同形成

帕罗·阿南德（Paro Anand）的《其他：差异的故事》（The Other：Stories of Difference，2018）强调了当今困扰印度青少年生活的困境和挑战，作者为了年轻成年读者的利益而谨慎地对待这一主题。然而，这些叙事大胆地集中于青少年所面临的隐藏或被压制，代表性不足的危机，这凸显了在一个仍然无知或无动于衷的社会中解决这些问题的紧迫性。然而，主要针对年轻读者的文本中的社会不适，心理创伤，情感苦恼和身体伤害的文学表现绝非易事，因为这样的文本有可能在他们希望提供信息和进行教育的过程中被公开授课。Anand是否避开了这个陷阱（因为故事需要作为故事工作）是本文关注的问题之一。作者的另一项任务是将青少年描绘成不完全独立于成年人，而且不丧失代理能力。本文研究了与年轻人角色的身份形成有关的故事，这些年轻人必须沿着性别，阶级，种姓和残疾的轴心掌握并应对复杂的事物，这意味着：在印度长大。