Margaret Mascarenhas

Margaret Mascarenhas was a transnational novelist, poet, essayist and independent curator. Born in America and of Goan ethnicity, she spent some of her childhood years in Caracas, Venezuela.[1] She died on 14 July 2019.[2][3]

Margaret Mascarenhas
Margaret Mascarenhas in 2010
Died(2019-07-14)14 July 2019
Goa, India
Occupation
  • Poet
  • author
  • essayist
  • independent curator
Notable works
  • Skin
  • Triage--casualties of love and sex

Career
Mascarenhas at the release of The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos with Amitav Ghosh.

She was the author of the novels Skin and The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos.

Skin, a diasporic novel, moves from a bar in California to life in a Goan village, and has formed part of post-colonial academic discourse around the world since it was published by Penguin in 2001. Skin has been described as a "story of a contemporary woman who traces her cross-continental family diaspora which originates with the Portuguese slave trade in India in the 17th century."[4] It has been translated into French and Portuguese.[1] The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos was selected for the Indie Next List[5] and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick in 2009.

Her poetry and sketch collection, Triage--casualties of love and sex was released in 2013.

Fiction
  • Skin. Penguin 2001; ISBN 0-14-100465-7
  • The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos. Hachette 2009: ISBN 978-0-446-54110-7

Poetry
  • Triage--casualties of love and sex. Harper Collins 2013; ISBN 978-93-5116-005-2

Other writing

Mascarenhas' essays and articles have been published in Marg, Colloquio Letras[6], Urban Voice[7], and elsewhere. Her op-ed columns and book reviews have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Outlook, India Today, TOI Crest, Hindustan Times, Goa Today, and The Navhind Times Panorama.

Goodreads[8] said that she was working on her third novel, Another Car Bomb (working title) set in Beirut, as well as on collections of her columns, short stories, and poetry.

Other pursuits
Margaret Mascarenhas in 2008

In the mid-2000s, Mascarenhas began a mailing list with Wendell Rodricks, urging citizens to report cases of lack of waste management in Goa.[9] She was the founding co-director the Blue Shores Prison Art Project[10][11], a prison art curriculum designed for inmates that focuses on the interrelationships between image and text.[12] She was on the Advisory Boards of the Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts and Goa Photo.

In the 2010 edition of Skin, she wrote:

In its first avatar, and all its reprints, the penultimate draft of the MS of Skin was the version published by Penguin India, an accidental slip never amended for nine years, mostly because the penultimate version did fine. However, this has always been an issue I knew I would eventually want to address, given the time and the opportunity, which presented themselves recently. My purpose in republishing Skin is of course to correct an error that has bothered me for a long time, like an itch. But my purpose in doing it in collaboration with Broadway and Goa,1556 is to highlight the nexus between literature and art and to promote Goa-based writers and artists/art photographers. On the cover of this edition is a painting by Ravi Kerkar. Hopefully, we will be seeing a line of books emerging from this collaboration that makes it a point to use local talent for cover art.[13]

Personal life

Mascarenhas' blog described her as a "dog whisperer" and one who "[s]ometimes masquerades as jazz singer and chef".[14] She spent a significant part of her life in Goa, the former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India, where she traced her paternal ancestry to. She was a prominent figure in the writing circuit, and also mentored writers through workshops and other events.

Mascarenhas died after a bout of illness on 14 July 2019.[15]

gollark: The osmarks project standards authority.
gollark: > According to what?PSO 1324.
gollark: I'm assigning it "Project CALCIUM OVERSEER".
gollark: That is an invalid project name.
gollark: Clause 4.8 (https://osmarks.tk/p3.html#4-8).

References
  1. R. Benedito Ferrão, "The Other Black Ocean: Indo-Portuguese Slavery and Africanness Elsewhere in Margaret Mascarenhas's Skin", Research in African Literatures, 45. 3 (Fall 2014), 27-47 (p. 28).
  2. "Author Margaret Mascarenhas dies". timesofindia.indiatimes.com. timesofindia.indiatimes.com. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  3. "Author Margaret Mascarenhas passes away in Goa". indianexpress.com. indianexpress.com. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  4. "Detailed Review Summary of Skin by Margaret Mascarenhas". allreaders.com. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  5. "The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos | IndieBound.org". www.indiebound.org. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 21 October 2014. Retrieved 11 November 2014.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. "Leadstart Publishing URBAN VOICE – BOMBAY : NEW WRITING". www.leadstartcorp.com. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  8. "Margaret Mascarenhas". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  9. Bhattacharjya, Manjima (15 February 2020). "Wendell Rodricks passes away: Fashion designer is too small a term to encompass the multitudes that was Padma Shri awardee". Firstpost. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  10. "Prison Art Programme: The Strength of Conviction". The Times of India. 1 October 2012. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  11. Mascarenhas, Margaret (September 2014). "The Clock is Ticking: The Blue Shores Prison Art Project" (PDF). Marg: A Magazine of the Arts. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  12. Kumar, Sujatha Shankar (13 December 2013). "Love under the scanner". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 10 March 2020.
  13. Mascarenhas, Margaret (2010). Skin. Goa: Goa,1556-Broadway. p. 3. ISBN 978-93-80739-05-2.
  14. Mascarenhas, Margaret. "Margaret Mascarenhas on about.me". about.me. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  15. Jul 15, 2019. "Author Margaret Mascarenhas dies". The Times of India. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
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