Burning Like Her Own Planet

By Vandana Khanna

Against the backdrop of iconic, ancient Hindu texts, Burning Like Her Own Planet reimagines the lives of Hindu goddesses through a contemporary, feminist lens.

Told in a series of persona poems and dramatic monologues, the book reinvents these myths into essential stories of love, betrayal, and faith. In these poems, the goddesses question their predetermined fates and examine what it means to be human and divine. They speak in the voices of girls, wives, and mothers, all trying to carve a space for themselves in a world ruled by jealous gods and capricious luck. Overcoming a string of challenges, these goddesses discover their own agency, and the power that comes from telling their own stories.

At the heart of the book are the goddesses Sita and Parvati—women who are cast in the role of the “perfect” wife, the “perfect” mother. Here, the goddesses describe their own transformations from naïve, untried women into powerful forces claiming their autonomy. Each in her own way challenges the traditional notions of what it means to be a woman, illuminating the connections between the personal and the universal, the devout and the earthly. The poems highlight the tension between obligation and freedom, examining the consequences for those who try and change the narrative. Whether blessed or cursed, these women, these girl-goddesses, forge their own place within the pages of ancient texts, writing the bitter and the sweet of own lives as they undergo the trials of becoming holy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Release date: Apr 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781949944242

Book preview

Part I

Hindu Mythology in Shorthand

Begin with the blue god with

the charm, the flute, and the cows.

Then the holy monkey who

thrashes through the jungle

crushing everything lush and green

underfoot. I’m seven and can’t sleep

because it’s not Virginia, it’s not

snowing. The stories in Sanskrit,

in Hindi—jumbled and cloudy

in my ears. My grandmother

wants me to forget it’s Christmas

in India, tells of Durga riding

a tiger, arms filled with sickles

and swords: vindication manifest

in the steel’s sharp edges. Of stolen

Sita selfless and pure, the sag of her

mud-streaked sari I imagined

the color of unused sky, green

of Himalayan summers, but it was

probably red, like every other one

I’d seen since I’d gotten off

the airplane—shades of crimson,

shades of bleeding. There was

that smell—Delhi?—that I couldn’t

sniff out of my nose: incense