1977, ISBN: 9780252068874

First published in 1977, 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 … mais…

First published in 1977, 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 here 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.A wrenching and intimate autobiography, 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 everexperienced the exhilaration and despair of love. Media >, [PU: University of Illinois Press]<