Sonora Jha explores feminism, sexuality, friendships, class structure and familial legacy in ‘Intemperance’

“I am not the sort of person to throw a lavish party, but this is no ordinary party and the thing that makes it necessary is no ordinary loneliness,” Sonora Jha wrote in the opening of her latest book, “Intemperance.” “After nine years of revolutionary solitude (except for a couple of brief dalliances), I find myself a woman in her mid-fifties, caught in the shudder of the planet’s mid-2020s, now seeking communion with a man, despite everything we know.”

On Friday, Jha will speak with Cindy Hval about this book, which uses a satirical lens to explore intersectional feminism, while delving into aging, sexuality, female friendships, class structure and familial legacy.

In many ways, the book’s narrator is similar to Jha: a university professor in Seattle and a well-known and -respected intellectual and feminist navigating middle age as a single woman.

“But is very different from me in the sense that she’s bolder, a little wilder, a little off the rails,” Jha said. “And I just thought that that would be a good thing to follow, to see if there was someone who has the same trappings of my life, in a way, but is doing these intemperate things.”

This intemperance first expresses itself in the narrator choosing to throw herself a swayamvar, a custom rooted in her native Indian culture wherein men must compete for her hand in marriage by performing feats.

“Even in deciding to write this book, I was thinking about, like, ‘Oh my gosh. Like, so now I’m writing a book about a heterosexual attempt at marriage? Where has my feminism gone?’ ” Jha said. “… And it’s been so lovely to see feminist magazines like MS magazine has reviewed it and Bust has reviewed it and given it rave reviews. And I mean, I know I’m just making it sounds like I’m tooting my own horn, but it’s a relief, right? Like it’s both a relief and an acknowledgement.

“It feels like an acknowledgment for what I was trying to do – take this idea and approach it as a feminist act, which is what bell hooks is telling us to do in that book in ‘Communion,’ where she says that the search for love can be a feminist act. It’s just that we need to change the terms a little bit.”

The book also has an unflinching gaze on the particularities of its narrator’s sexuality.

“To me, she is in her sexual prime, and this is something that a lot of women are coming to in middle age, where they feel like they know their sexuality,” Jha said. “They also feel an unfettered desire. The kids are grown, maybe they’re feeling comfortable in their skin, and they are turning the gaze outward, rather than feeling the gaze constantly on them. So, it’s like this beautiful, exquisite precipice of visibility and invisibility that becomes a very dynamic place and creates this enchantment with who one really is.”

The book also explores the story of her ancestry that reveals itself to the narrator through the application of kohl, a traditional eyeliner mysteriously mailed to her.

“The scent goes straight to my head and kicks open a door of memory in which the aunt in Patna puts a little mirror in my hand and, with the soft tip of her ring finger, gently traces kohl into the rims of my young eyes,” Jha wrote. “‘Never leave home without some of this in your eyes,’ she says. ‘You will see the world as it really is, not as what the men tell us it is. And wit this lining your eyes, you will always have beauty. The kohl will draw people’s sight up to your pretty face. No matter how badly you limp, you will always be the most beautiful woman walking down the road.’ ”