DIVAKARUNI, Chitra Banerjee 1956-

PERSONAL: Born July 29, 1956, in Calcutta, India; daughter of R. K. and Tatini Banerjee; married S. Murthy Divakaruni, June 29, 1979; children: Abhay, Anand (sons). Education: Calcutta University, B.A., 1976; Wright State University, M.A., 1978; University of California—Berkeley, Ph.D., 1985.

ADDRESSES: Home—Sunnydale, CA. Office—Foothill College, English Department, 12345 El Monte Rd., Los Altos, CA 94022-4504.

CAREER: Diablo Valley College, professor of creative writing, 1987-89; Foothill College, Los Altos, CA, professor of creative writing, 1989—. Mid-Peninsula Support Network for Battered Women, 1990—; President, MAITRI (help-line for South Asian women), 1991—.

AWARDS, HONORS: Memorial Award, Barbara Deming Foundation, 1989; Writing Award, Santa Clara County Arts Council, 1990; Writing Award, Gerbode Foundation, 1993; Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for Fiction; PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Prize for Fiction; Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize and Pushcart Prize, both for Leaving Yuba City; American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1996, for Arranged Marriage: Stories; California Arts Council Award, 1998; The Mistress of Spices was named a best book of 1997 by the Los Angeles Times and a best paperback of 1998 by the Seattle Times.

WRITINGS:

Dark Like the River (poems), Writers Workshop [India], 1987.

The Reason for Nasturtiums (poems), Berkeley Poets Press (Berkeley, CA), 1990.

Black Candle: Poems about Women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Calyx Books (Corvallis, OR), 1991.

(Editor) Multitude: Cross-cultural Readings for Writers, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1993.

Arranged Marriage: Stories, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1995.

The Mistress of Spices (novel), Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1997.

Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor) We, Too, Sing America, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1998.

Sister of My Heart (novel), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1999.

The Unknown Errors of Our Lives: Stories, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2001.

The Vine of Desire: A Novel, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2002.

Neela, Victory Song (juvenile), illustrated by Troy Howell, American Girl (Middleton, WI), 2002.

The Conch Bearer: A Novel (juvenile), Roaring Brook Press (Brookfield, CT), 2003.

Queen of Dreams: A Novel, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to more than fifty periodicals, including Ms., Beloit Poetry Journal, Chicago Review, Zyzzyva, and Chelsea.

ADAPTATIONS: The Mistress of Spices was adapted as an audiobook.

SIDELIGHTS: Poet, novelist, and short-story writer Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is known for her portrayals of immigrant Indian women. When Divakaruni, who was born in India, immigrated to the United States in 1976, she reevaluated the role of Indian women. She drew on her own experiences and those of other immigrant Indian women to write novels and verse. In Black Candle, she tells of women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Arranged Marriage, a collection of short stories, portrays immigrant Indian women who are caught between the two cultures. Her novel The Mistress of Spices, a blend of poetry and prose, revolves around a female character who must choose between her own culture and that of her non-Indian love.

The poems in Black Candle, which first appeared in various poetry magazines, are in free verse, "straightforward narrative poems," to quote Nina Mehta of Bloomsbury Review. They tell of women at various levels of desperation and despair, including women who are killed because their dowry was too small, who are driven into prostitution, or who commit suicide. "After reading these poems, it's clear that the collection's title is an apt metaphor for the scorched lives of the women Divakaruni portrays," commented Mehta, who wondered why Divakaruni did not tell these tales as short stories, but nevertheless gave "Sondra" and "All in My Head" special praise. Booklist reviewer Pat Monaghan remarked on the political nature of the work, yet considered it to be more than a tract because of Divakaruni's "sensuous" language and deep feeling. An "exemplary" collection, Monaghan asserted.

In the collection of short stories Arranged Marriage, Divakaruni depicts women living in India or in the United States for whom arranged marriages had been made, as is the custom in India. Each woman's struggles, according to Ginny Ryder in the School Library Journal, read like "tiny soap operas" with "appealing pathos." Reviewers praised the work highly. In the New York Times Book Review, Rose Kernochan described the stories as "appealing" and "irresistible;" and Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, called Divakaruni a "virtuoso," lauding Arranged Marriage for its "ravishingly beautiful stories" in which the author gives glimpses of the soul in the everyday world.

Divakaruni's first novel, The Mistress of Spices, revolves around an Indian girl with magical powers. After Tilo survives a shipwreck and is trained by a mysterious figure, she is sent through transmigration to act as the Mistress of Spices in an Indian store in Oakland, California. There she serves the overt and hidden needs of her Indian immigrant clientele. When Tilo falls in love with an Indian American, she must choose between her magic and a more mundane life.

The novel garnered glowing reviews for the author's lyrical style, its combination of fantasy and realism, and its portrayal of the immigrant experience that goes beyond the stereotypical. "Divakaruni has written an unusual, clever and often exquisite first novel that stirs magical realism into the new conventions of culinary fiction and the still-simmering caldron of Indian immigrant life in America," praised Shashi Tharoor in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. In a review for Chicago Tribune Books, Tammie Bob noted Divakaruni's "distinct storytelling, setting, and subject," as well as the novel's "opulence of language, graceful narratives that weave intense, poetic images" and "fascinating characters." "If Tilo's choice is rather predictable, the way Ms. Divakaruni gets us there is anything but," enthused David Guy in the New York Times Book Review. According to Tharoor, Divakaruni's style is "distinctive. Her penchant for sentence fragments, once you get used to her cadences, often works to good effect. . . . She has an allergy to question-marks that sometimes leads her interrogatories to fall flat. But her narrative is infused with poetry." Likewise, Bob maintained that "due to Divakaruni's lovely prose, the magic seems reliable and credible." On the topic of magic, Tharoor thought otherwise, however. "Although Divakaruni does the magic rather well, writing about the mystical spices in prose that raises light off the page like so many wisps of incense, she is best at the realism. She has a keen feel for immigrant life."

In her poetry collection Leaving Yuba City, for which she won a Pushcart Prize and an Allen Ginsberg Prize, Divakaruni joins "personal experience with cultural history in a soft but powerful voice," to quote Library Journal reviewer Ann van Buren. Her verse and prose poems treat such subjects as an abusive father, Indian men who immigrated to Yuba City, California, in 1910, Indian movies, and the dreamscapes of American painter Francesco Clemente. According to a Publishers Weekly critic, Divakaruni's treatment of women's experiences "often deepens as it is arrayed against varying cultural grounds." Likening the poems to meteors plunging into readers' hearts, Donna Seaman of Booklist described the poems as "lyrical and haunting" and "shimmeringly detailed and emotionally acute."

Divakaruni's second novel, Sister of My Heart, is a realistic treatment of the relationship between two cousins, Sudha and Anju, who narrate alternating chapters of this modern drama that develops over decades. While critics were less enthusiastic about this novel than The Mistress of Spices, they commended Divakaruni's efforts. Library Journal critic Wilda Williams faulted the author for a "contrived" plot and stereotypical characters; yet she found the novel to be an "engaging read" with many "tender, moving moments." So, too, a Publishers Weekly reviewer challenged her sometimes overwrought prose, but judged Sister of My Heart to be a "masterful allegory of unfulfilled desire and sacrificial love."

The author followed Sister of My Heart with another collection of short stories, The Unknown Errors of Our Lives. According to Grace Talusan for AsianWeek, in this volume "Divakaruni's characters discover [a] sense of belonging and safety through struggles faced negotiating relationships with family, friends, strangers and self. The protagonists must face the disparities between the lives they have and the realities of human existence. They face the limitations of love, the disappointment of dreams, and the consequences of errors that beg to be resolved." The critic went on to cite the title story and "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter" as particularly praiseworthy. Frederick Luis Aldama, reviewing The Unknown Errors of Our Lives in World Literature Today, championed the book as well. "Divakaruni's keen eye for detail and poetic turns of phrase make for a collection of stories that fill out the lives of those who experience the brunt of today's violence of racism and sexism. However," he concluded, "she does not leave her readers only with a sense of tragedy. Perhaps discovering one's creative possibilities will allow one to find happiness only to be experienced, as one character reflects, in 'the long effort of exploration.'"

Divakaruni returned to the lives of Sudha and Anju in 2002's The Vine of Desire. In this sequel, Sudha comes to live with Anju after leaving her abusive husband, and must fight the love she has always inspired in Anju's husband. After she loses this fight, Sudha takes her daughter and moves on to other adventures and experiences of her own. According to a Publishers Weekly critic, the author's "lyrical descriptions of the characters' inner and outer worlds bring a rich emotional chiaroscuro to an uplifting story about two women who learn to make peace with the difficult choices circumstances have forced upon them." As Robert E. Brown put it in the Library Journal, "the plot twists, the characters are engaging, and Divakaruni's vaunted style is evident." Chris Barsanti in Book concluded that The Vine of Desire "is a potent, emotional book delivered by a writer who knows how to step back and take in the poetry."

In the same year that The Vine of Desire appeared, Divakaruni also published a novel for middle readers. Neela, Victory Song is set during the struggle for Indian independence, and centers on the adventures of a twelve-year-old girl whose father becomes involved in that struggle. Sarah Stone reviewed the book for the Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color Web site, saying that "Victory Song not only educates young readers about India's culture and past but also manages to entertain brilliantly with a likeable main character and a suspenseful plot that keep young readers interested." Divakaruni penned another book aimed at young audiences the following year. The Conch Bearer is a fantasy in which twelve-year-old Anand must return a magical conch shell to the far away Himalayas from which it came.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Novelists, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Amerasia Journal, Volume 22, 1996, pp. 249-250.

Black Issues in Higher Education, September 18, 1997, p. 26.

Bloomsbury Review, September, 1992, p. 19.

Book, January-February, 2002, Chris Barsanti, review of The Vine of Desire, p. 76.

Booklist, December 15, 1991, p. 745; July, 1995, pp. 1860, 1869; December 15, 1996, p. 692; August, 1997, p. 1871; November 15, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of Neela, Victory Song, p. 597; September 15, 2003, Ilene Cooper, review of The Conch Bearer, p. 236.

English Journal, September, 1997, pp. 99-100.

Horn Book Magazine, January-February, 2004, Susan P. Bloom, review of The Conch Bearer, p. 81.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1995, p. 898; December 15, 1996, p. 1753; August 15, 2003, review of The Conch Bearer, p. 1071.

Kliatt, July, 1997, p. 49; September, 1997, p. 5.

Library Journal, June 15, 1995, p. 97; December, 1995, p. 192; February 1, 1997, p. 105; May 15, 1997, p. 118; July, 1997, p. 102; October 1, 1997, p. 86; January, 1999, p. 147; December, 2001, Robert E. Brown, review of The Vine of Desire, p. 170.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 9, 1997, p. 10; December 14, 1997, p. 5.

Ms., July, 1995, p. 77.

New York, June 23, 1997, p. 164.

New York Times Book Review, July 16, 1995, p. 53; April 13, 1997, p. 20; March 1, 1998, p. 32.

Publishers Weekly, June 5, 1995, p. 53; April 29, 1996, p. 69; January 13, 1997, pp. 51-52; August 25, 1997, p. 68; November 89, 1998, p. 55; May 14, 2001, Roxane Farmanfarmaian, "Writing from a Different Place," p. 46; November 26, 2001, review of The Vine of Desire, p. 38; August 18, 2003, review of The Conch Bearer, p. 80.

School Library Journal, December, 1995, p. 142; December, 2002, Alison Follos, review of Neela, Victory Song, p. 136.

Times Literary Supplement, March 21, 1997, p. 24.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), May 25, 1997, pp. 1, 9.

Washington Post Book World, December 15, 1996, p. 4.

Woman's Journal, February, 1997, p. 16.

World Literature Today, winter, 1998, p. 207; winter, 2002, Frederick Luis Aldama, review of The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, pp. 112-113.

ONLINE

About Women Writers,http://womanwriters.about.com/ (April 29, 2003), review of The Vine of Desire.

AsianWeek,http://www.asianweek.com/ (April 27, 2001), Neela Banerjee, "Mistress of Self"; (April 27, 2001), Grace Talusan, "Wherever You Go, There You Are."

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Home Page,http://chitradivakaruni.com/ (February 18, 2004).

Time Online,http://www.time.com/ (April 29, 2003), "One Nation: America Remembers September 11, 2001: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni."

Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color,http://voices.cla.umn.edu/ (April 29, 2003), "Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni," Sarah Stone, review of Neela, Victory Song.*