False Offering is equal parts rage and rebellion. Mookerjee deftly traces the outrage of a brown femme body in a world where 'white space would always be looming behind,' where she chooses to be a 'gilded thistle,' where her 'ashes will glitter, residue in a dragon's wake.' A rambunctious and important debut that everyone should read.
-SJ Sindu, Blue-Skinned Gods
Though an intoxicating mix of "nectar and venom" makes it great fun to watch her take down the false gods of American exceptionalism, Rita Mookerjee's main business is praise. Rooted in love of the South Asian diaspora, this powerhouse debut documents what it takes to resist assimilation, survive white spaces, and confront Infidels for Trump.
-Brian Teare, Doomstead Days
Rita Mookerjee's False Offering is a bad bitch, is a heathen's hearth, is a sexy romp through selfhood and lineage, is venom breaking apart the fuckery of empire and white supremacy. These visceral poems are ripe with rage and howl for kinship, for ancestral care and ask: how can we find safety in this world? False Offering is "marked for chaos," and I have a kink for chaos.
-Jane Wong, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything
FALSE OFFERING
PROTECTION RITUALS
"Each of the poems in Becoming the Bronze Idol is, in itself, like a tiny deity. The anger in many of these poems—anger about the loss of identity and ancestry due to colonialism; anger about being treated differently due to racism and xenophobia—cuts like the righteous blade of a vengeful goddess. There are sex-poems and there are death-poems, and Mookerjee makes it clear that one does not exist without the other, in the same way that many goddesses are deities of both fertility and war. No matter the topic or mood, there is a lushness to this book. Whether writing about sex or rot, identity or familial ghosts, Mookerjee’s words ooze raw sensuality. Read Becoming the Bronze Idol the way you’d worship a goddess—in reverence to the beauty and the terror. Asking that you may be found worthy of receiving its blessings."
