MOTHERS FOR SALE
Women in Kolkata’s Sex TradeIndrani 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
Original Price $25.95
Global Books Price $20.95
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.
