As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak points out in her introduction, the breast is far more than a symbol in these stories-it is the means of harshly indicting an exploitative social system. In 'Draupadi', the protagonist, Dopdi Mejhen, is a tribal revolutionary, who, arrested and gang-raped in custody, turns the terrible wounds of her breast into a counter-offensive. In 'Breast-giver', a woman who becomes a professional wet-nurse to support her family, dies of painful breast cancer, betrayed ali...