“Erudite and original, this book makes a signal contribution to scholarship on gender, class, caste, sexualities, identities, and labor by bringing attention to the lives and practices of low-caste peasants in the rural North Indian countryside. Engaging and expertly written – Jassal’s prose enacts a most pleasing poetics to this reader’s ear – the genius behind Unearthing Gender lies in its use of women’s folk song genres.”

“Jassal’s project breaks new ground for ethnomusicologists to take up the challenge of combining research on the labor of music making in the context of rural agrarian political economies. . . . An engaging combination of detailed ethnography and insightful interpretation of song texts and their social significance. . . .”

“Ultimately, this beautifully written and highly readable (and teachable) ethnography offers important insights into gender, caste, and kinship. Its most immediate impact is the richness of the worlds it explores and the possibilities it raises for thinking about the place of expression in the crafting of culture. What comes through most vividly, aside from the poetry of the songs themselves, is the vibrancy and warmth of the lives of those who sing them. Jassal’s portrait of women’s expressive lives is one of deep humanity and, at its core, is about possibilities for action, intimacy, and selfhood.” 

"A particularly cogent example of how much is to be gained by attending simultaneously to the structural and expressive aspects of culture and to the subtle and complex ways subversion and reinforcement can harmonize and create dissonance in the very same tune."

"Recalling Smita Tiwari Jassal’s own ancestral roots in this rural region, I see this lovingly researched book as embodying one such way of remembering, reframing, and transmitting songs into the future."