Book excerpt: The first anthology of writings from a variety of debut and established writers in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, India. A first of its kind, Inheritance of Words brings together the writings of women from Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India. Home to many different tribes and scores of languages and dialects, and once known as a "frontier" state, Arunachal Pradesh began to see major changes after it opened up to tourism and after the Indian State introduced Hindi as its official language. In this volume, Mamang Dai, one of Arunachal's best-known writers, brings together new and established voices on a wide variety of subjects: identity, home, belonging, language, Shamanism, folk culture, orality, and more. Many of these stories have been handed down orally through festivals, epic narratives, and the performance of rituals by Shamans and rhapsodists who are revered as guardians of collective and tribal memory. This book captures those vivid, enduring oral stories here in the words of young poets and writers, as well as artists and illustrators, as they trace their heritage, listen to stories, and render them in new forms of expression.