This article explores the plight of Pakistan’s Christian minorities as depicted by author and journalist Mohammed Hanif in his novel Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. Literature has the ability to inspire immense empathy for the other by lending voice to the forgotten and marginalized, which is the first step to any dialogue for social justice. Examining the so-called fictional depictions against scholarship on the subject, the article studies the complex intersectionality of religion, caste, class, and gender that manifests in the mistreatment of Christian minorities. Through the framework of fiction, it brings to light the lived experience of Pakistani Christians, and in the process, demonstrates the evocative power of literature towards understanding those who find their human dignity threatened by power and privilege.
The European Enlightenment witnessed a Jewish reclamation of Jesus. It led modernist Yiddish intellectuals to experiment with Christian motifs as they tried to contend with what it meant to be Jewish in the modern world. This article proposes to examine, with special focus on poetry, how the crucified Jesus not only became a space of hybridity for Yiddish literary artists to formulate modern Jewish identity and culture but also the medium through which to articulate Jewish suffering in a language that resonated with the oppressors. By doing so, the article seeks to understand the relevance that such literary depictions of Jesus by Jewish authors and poets can have for the Christian understanding of its own identity and its relationship with Judaism.
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