Lopamudra Basu has now lived in Wisconsin longer than she has in Kolkata, India, the town where she grew up.

Around the turn of the millennium, Basu was a Ph.D. student living in the Bronx – a journey which would ultimately land her in the Chippewa Valley, teaching English to its college students – the setting which backdrops her poem, “At the Border.”

The cover art of Sing, Slivered Tongue was crafted by Hafiza Nilofar Khan.

“At the Border,” a work which succinctly speaks to the experience of many non-white women and people living and working in North America, is the first of two poems by Basu found nestled within the pages of Sing, Slivered Tongue: An Anthology of South Asian Women’s Poetry of Trauma in English.

The new, 200-plus page anthology features nearly 70 poets – including fellow Chippewa Vallian Asha Sen and her pieces “Nobody Loves a Widow” and “Words” – and is the fruition of each writer’s lived understanding with the world: to be a woman; to have a body viewed and touched and potentially silenced by violent externalities.

The collection is co-edited by Basu and Professor Emeritus Feroza Jussawalla and published by Yoda Press, a small, independent, feminist publishing house in India. Both Basu and Jussawalla trace their respective roots to India, though born and raised in different cities and communities, Basu notes.

Basu, now a professor of postcolonial and multicultural literature and English at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, reached out to Jussawalla in 2022 to gauge her potential interest in co-editing a collection. Through her work as a professor, Basu had noticed “very few collections of contemporary poetry, especially those written by women.”

From the outset, Basu and Jussawalla aimed to see a collection featuring poets from South Asia – “the region which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, (and) Bhutan … as well as diasporic communities originating form these countries,” Basu stated – with a focus on each poet’s trauma, told through a gendered lens.

"As someone who began (as an) international student in the U.S. and then went on to become an immigrant and naturalized citizen, I cannot (help) but be influenced by world events, especially the anti-immigrant ethos that has developed in so many countries."

LOPAMUDRA BASU

POET & CO-EDITOR OF SING, SLIVERED TONGUE

“The reason we focused on women’s traumatic experiences in poetry is because for too long these experiences have been consigned to silence and erasure,” she stated. “From the time of Partition in 1947, which led to the hasty drawing of borders of India and Pakistan, religious and sectarian violence took the form of atrocities on women’s bodies.

“From these historical public traumas to the more insidious traumas that women face in the private sphere, there is a lot of material for poetry.”

For Basu, the medium of poetry is a force for creating or bridging connection. Further, she hopes it may offer a path of empathy and perspective.

“As someone who began (as an) international student in the U.S. and then went on to become an immigrant and naturalized citizen, I cannot (help) but be influenced by world events, especially the anti-immigrant ethos that has developed in so many countries,” she said.

“At the Border,” in just a few stanzas, captures one vein of such a standpoint.

Lopamudra Basu, pictured sixth from the left, and some of the anthology's featured poets. (Photo via UW-Stout)

Basu’s second featured poem, “White Roses,” offers a sharp contrast between colors and traditions, though each centers on a particularly human experience: mourning over a loved one and honoring them in an event.

In India, Basu explains, white is associated with bereavement and mourning; at memorials, most will wear white clothes, with flowers and gifts typically in the same shade.

Notably, in western forms of celebration – namely traditional weddings – the same color is used, while black is the common color which signifies mourning.

Though “White Roses” is about more than rituals and emotional loss; a different kind of grief results from what could have been.

Two-and-a-half years is not all that long for an edited collection to print, Basu said, though its tangible arrival in 2025 comes at a significant moment in our country and world – one that may be looked back on as the breath-held chapter before one path was chosen over another.

Sing, Slivered Tongue will soon be available locally and can now be purchased online. Basu hopes to announce an event around the collection in the Eau Claire area sometime this fall, and will also be part of this year's Chippewa Valley Book Festival.

Sing, Slivered Tongue: An Anthology of South Asian Women’s Poetry of Trauma in English can be purchased online as a paperback or for Kindle • Dr. Lopamudra Basu is the author of Ayad Akhtar, the American Nation and its Others after 9/11: Homeland Insecurity (2018) and the co-editor of Passage to Manhattan: Critical Essays on Meena Alexander, and is a professor of English • Basu will present the book at the Chippewa Valley Book Festival on Friday, Oct. 24, at 6pm both in-person at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and via Zoom (the event will be delivered as a hybrid)