Katherine Mayo

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Katherine Mayo (1928)

Katherine Mayo (born January 27, 1867 in Ridgway , Pennsylvania , † October 9, 1940 in Bedford Hills , New York ) was an American writer and journalist. She gained fame primarily through her polemical book Mother India , published in 1927 .

biography

Mayo was raised privately in Cambridge and Boston .

In 1892 Life Magazine published her first article. As a pseudonym she used the name Katherine Prence at times. In 1899, at the age of 32, she traveled with her father to what was then the Dutch colony of Suriname and stayed there for eight years. The New York Evening Post , Atlantic Monthly, and Scribner's Magazine accepted her articles on the country. Mayo also traded in ethnological relics and insects and sold them to museums.

Mayo worked as a researcher again in the USA. She helped, among others, Oswald Garrison Villard, Sr. of the New York Evening Post in the 1910 publication of his book on John Brown . Villard, pacifist, political activist and son of a well-known suffragette and the press and railroad magnate Henry Villard , who was born in Wiesbaden , supported her in her work and worked towards a social reform perspective in her publications.

Mayo met M. Moyca Newell in 1910. The wealthy heiress became her lifelong close friend and supporter of her books. The two traveled around the world together for research.

Mayo's Justice For All was published in 1917 calling for a reform of the Pennsylvania State Police. Theodore Roosevelt wrote a foreword for the book, which is also considered the impetus for the New York State Police. The US police force was very weak or not represented at all, especially in rural areas. The writings The Standard Bearers (Flag Bearer, 1918) and Mounted Justice (Justice on horseback, 1922) also dealt with the police.

1920 Mayo came That Damn Y (the damn Ypsilon) out over alleged mismanagement of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in the supply of American troops in France in the First World War . In 1925, in The Islands of Fear , she spoke out against the independence of the Philippines . Her best-known book Mother India was published in 1927 .

With extensive research and a polemical style, Katherine Mayo became a representative of the Muckraker (dung scratchers), an early form of investigative journalism . Her publications were mostly related to citizen protests and political movements.

Mother India (1927)

Her book Mother India , published in 1927, sparked a literary scandal on three continents. Mayo spoke out against the Indian independence movement and condemned the Hindu -influenced culture of the country, the treatment of the Dalits and Indian women. Mayo stated - in her eyes - too intense sex drive of Indian men as a core problem. This leads to masturbation , rape , homosexuality , prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases , in particular to early sexual intercourse and a premature marriage age. She took an offensive against child marriage .

Raising the age of marriage to 13 years was widely and controversially discussed in India as early as 1925. Mayo's book publication contributed to a corresponding law. At the same time, the author was very controversial because of her proximity to the English rulers and her racist undertones. Mayo had also spoken out in favor of the US Immigration Act of 1924 , which placed immigration from Asia under racial aspects and was supposed to reduce it. Her book was burned in India along with a picture of the author.

One of the prominent responses to the book was a speech by Muthulakshmi Reddi , the first female Indian MP. In addition to her criticism, she also states that dealing with Mayo's polemics had a lasting impact on the Indian women's movement. Mahatma Gandhi said that Mayo - figuratively - equates the condition of Indian sewers with that of all of India. Responses to the book included Father India (1927); Sister India (1928); My Mother India (1930); A Son of Mother India Answers (1928); Long Live India: What a Son Has to Say About Mother and Father India (1932); To Englishman Defends Mother India (1932); The Truth About Mother India (1928); Unhappy India (1928); Mother India By Those Who Know Her Better Than Miss. K. Mayo (1927); Miss Mayo's Cruelty to Mother India (no year) and Mother India Ka Jawab (The Reply to Mother India) (1928).

The criticism of today's Indian feminists like Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on feminism Western-style attack positions as well represented Mayo.

Publications

  • Justice to All: History of the Pennsylvania State Police (1917)
  • The Standard Bearers: True Stories of Heroes of Law and Order (1918)
  • That Damn Y (1920)
  • Mounted Justice: True Stories of the Pennsylvania State Police (1922)
  • The Isles of Fear: The Truth about the Philippines (1925)
  • Mother India (1927)
  • Mother India , introduced by the publisher, translated by Dora Mitzky, Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei, Frankfurt am Main 1928, DNB 575042583 ; 3rd edition 1930 with Indian answers added, OCLC 174426198 .
  • Slaves of the Gods (1929)
  • Volume II (1931)
  • Soldiers What Next! (1934)
  • The Face of Mother India (1935)

literature

  • Mrinalini Sinha (Ed.): Selections from Mother India. Kali for Woman, New Delhi 1998, ISBN 81-85107-26-2 (Includes detailed critical introductory comments by the editor and some contemporary Indian responses to the Mother India ).
  • Nandi Miriam: M / Other India / s on the literary processing of poverty and caste problems in selected texts from Indian-English and native-speaking Indian literature since 1935 (= Anglistische Forschungen , Volume 377), Winter, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 978-3-8253 -5285-1 (Dissertation University of Freiburg im Breisgau 2005, 298 pages table of contents , content ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Short biography of Katherine Frick ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu
  2. ↑ Mother India, Selections from the Controversial 1927 Text , Edited and with an Introduction by Mrinalini Sinha, University of Michigan Press, 2000, ISBN 047206715X
  3. ↑ Teaching Journal: Katherine Mayo's Mother India (1927) Amardeep Singh
personal data
SURNAME Mayo, Katherine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Katherine Prence (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Ridgway, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 1940
Place of death Bedford Hills , New York