Khanna presented a beautiful reimagining of the lives of Hindu goddesses in this poetry collection, centering the goddesses Sita and Parvati in particular. My knowledge of Hindu deities is quite limited, so I admit that it was a little harder for me to fully appreciate these poems. Despite this, I still got a fair bit out of them, and I enjoyed the feminist lens that challenged what was expected from women through these goddesses. On this note, I really liked the coalescence of the divine and ordinary through the feminine. Furthermore, Khanna explored the tensions of upholding tradition versus breaking free from them, taking care to contemplate what happened to those who chose to defy expectations.

Again, I think this collection was a bit harder to get into because of my unfamiliarity with Hinduism, but I still enjoyed a handful of poems and found them thought-provoking and interesting.

Some favorites: “Fable,” “Goddess in the Dark,” “The Goddess Calls a Truce,” “Creation Myth” poems, and “Destruction Myth” poems