Skin Over Milk (Chestnut Review Chapbooks)
Skin Over Milk is a heartbreaking look into sisterhood and coming of age in a cruel, yet loving home.
Praise for Skin Over Milk
Skin Over Milk tells the story of young Chutki and her two sisters who bear the weight of being unwanted daughters in 1990's India. Told through Chutki's eyes, we feel the innocence that is childhood, allowing the gratitude for a crust of bread thrown away by her brothers, or the simple joy in making prank phone calls. We meet characters, such as the father who curses their mother for giving him useless girls, the brothers who don't seem to appreciate the luxury of education. But we also meet the loving grandfather, Dada, who will die and watch over them like a star in the sky and their beautiful, beautiful mother, Ammi, who does what she can to make all of their lives bearable. Exquisitely written with a jeweler's eye for detail, the deftest of hands with characterization and storytelling, this is a brilliant and unforgettable read.
― Francine Witte, author of Dressed All Wrong for This and The Way of the Wind
"The summer of 1990 brought rain and more rain to our little town of Muzaffarnagar." Thus begins Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar's chapbook, Skin Over Milk, an elegantly written and immersive family story told over the course of twelve short chapters and through the collective point of view of the family's siblings. We readers get a strong sense of this particular family's joys and heartaches, struggles and traditions. Chansarkar knows how to weave her stories seamlessly and disarmingly, with heart and humor and tenderness. It is a testament to this writer's mastery that I never wanted the story to end.
― Kathy Fish, author of Wild Life: Collected Works
With precision and insight, these evocative stories within a story speak of rain and tears, of sisterhood and solidarity, of poverty, and growing up as girls under the lashes of patriarchy. Chansarkar evokes the poetry and brutality of small-town India with a deftness that makes it impossible to tell which is which.
― Damyanti Biswas, author of You Beneath Your Skin and The Blue Bar
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