Mamang Dai: A Voice from Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India
- Mamang Dai is a poet and novelist from Itanagar, a Northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh.
- She was born on 23 February 1957 at Pasighat in the East Siang district of this state.
- Her parents are Matin Dai and Odi Dai.
- She belongs to the Adi tribe.
- After the completion of her schooling at Pine Mount School, Shillong, and graduation in English literature from Gauhati University, Assam, she was selected for IAS in 1979 as the first woman from her state.
- But because of her love for journalism to pursue her career in the same, she left her post.
- Her well-known fictional and non-fictional works are Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land (2003), The Legends of Pensam (2006), Stupid Cupid (2008), and The Black Hill (2014). She is well-known for her collection of poetry, River Poems (2004).
- In 2011, she was appointed as a member of the Arunachal Pradesh State Public Service Commission. In the same year, she received Padmashree.
- In 2013, for her non-fictional work Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land, she was awarded the Annual Verrier Elwin Prize by the Arunachal Pradesh government.
- In 2017, she was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award for her memorable novel, The Black Hill.
- While being awarded the Padmashree, Y. D. Thongchi, the President of Arunachal Pradesh Literary Society, said that Mamang Dai “is firmly rooted with the soil of her birthplace.” He also remarked that “her heart was always in consonance with rivers, mountains, trees, jungles, rituals, legends, mythology, dances, villages, prayer flags of her ‘dear abode’, Arunachal Pradesh” (“Padmashree”).
- In the “author’s note” in her collection of short stories, The Legends of Pensam, Dai asserts, “Arunachal Pradesh in North East India, bordering Bhutan, China and Myanmar, is one of the largest states of the country, and also one of its greenest.” She also adds, “It is the homeland of twenty-six tribes with over one hundred and ten sub-clans …”
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