The dualism between subject and object has dominated literary imagination, especially throughout the twentieth century, both in the Western and the Asian culture. However, over the last twenty years, an ontological shift in focus can be observed in Anglophone Indian women's narratives in which the material world is not merely the background but the structural framework of the story. Small objects, domestic artifacts, and ordinary things are rehabilitated and become metonymies of women's inner lives. Following a critical approach which puts subjects and objects in relational rather than oppositional terms, this book offers new insights into women's condition, not only from the point of view of gender discrimination but also of identity formation, both in postcolonial and diasporic contexts. The analyses proposed demonstrate that gender is no less physical than an object and is expressed through a material-semiotic apparatus that tells stories of oppression and resistance, marginalization and empowerment, thus constituting significant reading matter. Sofia Cavalcanti is postdoctoral fellow in Anglophone literature at the University of Macerata (Department of Humanities) and adjunct professor of English Culture and Literature at the University of Bologna (Department of Interpreting and Translation). Following a strong transdisciplinary and transnational approach, she focuses her research on contemporary postcolonial and diasporic female narratives as well as migration and refugee literature from a material ecocritical perspective.