Words matter. These are the best Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I came to the plain fields of Ohio with pictures painted by Hollywood movies and the works of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. None of them had much to say, if at all, about Dayton, Ohio.
I have a variety of readers from across the diasporic community, not just from South Asia. I like to write large stories that include all of us – about common and cohesive experiences which bring together many immigrants, their culture shocks, transformations, concepts of home and self in a new land.
One of the things that I am learning is that each generation will have its own negotiations with identity. And one generation can not necessarily help the other generation with it.
I type everything on my computer. I carry a writer’s notebook everywhere, in case I am struck by an idea. I forget things unless I write them down. I’m planning to learn how to dictate into my cellphone; I think that will be very helpful, too.
I took a little break after ‘The Palace of Illusions’ to clear my head.
There is no conflict in looking good. You buy things you need, and then you do something good for society.
I realise that a novel and a film are different mediums. As artistes, we need to respect other artistes. It also needs a lot of courage to take risks to experiment and interpret known literary works.
I started putting down my thoughts on paper out of loneliness while I was studying in America. I was very close to my grandfather, and when he died, I couldn’t visit home. I started scribbling those thoughts.
I am a Hindu, brought up mostly in India.
To me, characters are at the heart of great literature.
I find that it’s really important for me to imagine characters and situations. That allows me a lot of freedom.
I hate it when people throw away food – I’ve seen too many hungry people.
I like being myself. Maybe just slimmer, with a few less wrinkles.
I interviewed a lot of people in India, and I asked my mother to send me a lot of Bengali books on the tradition of dream interpretation. It’s a real way for me to remember how people think about things in my culture.
I grew up in Kolkata in a traditional family. We had friends who lived in mansions just like the one in ‘Oleander Girl.’ Growing up, I was fascinated by the old house and the old Bengal lifestyle.
India lends itself well to fictionalization, but ultimately, it all depends on the writer’s imagination.
I work very hard at creating complex characters, a mix of positives and negatives. They are all flawed. I believe flaws are almost universal, and they help us understand, sympathise and, paradoxically, feel closer to such characters.
Unlike novels with a hero or two heroines, in ‘One Amazing Thing,’ all the characters tell stories they’ve never told anyone before, so all the voices become equally important.
The Mahabharata might have been a great and heroic battle, but there are no winners. The losers, of course, lose.
I was caught on the freeway for hours when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The entire city had to be evacuated. I observed lives threatened by catastrophes and a whole range of behaviour. What could people do during a crisis?
As I remember my grandfather and those Christmas mornings he gave for a little girl’s pleasure, I know that often a big life starts with doing small things.
Often, writer’s block will occur when I don’t understand a character or his/her motivations. So I will make notes analysing characters.
I came into Chicago in winter – I’d never been so cold in my life! I was very homesick, and a poor student at that time. America seemed so different and so filled with amazing things – and almost all of them were out of my reach.
Strong women, when respected, make the whole society stronger. One must be careful with such rapid changes, though, and make an effort to preserve, at the same time, the positive traditions of Indian culture.
Each book is a separate entity for me. When I’m writing it, I enter its world and inhabit its vocabulary. I forget, as it were, that I ever wrote anything else.
I want people to be sensitive about how women feel and think.
Perhaps what distinguishes my characters is their courage and spirit and a certain stubbornness which enables them to keep going even when facing a setback. I think this developed organically as I wrote, but also it came out of a desire to portray women as powerful and intelligent forces in the world.
The ancient world is always accessible, no matter what culture you come from. I remember when I was growing up in India and I read the ‘Iliad’ and the ‘Odyssey.’
If it is good literature, the reader and the writer will connect. It’s inevitable.
I want my books to force readers to recognise the fact that a woman is a human being just like them.
I wrote ‘Mistress of Spices’ at an unusual time when I had a near-death experience after the birth of my second son.
I started writing after the death of my grandfather – memories, poems, etc. It was very personal; for years I did not share my writing with anyone.
I show women growing, changing, becoming stronger in many kinds of situations.
I’m a very senses-oriented person, and I want to bring readers in on the level of the senses, so they can experience another culture and another place.
Dissolving differences has always been an important motive for my writing, right from ‘The Mistress of Spices.’
I love visual art. I painted for many years when I was younger. I have studied modern/contemporary Indian art a bit and am very impressed with the talent in India.
To some extent, I draw on what I see around me; in other places, I imagine what I write.
By the time we’re adults, our ideas have solidified. So I wanted to write for a younger audience, who would perhaps love heroes from other cultures.
When I was volunteering with Hurricane Katrina refugees in Houston in 2005, I first started thinking about the whole phenomenon of grace under pressure.
Immigration was a huge force in changing my outlook. I moved to America 30 years ago. I had to reassess my beliefs, especially about women’s roles.
It’s very important to balance things; it’s imperative to do something for the society, and women in particular, and help women who aren’t in position to help themselves.
After 9/11, there was so much distress in America that it led to an inter-cultural breakdown. Some of our communities were targeted. Many of our adults shut themselves off from other cultures. I tried to bring children of Indian and other cultures together in my literature.
I’ve long been interested in the tale-within-a-tale phenomenon. I’m familiar with many tales which use this framework or the device of many people in one place, telling their stories, or multiple storytellers commenting on each others’ stories with their own.
It is an Englishman who turns out to be the real villain of ‘The Moonstone.’ By contrast, the three Indian priests who dedicate their lives to returning the jewel to its proper home in the temple, though they have nothing personal to gain by doing so, are positively heroic.