Critical Perspectives on Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Feminism and Diaspora

Amritjit Singh, Robin E. Field, Samina Najmi

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2022
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978780729
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Critical Perspectives on Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: Feminism and Diaspora offers insights into Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's provocative and popular fiction. In their engaging and comprehensive introduction, editors Amritjit Singh and Robin Field explore how Divakaruni's short stories and novels have been shaped by her own struggles as a new immigrant and by the influences she imbibed from academic mentors and feminist writers of color. Twelve critical essays by both aspiring and experienced scholars explore Divakaruni's aesthetic of interconnectivity and wholeness as she links generations, races, ethnicities, and nations in her depictions of the diversity of religious and ethnic affiliations within the Indian diaspora. The contributors offer a range of critical perspectives on Divakaruni's growth as a novelist of historical, mythic, and political motifs. The volume includes two extended interviews with Divakaruni, offering insights into her personal inspirations and social concerns, while also revealing her deep affection for South Asian communities, as well as an essay by Divakaruni herself—a candid expression of her artistic independence in response to the didactic expectations of her many South Asian readers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Feminist Politics, Feminine Sensibilities
• Chapter 1: Between Home and the World: Situating South Asian American Feminism in the Fiction of Chitra Divakaruni
• Chapter 2: Helping Women Help Themselves in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives
• Chapter 3: Woman to Woman, Sister to Sister: Feminine Connections in Divakaruni’s Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart
• Chapter 4: “Her Story” in Chitra Divakaruni and Shashi Deshpande: Re-Reading the Mahabharata from Women’s Perspectives
• Part II: Narrating Memory and Belonging
• Chapter 5: The Statue of Liberty and the Secret Sharer: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “A Perfect Life”1
• Chapter 6: Memory, Nostalgia, and Finding Oneself in Divakaruni’s Fiction
• Chapter 7: Transnational Hope in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Short Fiction
• Chapter 8: Morphed Sense of Longing and Belonging in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Arundhati Roy
• Part III: Identity Politics and Social Protest
• Chapter 9: Spicing It Up: Strategic Orientalism and Racial Interconnectedness as Social Curatives in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl
• Chapter 10: “It Was a Bad Time for Muslims in America”: Representation of Islamophobia in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams and One Amazing Thing
• Chapter 11: Revisiting Mythology and Registering Protest in Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions
• Chapter 12: Neo-Oriental Representations: Widows in Chitra Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage
• Part IV: In Her Own Words
• Chapter 13: Between Scylla and Charybdis: What Should a Writer Write About, and How?
• Chapter 14: Writing as Spiritual Experience: A Conversation with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
• Chapter 15: “Through This Experience I Connect with You”: An Interview with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Editors and Contributors