Margaret Mascarenhas was a transnational novelist, poet, essayist and independent curator. Born in America and of Goan ethnicity, she spent some of her childhood years in Caracas, Venezuela. She died on 14 July 2019.
Career
She was the author of the novels Skin and The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos. Skin, a diasporic novel, moves from a bar in Californiato life in a Goan village, and has formed part of post-colonial academic discoursearound the world since it was published by Penguinin 2001. Skin has been described as a "story of a contemporary woman who traces her cross-continental family diaspora which originates with the Portuguese slave trade in India in the 17th century." It has been translated into French and Portuguese. The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos was selected for the Indie Next List and was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick in 2009. Her poetry and sketch collection, Triage--casualties of love and sex was released in 2013.
Fiction
Skin. Penguin 2001;
The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos. Hachette 2009:
Poetry
Triage--casualties of love and sex. Harper Collins 2013;
Other writing
Mascarenhas' essays and articles have been published in Marg, Colloquio Letras, Urban Voice, and elsewhere. Her op-ed columns and book reviews have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Outlook, India Today, TOI Crest, Hindustan Times, Goa Today, and The Navhind Times Panorama. Goodreads said that she was working on her third novel, Another Car Bomb set in Beirut, as well as on collections of her columns, short stories, and poetry.
Other pursuits
In the mid-2000s, Mascarenhas began a mailing list with Wendell Rodricks, urging citizens to report cases of lack of waste management in Goa. She was the founding co-director the Blue Shores Prison Art Project, a prison art curriculum designed for inmates that focuses on the interrelationships between image and text. She was on the Advisory Boards of the Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts and Goa Photo. In the 2010 edition of Skin, she wrote:
In its first avatar, and all its reprints, the penultimate draft of the MS of Skin was the version published by Penguin India, an accidental slip never amended for nine years, mostly because the penultimate version did fine. However, this has always been an issue I knew I would eventually want to address, given the time and the opportunity, which presented themselves recently. My purpose in republishing Skin is of course to correct an error that has bothered me for a long time, like an itch. But my purpose in doing it in collaboration with Broadway and Goa,1556 is to highlight the nexus between literature and art and to promote Goa-based writers and artists/art photographers. On the cover of this edition is a painting by Ravi Kerkar. Hopefully, we will be seeing a line of books emerging from this collaboration that makes it a point to use local talent for cover art.
Personal life
Mascarenhas' blog described her as a "dog whisperer" and one who "ometimes masquerades as jazz singer and chef". She spent a significant part of her life in Goa, the former Portuguese colony on the west coast of India, where she traced her paternal ancestry to. She was a prominent figure in the writing circuit, and also mentored writers through workshops and other events. Mascarenhas died after a bout of illness on 14 July 2019.
