Sita

2020 | Biography

A wrenching and intimate autobiography, "Sita" is an unsparing, moment-by-moment record of the fading of love, with all of its agony and false-dawn respites. For the first time, the original text of "Sita" is accompanied by the first of Millett's moving prose elegies, written after Sita committed suicide. This lament lends new resonance to the original text and gives the reader a fuller understanding of the mercurial devotion that bound the two women to each other. This reissue also features a new preface by the author."Sita" follows the disintegration of Millett's love affair with a woman who is ten years her senior, a veteran of several marriages, and the mother of grown children. Fiery, seductive, elegant, and exotic, "Sita" captivates Millett in every sense, offering unimagined pleasure and much-needed emotional security. One day, however, all this changes. Arriving from New York to spend half the year in Berkeley, as they had arranged, Millett is appalled to find the house - their house - overrun with Sita's troubled children and their hangers-on.Amid this unexpected chaos, she struggles with searing jealousy and self-doubt to salvage her relationship with Sita, who is often preoccupied, impatient, and cold, and who frequently disappears for assignations with male lovers. With remarkable candor, Millett charts her months with Sita and the inexorable shift from passionate abandon to abandonment. As each fragile thread of their love dissolves, Millett dwells on what drew them together, recounting all the hopes, tricks, and evasions that made up their erotic dance. Obsessive and impassioned, "Sita" speaks with a sharp immediacy to everyone who has ever experienced the exhilaration and despair of love'.

Kate Millett (Author)