Tag Archives: feminism

Rita Banerjee’s novella, “A Night with Kali,” in Approaching Footsteps now available for pre-order from Spider Road Press

Posted on by

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000038_00068]Rita Banerjee’s novella, A Night with Kali, will be published in Approaching Footsteps, an anthology of four compelling novellas by talented women which will keep you guessing. In the anthology, best-selling novelist Donna Hill spins a gripping tale of desperation and danger. Author Jennifer Leeper puts a unique spin on noir fiction. Writer and scholar Rita Banerjee blends a story of two unlikely allies trapped in a monsoon with a tale of murder and magic. Debut writer Megan Steusloff tells the story of an interracial couple and the deadly price that must be paid for freedom. Reader’s Bonus: Highlights from Spider Road Press’ recent flash fiction contests. Spider Road Press donates 5% of the proceeds from its titles to charities which address the issues of sexual assault, supporting American veterans, empowering youth and fighting hunger at home and abroad. Pre-order Approaching Footsteps from Spider Road Press here!

In Rita Banerjee’s novella, A Night with Kali, two people from different classes, a taxi driver called Tamal-da and his well-to-do passenger meet under unusual circumstances. Stuck together in a flood in the middle of a monsoon hitting Kolkata, Tamal entertains his bored, out-of-town passenger by telling her the story of his life. As he explains how he ended up hustling the mean streets of Kolkata, how he abandoned his rural village, and why he left his family of fishers behind, Tamal spins a tale that is both mundane and fantastic. Built on the tradition of Bengali ghost stories, Tamal’s coming-of-age tale depends as much on the supernatural as on the possibility or impossibility of human connection.

Soundtrack for Jade Sylvan’s “Spider Cult: The Musical” now available on Bandcamp!

Posted on by

SpiderCultSoundtrackCongratulations to CWW Instructor and talented playwright, Jade Sylvan, for a raucous performance of their play, Spider Cult: The Musical, at the American Repertory Theatre in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA this past weekend!  The play was produced by Jane Doe, choreographed and directed by Fem Bones, and featured dance performances by the Slaughterhouse Sweethearts.  Catherine Cappozi (a.k.a. AxeMunkee) played electric guitar and composed the soundtrack for Spider Cult.  We’re proud to announce that the original soundtrack for Spider Cult: The Musical is now available on Bandcamp for those who couldn’t make it out to Cambridge, MA to see the play this weekend.  And a big hurrah for Jade Sylvan and the wonderful cast and crew of Spider Cult who brought down the house at the Oberon Theatre on Sunday!

The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee: A Review by Alex Carrigan

Posted on by

QueenoftheNightWhat makes a great opera? Is it the music? The costumes? The story? Or can it become great for the performer who helms the leading role? Novelist and CWW 2016 Summer in Granada Writing Retreat faculty member Alexander Chee’s latest work, The Queen of the Night is a historical fiction novel that follows Lilliet Berne, a Parisian opera sensation in the late 19th century. Lilliet receives an offer for an original role, an honor most opera performers only dream of. However, when she discovers that the opera is based heavily on her past, she embarks on a journey to discover how the work came to be. The novel traces Lilliet’s journey, beginning with her childhood as an American frontiersman’s daughter. Readers watch as Lilliet joins a circus and a brothel, serves the Empress of France, studies under opera legends, and ultimately arrives at her current status as one of France’s most famous opera singers.

Chee’s novel is a historical epic, and Lilliet is a character in the vein of a Dickens protagonist. Her life takes so many turns, and she is forced to navigate using her wit and talent for assuming new roles.

alexandercheeThough this shape-shifting proves convenient, Lilliet struggles to discern how much control she has over any one of her personas. While she cycles easily through roles, she finds herself influenced, even dominated, by others, and most of the conflict in the book comes from run-ins with authority figures. The most dangerous is a tenor singer who tries to morph Lilliet into the opera legend of his fantasies. Lilliet, dubbed a Falcon soprano due to her unique and potentially temporary style of singing, is often associated with falcons and other avian imagery. Lilliet is a master at “flying” from dangerous people and situations and finding a way to survive.

It is true that Chee’s novel is a hefty read, but I never found myself losing interest. I found Lilliet fascinating–multidimensional and endowed with a unique voice.  She is strong and clever, but she also possesses very human faults.

I also admire the way Chee conveyed opera in the story. It can be difficult to communicate performance, which relies so heavily on visual and audio, in prose. However, Chee’s book manages to convey all the operas and performances via detailed imagery and clever diction. Even the more abstract operas were so well fleshed as to remind me of a George Méliès film.  I only wanted to see them realized on the stage.

Overall, The Queen of the Night is a wonderful novel. Liliette is a strong and fascinating character, and Chee tells her story in precise, rich prose. I am very excited to read more Alexander Chee, and I am very excited for the Historical Fiction course he will be teaching at our Granada retreat.

–Alex Carrigan, CWW Managing Intern

For more information on Alexander Chee and The Queen of the Night, visit his website here.

