My Name Is Sita

Bea Vianen rose to prominence as a writer in both her native Suriname and its European colonizer, the Netherlands, with the publication of My Name is Sita in 1969.

Set in the 1950s in the Caribbean Dutch colony during an era of social and ethnic turmoil, this coming-of-age novel shadows Sita, a young East Indian girl, as she copes with the loss of her mother and defends herself against her father’s many mistakes, while also trying to care for her younger brother and carve out a life for herself in a staunchly rigid culture. Beneath the festering, lush, and humid tropical setting, Sita’s struggles only become more difficult with her best friend’s departure and an unwanted pregnancy.

Now considered a contemporary Dutch classic, My Name is Sita makes it all too clear what women have had to, and continue to, sacrifice in the name of claiming their identity.