The Singer of Alleppey

This collection of just over sixty poems tells the story of the author's paternal grandmother, Sitala, who lived in Kerala, South India, in the early to middle twentieth century. A composer of songs, Sitala was known to use her art to negotiate her position as a woman, wife, and colonial subject. Though the author, Pramila Venkateswaran, knows little about the details of her grandmother's life and none of her songs were preserved, Venkateswaran interviewed older living relatives in Alleppey, Kerala, and listened to folk music that would have influenced her grandmother's songs in order to chronicle Sitala's life and art. As Meena Alexander observes, “Moving through the cycles of day and night, these poems evoke the arc of a woman’s life, from the blossoming of young adulthood into the decay of old age.” Venkateswaran creatively uses the rhythms of local musical forms such as kummi, kudiattam, naatu paadal (folk song) and vanchipaatu (boat song) to tell the stories about a woman living and growing old in India in the last century.