Forthcoming book (January, 2009)
MOTHERS
FOR SALE
Women in Kolkata’s Sex Trade
Indrani Sinha & Shamita Das Dasgupta
Mothers for Sale attempts to offer an understanding of sex workers as mothers, which goes beyond the current debate on the viability and legitimacy of sex work for women. It highlights the aspirations and fears, joys and disappointments, triumphs and failures that sex workers share with all mothers. Based on information culled from more than 750 sex workers including child prostitutes and 300 children, Mothers for Sale takes an unblinking look at the lives of mothers involved in the sex trade of Kolkata, India.
Indrani Sinha founded Sanlaap in 1987 and works with women and young people fighting for their rights and protesting violence against women.
Shamita Das Dasgupta
cofounded Manavi in New Jersey and is an Adjunct Faculty of Law with the NYU
Law School.
Published by Dasgupta-Alliance
Pages 288
Softcover, Perfect Binding
Price $25.95
Pre-order (for US only). The book will be shipped by GLOBAL BOOKS, USA, in January. For shipment to other countries, please contact: dasgupta.alliance@yahoo.com
Prepublication comments::The authors of this volume
have shown how deep insight and in-depth study can enhance the quality of
knowledge and lead to the design of intervention strategies that are both
effective and feasible...There are unambiguous pointers to what the state,
community and society need to do for ensuring not only welfare of the sex
workers but their very human rights.
-- Kumkum Bhattacharya, Professor, Dept. of Social Work;
Director of Publishing Dept., Visva-Bharati, India. Coauthor, Saontal
Muktadharay Prabesh (Bengali), Purbanchal Sanskriti Kendra, Kolkata.
A sharply intelligent
and compassionate exploration of an East Indian social reality. Mothers for
Sale is notable for its unblinking examination of the complexity and "thickness"
of local culture. This is a must-read book for anyone with a serious interest
in the issues of South Asian womanhood.
-- Dr. Kalyan Ray, Director, Int'l Partnership for Service-Learning.
Co-author, Visions of Service, IPSL Press, NY; author, Eastwords,
Penguin Books India.
Sinha and Das Dasgupta’s
Mothers for Sale is a unique and urgently needed book as it focuses on how
motherhood of sex workers is an invisible role worldwide and the implications
for their children as well. The greatest strength of this book is that it
sets the local experience of these women and their children in the context
of the global, highlighting women’s lack of resources and recourses in a patriarchal
world.
-- Natalie J. Sokoloff, Professor of Sociology, John Jay
College of Criminal Justice—CUNY, New York. Co-editor of Domestic Violence
at the Margins: Race, Class, Gender & Culture and The Criminal
Justice System and Women: Offenders, Prisoners, Victims, and Workers.
