Maria Elsa da Rocha

Maria Elsa da Rocha (1924 – 2007) was an Indian short-story writer and poet in the Portuguese language.

Maria Elsa da Rocha was a school teacher by profession, which took her all over Goa (and Damão). The experiences she accrued would feed into her stories, which were also often based on hearsay and anecdotes.^{[citation needed]}

Throughout the 1960s, Rocha contributed short stories to the Margão-based Portuguese language newspaper A Vida, in which she co-edited a cultural page together, and the Portuguese-language programme 'Renascença' broadcast on All-India Radio.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005 a collection of her short stories appeared under the title Vivências Partilhadas [Shared Lives].^[1]

Vivências Partilhadas provides widest range of representations of the Goan subaltern in Portuguese-language Goan literature post-1961, with a particular focus on the experiences of women,^[2] though this deep-seated sympathy at times appears to be at cross-purposes with a certain social conservatism.^[3] Rocha's writing is notable for the use she makes of particularly Goan-inflected Portuguese and the considerable use of Konkani in her dialogues.

4. Cielo G. Festino "Sharing Lives in Maria Elsa Da Rocha´s Vivências Partilhadas" In Muse India. Goan Literature in Portuguese. Issue 70. Nov-Dec, 2016.

Maria Elsa da Rocha. Vivências Partilhadas. Panjim, India: Third Millennium, 2005.