Alexander Chee, our Summer in Granada Fiction Instructor, feat in Elle, NY Times, The New Yorker, and on NPR

Posted on by

“A woman’s desire is either terrifying or it’s ignored. I think what’s terrifying, is that men want power, even over that. It is the one thing, in a sense, that a woman can withhold, her sexuality. It’s incontrovertible, the withholding of her pleasure—and that was a source of the courtesan’s power: the performance of pleasure. A courtesan not only played lover, but mother, too. You know, it was common to blame courtesans for the fall of the Second Empire—and that fascinated me. The idea that they bankrupted these poor young men, who spent so much money on them and made France so weak.”  — Alexander Chee on novel, The Queen of the Night

The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee’s second novel, has received significant critical attention since its February 2016 debut.   Read more about The Queen of The Night at Alexander Chee in Elle, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and NPR.

alexandercheeAlexander Chee was born in Rhode Island, and raised in South Korea, Guam and Maine. He is a recipient of the 2003 Whiting Writers’ Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in Fiction, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Ledig House, the Hermitage and Civitella Ranieri. His first novel, Edinburgh (Picador, 2002), is a winner of the Michener Copernicus Prize, the AAWW Lit Award and the Lambda Editor’s Choice Prize, and was a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year and a Booksense 76 selection.  Chee, will be teaching at our Summer in Granada, Andalucía, Spain Writing Retreat (July 28-Aug 5, 2016).  The deadline to sign up for our Summer in Granada, Andalucia, Spain Writing Retreat is this April 15, 2016.  Apply at: https://cww.submittable.com/

CWW Poetry Faculty Rita Banerjee discusses Amrita Pritam, Publishing, and Sexual Politics for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts Exclusive

Posted on by

AP2Rita Banerjee’s article, “Amrita Pritam: Sexual Politics and Publishing in mid-20th Century India” is now live as a VIDA Exclusive on VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.  In the article, Banerjee translates Pritam’s poem, “Night” from Hindi into English, and writes:

Writing from a minority perspective as an American, it’s often hard to find creative and intellectual predecessors who are writing from your culture of origin but who aren’t necessarily writing in English or just trying to be celebrities in the global Anglophone literary marketplace.  For South Asian writers, for women in the literary arts, and for writers who are looking to challenge the patriarchal hegemony of Anglo-American literature, Amrita Pritam is a must-know writer.  In the 1940s, she came to prominence as a political and feminist writer in India, first in Punjabi literature, then in Hindi and Urdu translation, and finally internationally.  By the 1950s, like Simone de Beauvoir and Bretty Friedan in the West, Pritam was challenging patriarchal values at home, redefining gender roles and narratives assigned to women, and openly challenging heteronormative sexual politics.  In doing so, she ushered in a new wave of feminist literature in mid-20th century India even as she faced criticism for her work from her male counterparts and from within the Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, and South Asian publishing industries at large.

That was our tryst, yours and mine.
We slept on a bed of stones,
and our eyes, lips and finger tips,
became the words of your body and mine,
they then a made translation of this first book.

The Rig Veda was compiled much later.

– Amrita Pritam, “First Book”

In Pritam’s poetry, one is not born, but rather becomes a woman.  Her unflinching gaze at sex, her exploration of emotional and psychological nakedness, and a sense of self-irony and self-knowledge underwrite several of her poems.  In her poem, “First Book,” quoted above, Pritam explores how the very act of physical, sexual love, unbound by the mores of society, collapses the distances between the sacred and the profane.  And in her poem, “Amrita Pritam,” the poet takes a hard look at the mythos of her own public identity and the narratives of victimization ascribed to it.  She writes: “Pain: / I inhaled it, / quietly like a cigarette. // Song: / I flicked off / like ash / from the cigarette.” (Singh 29).

Read the full article on VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.

Riot Grrrl Magazine features Rita Banerjee’s “Pygmalion & the Slippers” and “Currency”

Posted on by

RiotGrrrlMagazineThe current issue of Riot Grrrl Magazine features two new poems by Rita Banerjee, “Pygmalion & the Slippers” and “Currency.” 

Riot Grrrl Magazine is named after the feminist punk rock movement that began in the early 1990s.  The magazine is meant to show an appreciation for the community of women who raised their voices about gender equality, abuse and other complex issues, especially within the music scene.  The mission of the magazine is to provide entertaining and engaging content, and reflect diverse narratives.  Riot Grrrl Magazine is here to empower diverse audiences. The magazine strives to create a space for women of color, trans women, queer women, and disabled women.

Rita Banerjee is a writer, and her work has been featured in VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, Riot Grrrl Magazine, Poets for Living Waters, The Fiction Project, Jaggery, The Crab Creek Review, The Dudley Review, Objet d’Art, Vox Populi, Dr. Hurley’s Snake-Oil Cure, Chrysanthemum, and on KBOO Radio’s APA Compass in Portland, Oregon. Her first collection of poems, Cracklers at Night, received First Honorable Mention for Best Poetry Book at the 2011-2012 Los Angeles Book Festival.  She is Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop.