Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: Diasporic Writers

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is one of the skillful and passionate voices of the diasporic writers. In most of her novels Psychology, Mythology and Folklore are interrelated which reflect her rootedness to the culture and traditions of her native land.

Her characters are simple next door women who balance familyand through them she is able to explore the issues that are women centric like identity, fidelity, independence and tradition. She entwines diaspora and feminist experiences that are narrow in focus and broad in scope. In an interview, she states:

“I think being an expatriate is good for writers. Moving away from a home culture often allows a kind of disjunctive perspective that is very important— a slight sense of being the outsider, being out of place”.

She even quotes Gertrude Stein who said, “What good are the roots if you can‘t take them with you? She never thought of being a writer and that too in America. The foreign land has offered her a number of experiences that she really wouldn‘t have had in India. America, in a way, gave her

Anju and Sudha Chatterjee are very different in appearance, temperament and achievements, and grow up together under similar, yet very different conditions. Their fathers, died together in the same accident. Anju 's father was the master of the house, and her mother from an equally aristocratic family, Sudha 's father was a poor relation, her mother 's background nondescript, lower middle-class. This living together brings about very interesting turns in the story, develops the characters, gives them inner strength and multiple hues and through myriad twists and turns slithers through the lanes of strong characterization and feminine strength to an end which leaves us craving for more as the after taste of the last scene lingers for a long time in our