The Gift of Words: The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess Within / Indian Women’s Voices

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Kali represents the perfect metaphor of the great dissenter desperately needed in today’s times, to rise above subjugate society. Kali, a goddess of strength and destruction, represents energy in its purest and feral form. Goddess Kali is an embodiment of the unfettered, and uncontrolled energy, who like nature, can create and destroy with equal ease. She is the perfect feminist icon the world needs today.

“The Kali Project draws in the voices of women as women – teachers, mental health workers, writers, doctors, lawyers, bankers, social workers – adding a sharper understanding of the inner realities that patriarchal structures seek to silence, sanctified by society, religion, community, and class. With entries from children and teenagers, to poems by internationally well-known writers, the gamut of experiences is vast and reiterates the idea that art and poetry are the essential vehicles which carry the hurt and, in the process, also healing within them.”

-Charanjeet Kaur, Former Chief Editor and Features Editor of Muse India, currently Contributory Editor for Indian writing in English of MI. Consultant Editor of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research On Women) Newsletter.

(The Kali Project) “brilliantly gathers the voices of silence and sadness, helplessness and fury of feminist thoughts in powerful, simple and heart-wrenching verse. The poems nestle up into the folds and hems of the mythical mother- goddess, Kali. The poems in this collection deal with an array of themes, ranging from female foeticide to kanyadaans, marital rapes, bride burning and dowry deaths. It screams against the patriarchal penchant to invade and claim the female body as if it were an instrument of pleasure to be used and discarded or a possession to be bidden, sold and burnt.

. . . The poems in this anthology appear equipped with ten heads, ten arms and ten legs like Goddess Kali carrying the pain and ravages of broken spirit and psyche. Each representative poem spits blood, bile and tears and is a soul-rending cry for equality and harmony. The angst one feels is both personal and universal.”

Pushpa R. Menon, Teacher, Academic, Writer, Poet

“The Kali Project is a unique piece of art. It stands testimony, bridging the gap between India and the rest of the world, informing the ignorant and aware alike, of the power and enduring talent of Indian women.

. . . I suspect all women can tap into Kali’s positive energies and relate to the value of her fierce, unrepentant feminine energy. I appreciated this the most, reading The Kali Project; the convergence of women pulling together, creating, birthing, speaking without repression. . . We are all Kali.”

Dr. Belinda Román, Economist/Researcher/Historian

The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess Within / Indian Women’s Voices is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, IndieBound, Chapters/Indigo, Waterstones, Book Depository, and from other major online retailers.

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1951724061