Saya Yasmine Amores (born Asha Radjkoemar; 8 March 1965 – 4 August 2021) was a Surinamese-Dutch poet, writer, and painter. She wrote under the

pen name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

Cándani from 1982 to 2007. She then used the name Saya Yasmine Amores, which she legally adopted in 2013.

Early life

Asha Radjkoemar was born in the district of

Suriname Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. It is a developing country with a Human Development Index, high level of human development; i ...

, located in the country of

, on 8 March 1965. In 1982, she took up the

"Cándani", meaning "Moonlight" in the Sarnami language.

Literary career

Cándani's first book was published in 1990. It was a poetry collection in Sarnami with

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

translations entitled ''Ghunghru tut gail/De rinkelband is gebroken'' he bangle is broken">bangle.html" ;"title="he bangle">he bangle is broken Cándani's next collections were in Dutch, including ''Vanwaar je dacht te vertrekken sta je geplant'' (1993) and ''Een zoetwaterlied'' (2000). She returned to Sarnami/Dutch bilingual poetry with ''Ghar ghar ke khel/Het spel van huisje huisje'' (2002). These collections are centered around memories of Indo-Surinamese rural life. She also wrote two novels, ''Oude onbekenden'' (2001) and ''Huis van as'' (2002), in which the search for the Indo-Surinamese identity is placed within the historical context of Hindustani migration to Suriname and re-migration to the Netherlands. ''Geef mij het land dat in jou woont'' (2004) is a collection of poems about the

history of Suriname The early history of Suriname dates from 3000 BCE when Native American (Americas), Native Americans first inhabited the area. The Dutch acquired Suriname from the English, and European settlement in any numbers dates from the 17th century, when i ...

Personal life and death

Cándani married Dennis van den Bosch in 1999, publishing a commemorative collection ''Zal ik terugkeren als je bruid'' will come as your bride She had one daughter from a prior relationship in Suriname. She was hospitalised in 2020 at the

Antoni van Leeuwenhoekziekenhuis The Antoni van Leeuwenhoekziekenhuis is a hospital in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, that specialises in oncology: the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The hospital forms one half of a combined organisation with the Netherlands Cancer Institute ( ...

. She died of cancer on 4 August 2021 in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

References

External links

Cándani at the Digital Library for Dutch Literature
(in Dutch) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cándani 1965 births 2021 deaths 20th-century Surinamese painters 21st-century Surinamese painters Dutch women painters Surinamese women painters 21st-century Surinamese women Surinamese women poets Surinamese novelists Surinamese women novelists Deaths from cancer in the Netherlands 20th-century women painters 21st-century women painters

Early life

Literary career

Personal life and death

Further reading

References

External links