Sanjukta Dasgupta Knihy

Sanjukta Dasgupta's sixth book of poems, Sita's Sisters, may be read as texts of resistance and resilience, gesturing towards inevitable social change. The poems underscore the fact that like any man, a woman too can be destroyed but not defeated. The representations of Sita in Hindu religious texts often depict her as the avatar or incarnation of the Goddess Lakshmi, the consort of Lord Vishnu. The author believes that through strategies of peaceful resistance the Sitas of the world shall overcome their marginalization and claim their unique identities someday. Sita's Sisters also includes poems that deal with troubled times, ranging from Mahatma Gandhi and Auschwitz to global greed, from obsessive dependence on social media to the actual plight of the wretched of the earth.

This volume explores the subterfuges, strategies, and choices that Australian women writers have navigated in order to challenge patriarchal stereotypes and assert themselves as writers of substance. Contextualized within the pioneering efforts of white, Aboriginal, and immigrant Australian women in initiating an alternative literary tradition, the text captures a wide range of multiracial Australian women authors’ insightful reflections on crucial issues such as war and silent mourning, emergence of a Australian national heroine, racial purity and Aboriginal motherhood, communism and activism, feminist rivalry, sexual transgressions, autobiography and art of letter writing, city space and female subjectivity, lesbianism, gender implications of spatial categories, placement and displacement, dwelling and travel, location and dislocation and female body politics. Claiming Space for Australian Women’s Writing tracks Australian women authors’ varied journeys across cultural, political and racial borders in the canter of contemporary political discourse.