Sarah Joseph was born into a conservative Christian family[1] atKuriachira inThrissur city in 1946 to Louis and Kochumariam.[2] She was married at the age of 15[3] when she was in class IX. She attended the teacher's training course and began her professional career as a school teacher.[2] Later, she received her B.A. and M.A. inMalayalam as a private candidate and joined the collegiate service inKerala.[2] She served as a Professor ofMalayalam at Sanskrit College,Pattambi.[2] She has since retired from government service and lives at Mulamkunnathukavu inThrissur district. Her daughterSangeetha Sreenivasan is also a writer.[4]
Sarah Joseph is also a well-known social activist and feminist movement leader.[3][5] In the 1980s, she founded the women's group Manushi at Sanskrit College in Pattambi, where she also taught Malayalam and literature.[3] With her group, she led protests over several decades in response to a wide range of crimes against women, including rape,dowry deaths, trafficking, and sexual slavery.[3]
Her literary career began when she was in high school. Many of her poems appeared in Malayalam weeklies. She was also good at reciting her poems at poets' meets which was much appreciated by poets likeVyloppilli Sreedhara Menon andEdasseri Govindan Nair.[8]
She is known forRamayana Kathakal, a retelling of theRamayana.[14] An English translation of this work has been published by the Oxford University Press.[15][16][17]
In 2011, she won theMuttathu Varkey Award for her collection of short stories titledPapathara.[3][18] A collection of her short stories translated into English,The Masculine of ‘Virgin’ was released in 2012, including her storyPapathara, from the collection that ledK. Satchidanandan to create the word "Pennezhuthu," which was defined byThe Hindu as "writing seen as a feminist concept, in which the author uses female constructions of identity."[19]
On 10 October 2015, Joseph joined a protest by writers when she returned her 2003 Sahitya Akademi Award, stating, "There is a growing fear and lack of freedom under the present government", and criticising silence by the Sahitya Akademi in response murders of writers and mob violence.[21]
