Product Description

A collection of 11 stories, each one complete in itself, which chronicle the hopes and fears of Indian-born women living in America.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1258833 in Books
• Published on: 1997-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 307 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In this collection of emotionally fraught short stories, poet Divakaruni (Black Candle) relates the travails of Indian women trying to adapt to the often alienating culture of middle-class America. Her mostly young characters-students or brides-are negotiating the schism between Indian values and new possibilities here. In "Clothes," Mita moves from a tiny Indian village to be with her husband, who runs a 7-Eleven in California; after he is murdered in a holdup, Mita questions her naive vision of America. In "The Word Love," an Indian graduate student living in Berkeley with a man named Rex agonizes over whether and how to tell her mother back in India about the relationship. The narrator of "Affair" suspects her husband of sleeping with a close friend, realizing eventually that, whether or not her suspicions are correct, her marriage to an old-fashioned, judgmental and bossy man is troubled. Particularly poignant is "Meeting Mrinal," in which Asha, recently deserted by her husband and coping with an adolescent son, lies to a childhood friend, now a successful, independent businesswoman, insisting that her life is fine. In transparently simple language, Divakaruni places her characters at the volatile confluence of two conflicting pressures: the obligation to please traditional husbands and families, and the desire to live modern, independent lives. First serial to Good Housekeeping.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA?Most of the 11 women featured in this book live either in India or in the U.S. with husbands chosen for them by their families. Although the stories read like tiny soap operas, there is an appealing pathos to each woman's struggle with a traditional approach to marriage as well as to many men's struggles to survive financially. A theme that runs through all the selections is that once brought up in the tradition, it is difficult to change one's mind-set even as an accommodation to a new culture. For example, Sumita is ecstatic that her new husband is taking her to the United States where they will live on his salary from the 7-11, a store she hears described but may not visit. He promises she can go to college or travel, but until he has the money, she is to stay at home and care for his parents. When the dangers of his work lead to his death, she faces the role of widow, dressed forever in white, living among her in-laws. YAs will especially understand the dilemmas posed, as they must live with them as well.?Ginny Ryder, Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Divakaruni is not only an award-winning poet, she's also a virtuoso short story writer. In this consummate and deeply affecting collection, she explores the vast differences between women's lives in India, the country of her birth, and in the U.S., her country of choice. As the title suggests, these are stories about arranged marriages orchestrated by parents far more concerned with status and skin color than with their daughters' happiness. Several stories, including the spellbindingly dramatic "The Maid Servant's Story," are set in India, but most of Divakaruni's gorgeously rendered stories revolve around the attempt to maintain traditional Indian gender roles in the freewheeling U.S., where even the most obedient and self-negating Indian women discover they can live a far more fulfilling life. These are ravishingly beautiful stories, some profoundly sad, others full of revelation, all unforgettable. Divakaruni not only conveys emotions with stunning accuracy, she also transforms the outer world--every room and article of clothing, every instance of snow, rain, and sunshine--into reflections of the soul. Donna Seaman

Customer Reviews

good issues, but repetitive
The author did a good job writing about issues that seem to be very real for Indian women, but each story seemed to stem from the same root. There was always a young Indian woman who was usually the main character of the tale. She had usually come from Calcutta, and was living in the states, in the Bay Area in CA. She always had some sort of emotional tie to her Indian upbringing or family; this was what brought on the conflict. Then the conflict, a stray child, a live-in boyfriend, marriage, racial issues, etc........and though each of these were different, the women would always handle them the same: with small vigor in the beginning, but then they would become depressed and at the end of the story, the conflict would end with some sort of realization about how they should have handled the situation. The book had some good stories with good lessons for life, but after a while they became predictable and boring because of the author's repetitiveness.

Short story collection of Indian women in India and America
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's award-winning books continue to stun her readers with their illumination of the lives of Indian women in both India and America. No other Indian writer has offered such an excellent perspective of life between and within these two cultures.
Whether describing the plight of a woman trapped in an abusive marriage in India or the quick adjustments required of an immigrant bride in California, she cracks open the inner lives of her characters, revealing the disappointments and dreams in a way that makes them appear universal. In language that rings with authenticity and the sounds and rhythms of the Indian people, her books are full of rich imagery. You can almost smell the tumeric, see the saffron robes, hear the finger bells, and taste the cardamom and the curry.
Arranged Marriage, a short story collection, is a good place for readers new to Divakaruni to begin to appreciate her; it a lovely addition to the bookshelves of those who already count her as one of our most important contemporary authors.

