My Name Is Sita

Bea Vianen (1935-2019) is one of the most important and groundbreaking Dutch Caribbean authors of the 1970s, writing about entrapment and escape, freedom and the lack of it. Her prose and poetry revolve around her Hindu heritage and the effects of colonialism in Suriname. My Name Is Sita (1969), in which she describes the sense of suffocation in her native country with extraordinary sharpness, became a classic both in the Netherlands and Suriname.

Kristen Gehrman is a literary translator from Dutch to English. Recent translations include The History of My Sexuality by Tobi Lakmaker (Granta), The Tree and the Vine by Dola de Jong (Transit Books) and The Melting by Lize Spit (Picador). Originally from Charleston, South Carolina, she now lives in The Hague, The Netherlands, with her husband and young daughter.