Robin E. Field - Böcker

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.

Transforming Diaspora brings together an eclectic collection of essays that challenges traditional understandings of the diasporic condition. Most studies of diaspora privilege place, thus creating a binary between homeland and hostland. This book argues that the emerging forces of transnationalism and globalization have rendered such a division obsolete. Rather, the editors posit transnationalism and globalization to be fundamental characteristics of contemporary diasporic communities. Exploring the effects of the present historical moment on diaspora, the essays examine the changes in the relationships between diasporas, homelands, and hostlands. The collection is divided into two broad categories. The first section offers reinterpretations of the fundamental understandings of diaspora. The second section explores the complex relationship between the theoretical concept of diaspora and the realities of daily life for diasporic citizens.