Divakaruni seems all too eager to bash her own culture
Marriage is a highly complicated issue, especially in this day and age where the nuclear family is constantly engaged in a tug of war with a culture that is increasingly antagonistic towards anything marked by tradition. With a divorce rate exceeding the 50 percent mark, the issue of what a truly successful marriage entails is something that has become a consummate obsession in our pop culture.

With all the successes afforded the west, the one area it has been found wanting, if not dismally failing in is in the area of matrimony. Yet given the pathetic state of marital life in this country, one would assume that Americans would be open to seeing how other systems of matrimony work, particularly from countries where the dissolution of marriage is seldom heard of. Unfortunately, the arrogance of the western mind obviates even this logical assumption. The western mind seems hell bent on marginalizing any notion that was founded earlier than the 20th century or not on western shores.

It is unfortunate that the author of "Arranged Marriages", Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, seems to have also been seduced by this western predilection to vilify anything foreign to western soil. Granted Ms. Divakaruni does enumerate many problems that do indeed plague Indian marriages, and that need to be addressed, such as patriarchic exclusivity, fixation with status, misogyny, and abusiveness. However, it should be noted that western marriages are hardly free from these maladies. With all the emphasis in this country on protracted dating periods, courtship, and "getting to know the person" all these ills, that Ms. Divakaruni takes great pains to illustrate in her short stories, exist in this country as well. However, what Divakaruni does little of is accentuate the many laudable attributes of arranged marriages such as its stability, familial support, elevation of motherhood, its temperance of superficial desires in the mate selection process, and its surprising inclusiveness.

She tries hard to give the appearance of being evenhanded in her short stories by sometimes showing the drawbacks of the western system of cohabitation before marriage and misery that so called "love marriages" eventually endure when it is found that it takes much more than sexual attraction that is mistaken for love and a few shallow compatible traits to make a marriage work. Yet these seem to be after thoughts on her part purely contrived to give the outward look of objectivity in her storytelling, when anyone, even those who do not read her stories incisively, can see that her biases lie clearly in opposition to the arranged marriage system as a whole.

Far from just confining her critique to the various intricacies of the arranged marriage system, she seeks, in many subtle ways, to debase those mother's and fathers, sons and daughters, and aunts and uncles who abide by such as system. Fathers are either seen as detached or tyrannical. Mothers are seen as meddlesome, materialistic and overbearing. Sons who take on the role of husband are seen as deplorably pathetic; so subservient to the parent's wishes, even when those wishes are misguided, that he seeks to fulfill them at the expense of his wife's happiness. Daughters who become wives in such a system are seen as duplicitous or weak. Aunts and uncles are portrayed as cronies to mothers and fathers, when they are not present, in order sustain this seemingly oppressive system.
"Arranged Marriage" is not merely a scathing evaluation of the arranged marriage system as it exists in India, and among Indian immigrants here, it is a disparagement of Indians period. The word Indian or South Asian (lets include our Bangladesh, Sri Lankan, and Pakistani counterparts as well) almost becomes synonymous with chauvinism, narrow mindedness, frailty, and bigotry.

Good examples of this type negativity are seen in short stories such as "The Bats", " The Ultrasound", and the " The Maidservant" (note these may not be the exact titles of the short stories. I do not have the book in front of me and I read it 6 months ago, so I am merely going on my shabby recollection of it).

I understand that a fundamental element in all storytelling is that antagonism must exist in order for there to be a story. Yet that negative element in the story must serve as a vehicle to propel the story to illuminate some redemptive purpose. That does not necessitate that the story have a rosy conclusion, as some may conclude, thus limiting the creative range available to the author for plot development. However, to merely have a story commence with negativity, have every element of it entrenched in negativity, and then conclude in negativity makes the art of storytelling a tool to promote cynicism. If I wanted to know that life just plain sucks I don't need stories for that, I can just turn on the news.

One positive thing I have to say about Divakaruni's book is that for all its lack of positive characterizations of South Asian culture, she does a good job of showing the diversity within the culture itself, showing all the economic strata that South Asians occupy and how such problems listed above plague all whether they are affluent or destitute. It's that one saving grace that allows me to afford it a three star rating.