Diasporic Enigmas
Ashima Bhardwaj
Before We Visit The Goddess by By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Simon & Schuster, New York, 2016, 212 pp., $15.99
May 2017, volume 41, No 5

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a prolific writer, social activist and a teacher of creative writing skills. In her latest work Before We Visit the Goddess she has deftly chronicled the diasporic enigmas spanning three generations and showcasing the agglutination of Indian and American cultural identities.

The title is a reflection on the ‘mythical ironies’ that connect the mortals to the immortal sacredness within them. This juxtaposition arouses interesting queries and provides a centripetal texture to the narrative. The book itself is an artifact. The jacket design by Grace Han imparts a mini-review in itself. The Simon & Schuster editions have petal and border print effects on the pages as well.

An intricate cultural matrix emanates from the pages of the book. A parallel storyline and dexterous blending of the lives of Sabitri, Bela and Tara imparts a distinct flavour to the text. Durga, an absent-presence becomes the primogenitor of Chitra Banerjee Divakarunis’s characters. Durga’s daughter Sabitri tirelessly struggles for education in her life. She dies in loneliness being stigmatized in marriage and blamed for it by her own daughter Bela. Her daughter flees to America to marry her lover. Life under the penumbra of the American Dream has its nightmares for Bela as well. Her mother’s echolalia haunts her as she gets a divorce and is in turn blamed for it by her daughter Tara.

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