Issue 2 of the Joao Roque Literary Journal is out!

The two authors  – Jayanti Naik and Roanna Gonsalves – may at first glance seem to be worlds apart. One is a Hindu Goan and the other Catholic. One writes in Konkani and makes rural Goa her central character. The other is an Indo-Anglian writer who maps the lives of immigrant Goans. Yet, they are bound by that shared element – change – by which we are all fashioned and refashioned into the people and societies we eventually become. And so, in the stories they tell, the woman is confronted with progressive values which question her conservative dogma, her sexual propriety bends in the wake of sexual discovery, she fosters the safety-net of female solidarity but is thwarted by that womanly instinct to moralise and conform. She is a complex being who masturbates, menstruates and navigates her way out of the labyrinth of patriarchy. The sexuality of their female protagonists is not depicted merely for affect: to sensationalise, fetishize or eroticise. Rather, it is that clever and rare thing – emancipatory. A full chapter excerpted from Naik’s book The Salt of the Earth is included here as well as a review of the book. And Roanna Gonsalves’s interview has her talking about the influences which inform and frame her work, the Goan Catholic milieu, female sexuality, and the violence wrecked by systemic patriarchy.