Barrelhouse Reviews: Brown Women Have Everything by Sayantani Dasgupta
Reviewed by Courtney Justus
The University of North Carolina Press / October 2024 / 180 pp
What does it mean to look at the world with curiosity? Sayantani Dasgupta’s new collection exemplifies and redefines this question. These eighteen essays, which range in structure from braided essays to lists and three- to four-part personal narratives, are just as varied in subject matter as they are in the forms that they use to present it. From pirate ships and hurricanes in coastal North Carolina to the challenges of academia and the glory of her mother’s tomato chutney, every new landscape and scenario Dasgupta encounters is an opportunity for narrative exploration. Curiosity opens the door for writers to discover new things and bring readers along, and every essay in this collection takes the reader on a journey through discomfort and delight.
As someone who was raised between two cultures and moved extensively growing up, I was immediately drawn to Dasgupta’s descriptions of her childhood and later move to the United States, and the ways she found to honor each part of her heritage amid life changes. Starting with the opening essay, “Becoming This Brown Woman, or, Three Glorious Accidents,” Dasgupta covers her family history, the challenge of learning new languages, and her move to the United States, all within the span of a few pages. “Becoming” serves as a thematic compass for the collection, grounding the reader in Dasgupta’s family lineage, childhood, and the books that shaped her love of the written word. When historical facts appear in Brown Women Have Everything, they not only root the reader in a specific time and place, but also function as a narrative frame:
It’s the summer of 1976. Indira Gandhi is the prime minister of India, a company called Apple Computer is founded in California, and my maternal grandfather—though, as I am not yet born, he doesn’t yet get to claim the title—posts an ad in the matrimonial column of Ananda Bazaar Patrika, the most-read newspaper in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
Like pieces of a puzzle, each historical and personal event in this collection finds its place to create an immersive portrait of Dasgupta’s life and the lives of those around her. To examine past and present alike, one must sift through individual and collective histories like an archaeologist, uncovering fragments of the past. Brown Women Have Everything leaves no stone unturned as it weaves together historical milestones, an inspection of family heritage, and sharp insights into the workings of interpersonal relationships.
From Dasgupta and her grandmothers to the Biblical figure of Judith, from an unnamed girl in a rum barrel to Prince Siddhartha (Gautama Buddha)’s wife Yashodhara, the women and girls in these essays have arcs, stories, substance. Each piece asks the reader to consider: Whose stories are we telling, and how are we telling them? And, conversely, whose stories are not being told? Behind the better-known story of the Buddha and his enlightenment journey lies the story of his wife, Yashodhara, left to raise their son alone. Dasgupta asks, “What did Yashodhara make of her husband’s quest? Why had I never been taught to even consider her side of the story?”
This desire to explore unseen, lesser-known stories and histories also comes through in “Girl in the Rum Barrel.” In this piece, Dasgupta visits the small town of Beaufort, North Carolina, where she learns the story of a young girl’s tragic death aboard a ship traveling from North Carolina to England and back in 1886. As Dasgupta gazes upon the girl’s burial site, she wonders “why the girl wanted to visit England so desperately” and if those visiting the girl’s grave are seeking comfort or hope.
The power that women in this collection hold, and how their physical and emotional characteristics might influence how others perceive them, is explored with the most depth in the essay “Judith and Holofernes.” This piece lays out multiple artistic depictions of the Biblical story, considering different portrayals of Judith and the aspects of her story that may have received little consideration. In each image, the physical appearance of Judith shifts in accordance with the artist. One rendition portrays Judith as a Black woman with “a resolute chin and a wide nose,” whereas another shows a woman “dressed in a red velvet gown and a jaunty hat with feathers.” The variety across these images reflects the many ways a story might be told and retold and, in turn, how the viewer or reader will perceive its subject. “What else is the purpose of art if not to bridge the gap and create something fresh?” Dasgupta asks, appropriately. Ultimately, she returns to the version of Judith by Artemisia Gentileschi: “Judith’s body here has the power and heft that makes this act of violence believable.”
What distinguishes Dasgupta from other essayists is her capacity to balance reverence for joyous and vibrant moments with a sense of discomfort that permeates the collection. This juxtaposition is most apparent in “Forty Days in Italy.” While staying in Viterbo, where she is teaching a travel writing course, Dasgupta faces a mosquito infestation, restaurant managers refusing her service and calling her a refugee, and a struggle to navigate social relationships, in part due to not speaking Italian. Amid these challenges, Dasgupta finds a café that soon becomes a home away from home. She writes, “I’m the first woman in my family to visit Italy, to be so far away from home, and amid people who don’t look a stitch like me. I am overcome by the privilege of the moment.”
Multiple bouts of discomfort ultimately transform into delight. At the end of “Forty Days in Italy,” a new friend’s children lead Dasgupta by the hand through a garden, just after a beautiful lunch together. So too does Dasgupta lead the reader through the world of each essay, through landscapes, history and food, to point to the wonder that can be found after or amidst hardship, if one chooses to be open to a new path leading the way there.
Courtney Justus is a Texan-Argentinian writer living in Chicago. Her adolescence spent in Buenos Aires and her Argentinian heritage frequently inform her work across genres. She is a 2022 Tin House YA Workshop alumna and a Best of the Net nominee. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her work appears in Susurrus, The Acentos Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Hobart and elsewhere. You can visit her at courtneyjustuswriter.wordpress.com.