https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i2.026
Legacies of Resilience: Vulnerability and Resistance in Arundhati Roy’s Memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me
NIMMY MARIAM JACOB
Research Scholar (Full Time)
Department of English
St. Berchman’s College
Affiliated to Mahatma Gandhi University
DR. NEETHU TESSA BABY
Assistant Professor and Research Guide
Department of English
Assumption College
Affiliated to Mahatma Gandhi University
Abstract: Human beings are inextricably dependent on their surroundings and sustained within natural and manufactured ecosystems shaped by social relationships and interdependence. The fates of individuals and communities are woven together, exposing everyone to a shared vulnerability conceptualised as precariousness. Alongside naturally induced vulnerabilities, social hierarchies assign differential value to lives, producing vulnerabilities engineered by social and political forces. These are directed toward specific communities through class, caste, gender, and economic insecurity, resulting in purposefully curated inequality known as precarity. Judith Butler observes that gendered bodies experience precarity differently, where some lives are protected while others are ignored. Vulnerabilities are often associated with susceptibility, victimisation, and passivity, leading to legislative and infrastructural measures that frequently insulate vulnerable groups from mainstream social relationships. Challenging this assumption, Judith Butler’s Vulnerability in Resistance argues that vulnerability can foster resistance and resilience. This paper examines Arundhati Roy’s memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me (2025), as a text that reconceptualises vulnerability as an active and generative force.
The memoir explores the complex relationship between Roy and her mother, Mary Roy, while documenting structural, social, emotional, and embodied vulnerabilities. Mary Roy faced social ostracism, legal exclusion, economic insecurity, and physical vulnerability due to asthma. Her resistance to discriminatory laws and hostile social environments culminated in her emergence as a visionary educator and legal reformer. Arundhati Roy’s childhood was marked by instability and inherited precarity shaped by gender and economic insecurity. Her later resistance manifests through political activism, environmental engagement, and dissent against state violence, demonstrating that vulnerability is not passivity but a source of resilience and political solidarity across generations.
Keywords: Vulnerability, Precarity, Intergenerational Vulnerability, Resistance
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