In Gender, Genre and Power the authors cross the boundaries between anthropology, folklore, and history to cast new light on the relation between songs and stories, reality and realism, and rhythm and rhetoric in the expressive traditions of South Asia. The essays look particularly at the contexts in which expressible materials are shared and debated, while paying close attention to the textual conventions that frame their complexity. Arjun Appadurai, Frank J. Korom, Margaret A. Mills, and the contributors to this volume demonstrate that in the living traditions of folk representation in South Asia gender is richly debated and women`s voices are as eloquent as men`s.