Salma

"Master documentarian Kim Longinotto trains her camera on an iconoclastic woman. Salma's extraordinary story is one of courage and resilience, and Longinotto follows her on an eye-opening trip back to her village." —from the program of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival

"I walked away from Salma with a resounding hope." —Fariha Roisin, Huffington Post

"That [Salma] became a famous poet is the stuff of fairytales." —Nisha Lilia Diu, The Telegraph

"[This is] not just the poetry of a victim or a flag-waving victor: It is the voice of a battle-scarred survivor with all the torment and fear and rage that goes with being human." —Arundhathi Subramaniam, poet

In this book the Indian poet Salma and filmmaker Kim Longinotto come together to portray Salma’s extraordinary life and the challenges of capturing it in a documentary film.


When Salma, a young Muslim girl growing up in a South Indian village, was 13 years old, her family shut her away for eight years, forbidding her to study and forcing her into marriage. After her wedding her husband insisted she stay indoors. Salma was unable to venture outside for nearly two and a half decades. During that time, words became her salvation. She began covertly composing poems on scraps of paper, and, through an intricate system, smuggled them to the outside world.


The poems, many of which are included here, describe the hardships Salma and countless women like her suffer in their secluded lives. Eventually they reached a local publisher who printed them. Against all odds, and in a direct challenge to the stultifying traditions of her village, Salma has gone on to become a renowned Tamil poet and influential human rights activist.