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IOE alumna publishes Sita in Exile, a novella on immigration and alienation
5 May 2023
Rashi Rohatgi (English PGCE, class of 2015) talks about her novella inspired by the Rāmāyana that focuses on migrant sisterhood and brown motherhood.
The book tells the story of Sita, who moves to Norway from Chicago, and draws some elements from the author's own life. Rashi says:
“Sita in Exile is a pandemic story in conversation with the many other Rāmāyana retellings that take Sita as their centre, especially those from outside the subcontinent. Sita in Exile is a story about diaspora motherhood and its ineluctable grief.”
Rashi currently lives in Norway and works as an Associate Professor at Nord University. Her research interests lie in World Literature, with a particular focus on literatures of the Indian Ocean region, translation, and cross-cultural communication. She also explores religion and poetry, and comparative pedagogy.
Sita in Exile was published on 2 May 2023 and has won the Miami University Press Novella Prize. Rashi is also the author of another prize-winning novella, Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow and is the first English translator of the seminal Mauritian novel, Blood-Red Sweat.
We asked Rashi...
What inspired your novella? Can you remember when you started writing it?
Sita in Exile is a story about an autistic American Desi who moves from Chicago, where I went to grad school, to Europe, where I’ve lived since 2009, yet it’s not memoir, nor even autofiction. Instead, in response to the overwhelming European-blend racism experience of being reduced to one of my demographic descriptors – beholder’s choice – I began to ask myself for a proof positive: what if there could be someone else inside this container? What would their story be?
The pandemic, when I began to write, wasn’t the first time I’d asked this question. I think we all do, as minoritised children, and I'd like my readers to ask this of themselves again as the pandemic continues to reshape the adulthoods we had imagined.
For diaspora children within Hindu communities, there’s an answer we hear again and again, every time we hear the Rāmāyana from a different auntie or uncle from a different part of India, or from a different Hindu tradition. Sita goes through hugely differing stories in various versions, despite having the same basic describing characteristics throughout: beautiful, well-intentioned, but compared to other women in the story, a little uncanny.
Sometimes she goes into exile; sometimes she stays. Sometimes she walks straight into fires. Her children narrate the story in most versions, and they should know her best, right? But she’s unfinalisable.
“Sita wandered straight into my waiting container, and this is her story, and though Sita may belong to others – she is also ours.
What are your future ambitions?
When I was in my twenties, I wrote an (academic) book about literary failures called Fighting Cane and Canon: Abhimanyu Unnuth and the Case of World Literature in Mauritius.
In that instance, I meant books that were written to be in meaningful dialogue with readers they failed to reach; it was partly a critical look at a particular literature conversation, but also partly an exploration of what it means to be successful in a literary economy: one that includes publishers, prizes, school and university curricula, translators, public transport systems — tons of people spoke about how much more they read once they switched from driving to taking the train, though this was before the easy availability of audiobooks — and, you know, the wider world.
I got a fun personal experience of how much the wider world shapes specific publishing experiences when my first literary novella, Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow, came out in March 2020. My events were cancelled, but also, I was not in any fit state to appreciate accounts of readers engaging with the book.
Three years later, I can admit to myself that I was more relieved than upset that the events were cancelled, and I’m resigned to actively contributing to the failure of my new book in that specific way.
But, in terms of my future ambitions for Sita in Exile, I’m interested in the conversations I’m interjecting myself into with this book, both in terms of craft and content, and I would appreciate accounts of readers engaging with Sita in Exile.
Longer term, I’d feel like a million dollars if the book were translated into Norwegian. I’d also be thrilled if the book were turned into a film starring Geraldine Viswanathan, in case anyone reading this can make that happen!
“My artistic ambitions more broadly are, as always, to use my art to explore, to grow, and to build the world around me.
In addition to being a writer, you also teach. How did your professional experiences as an educator feed into your writing process?
My first book, Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow, is directly inspired by my own experiences at IOE.
IOE is a wonderful place to train as a teacher – I certainly did not feel alone spending my PGCE year learning how I would balance my progressive ideals with the practical constraints that shape UK teaching.
Leela, Maya, and Zainab in Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow are three trainee teachers who are working to liberalise their program while also reckoning with the new, at that time, Indian independence movement.
In terms of Sita in Exile, I wrote my novella during a period where I was faced with relentless racism at work, and Sita in Exile was itself the motivator to keep going despite those setbacks.
I wrote my first book during a period when we weren’t able to access childcare in very disciplined two-hour chunks in the evenings. While clearly both ways of writing are possible (and I did have the second-book-stress that people talk about) I don’t know that it does anyone any favours to ignore the fact that it’s a lot easier to write a book when there are external motivations. And when you have the funding, for the internal motivators as well.
“My only tried-and-true response to any setback, creative or otherwise, is to flood my senses with rich food, with beautiful prose, with the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves and grains of sand underfoot.My only tried-and-true response to any setback, creative or otherwise, is to flood my senses with rich food, with beautiful prose, with the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves and grains of sand underfoot.My only tried-and-true response to any setback, creative or otherwise, is to flood my senses with rich food, with beautiful prose, with the smell of the sea and the sound of the waves and grains of sand underfoot.
You’ve studied and taught in several different places. How does that inform both your writing and research interests?
“For me, teaching in the places in which I live is an act of commitment to finding a home wherever I am.
As an Asian-American child, I was constantly being dared not to care about where I lived – I say “dared” because I knew that if I ever did anything that suggested that I did not, in fact, care quite a lot, then I’d be subject not only to words but to action.
And, of course, I did care quite a lot about Pennsylvania, the USA in general, naturally, but that was not a comfort. Being unsure whether or not your feelings are real or have been conditioned by a series of invisible but quite violent narratives is unsettling, to say the least.
And then after all that, I emigrated! There is the stereotype of children of the lawyers-doctors-engineers wave of Indian migrants to the States following in their parents’ footsteps, and I followed in my parents’ footsteps as well, but not professionally.
I followed in my mother’s footsteps by emigrating for a man, by raising a child in an unforgiving climate, by creating my own community. There is a difference in terminology between White and non-White Americans who move to Europe – expats vs migrants – but for all that expats are treated far better, I felt that as a migrant who was also a child of migrants, I was far better equipped to handle the stress of exile.
In hindsight, I might have been wrong: it’s tough to hear my kid being told to go home.
“But I’m still sure that for me, home is not a commitment to a place or a profession, but a (portable) family that exists outside of any commitment but love, and all of my writing.
But Sita in Exile especially, deals with what it means to be part of this type of family.
What advice would you give to your past self?
Hmm... I don’t know that I was ever lacking advice, you know? Additional information is always great, of course, and I’d definitely pass on relevant information about the future if I could – changes to visa regulations, at the very least. Lottery numbers, all of that.
“But I think that what I could have really used more of – what so many of my students could use more of, instead of advice, and on top of information – is support. I’d go back and give myself a hug.
Are you interested in training to teach at Secondary level? Find out more at our virtual PGCE Secondary open event on 7 June 2023 - registration opens mid-May.
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Image
Credit: Rashi Rohatgi.