The Forest of Enchantments is a brilliant retelling of the Ramayana, one of the world’s greatest epics as well as a tragic love story. It is also a very human story of some of the other women in the epic, often misunderstood and relegated to the margins: Kaikeyi, Surpanakha, and Mandodari. While the Ramayana resonates even today, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni makes it more relevant than ever, asking questions such as: How should women be treated by their loved ones? What are their rights in a relationship? When does a woman need to stand up and say, ‘Enough!’
The Diwali festival is coming up on October 27, 2019. In celebration, we welcome a guest post by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, the author of The Forest of Enchantments. She is the winner of an American Book Award, the Italian Premio Scanno, and several Pushcart Prizes. Her books have been translated into 29 languages, including Hebrew, Hindi, and Hungarian, and some have been made into movies. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Houston. Having been a poor grad student for many years, she is a lover of libraries and a staunch believer of the saying, “Libraries will get you through times of no money far better than money will get you through times of no libraries."
***
Fall is a popular time for festivals around the world. There’s Halloween and the National Apple Festival in the US, the Moon Festival in China, the Matchmaking Festival in Ireland, Mehregan in Iran—and Diwali in India. Diwali, the festival of lights, perhaps the most popular festival in India, is celebrated by millions of people of Indian origin across the world. It has always been my favorite, symbolizing the victory of light over darkness, something we seem to need more and more each year.
This year, though, it holds a special meaning for me.
The first ever Diwali was celebrated, people say, to commemorate the return of King Ram and his wife Sita to their kingdom, Ayodhya, after the demon king Ravan had been vanquished. Thus it is central to my new novel, The Forest of Enchantments, which retells the story of Sita, a woman much misrepresented by centuries of patriarchal reinterpretation.
Growing up, I’d been fascinated by the story of Sita, the beautiful princess who accompanies her beloved husband Prince Ram to the forest when he is banished due to a stepmother’s trickery. I’d read over and over about the abduction that separates her from Ram, how they are reunited, and the unexpectedly tragic turn that Sita’s life takes just when she is ready to live happily ever after. I always felt she was more than the docile wife my elders interpreted her to be. In The Forest of Enchantments, I explore her endurance, her courage, her outrage at victim-shaming, her resolution to not compromise her values—but also her humor and her very human shortcomings. At once timeless and timely, her life touches on contemporary themes such as #MeToo and single motherhood.
At this dark time in our world when so many countries are looking with suspicion upon their immigrants, multicultural books are one of the best ways to bring people together. And libraries are one of the best places to access such books. My hope is that they will enable The Forest of Enchantments to reach many people and help them celebrate the festival of humanity that we share. That readers will resonate with Sita as she discovers, “No one can take your dignity away from you. You lose it only by your own actions.”
***
Thank you, Chitra! The Forest of Enchantments is available now. We are giving away finished copies to the first 10 librarians to email librarylovefest@harpercollins.com.