Sita's Sisters

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.