Junglee (stemming from the Sanskrit root "jungle") is used in India to label the wild, the uncivilized, the untamed. Used most commonly as condemnation or censure, it aims to break the spirit of women yearning for personal power. The female protagonists in these eleven stories recklessly pursue their sensual paths through a complex social world that seeks to shut them out. With wily irreverence and a willful rawness, Kamani pulls back the veil of convention, inch by inch, and draws the reader into the disquieting truth of women's lives, charting territory both intimate and bizarre.  This collection of delightful and sometimes provocative stories surprise and arouse…Ginu Kamani’s stories are tinged with humour and are often disturbing in their exploration of taboo passions and desires. Kamani is an original storyteller who writes from ‘inside’ the culture, claiming a rightful space for Indian women to define themselves.  ― Pratibha Parmar  Junglee Girl  is a delightfully seditious collection of tales, like some profane kama sutra of contemporary India . ―San Francisco Review of Books  Ginu Kamani, a gifted, savvy writer, combines such precarious, complex elements as class, caste, gender and eroticism into readable, imaginative and often hilarious tales . ― Publishers Weekly Several of these 11 short stories, all involving Indian girls or women, show authorial promise, but few are strong on substance. Young girls narrate tales ("Lucky Dip," "The Smell," "The Cure") that require mature vocabulary and intelligence; other stories ("Shakuntala," "Maria," "Waxing the Thing") exhibit excessive fascination with the genitalia of women. Of note is the book's publicity blurb that stresses Kamani's "wanton bawdiness" and "explicit sexuality," but such story elements fail to advance a theme or a conclusion, as seen in "Just Between Indians," where Indian and American cultures and languages are abruptly intermixed. Also, the author's plot contrivances ("The Tears of Kamala," "Younger Wife") fail to convey sufficient believability. Overall, the tragic aspect of these stories is the lack of strong and reliable editorship, for Kamani clearly has creative talent that cries out for responsibly helpful mentorship.?Glenn O. Carey, Eastern Kentucky Univ., Richmond Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. Ginu Kamani was born in Bombay, India and moved to the U.S. at age 14. She graduated with an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Kamani returned to Bombay for three years to work in film production before returning to the U.S., where she spent time as a professor at Mills College and continued to work on writing and film projects. Two of her short stories from Junglee Girl and several of her poems were published under her full name, Gaurangi Kamani, in the anthology Our Feet Walk the Sky: Women of the South Asian Diaspora . Kamani currently uses her knowledge of herbs, oils, and gardening in her work with woodsmen-artist-farmers in a volcanic rainforest environment in Dominica.; Used Book in Good Condition