Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Early life and education

Divakaruni was born in Calcutta, India. She received her B.A. from the University of Calcutta in 1976. In the same year, she went to the United States to attend Wright State University, where she received a master's degree. She received a PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985 (Christopher Marlowe was the subject of her doctoral dissertation).

Career

Divakaruni put herself through graduate school by taking on odd jobs, working as a babysitter, a store clerk, a bread slicer in a bakery, a laboratory assistant at Wright State University, and a dining hall attendant at International House, Berkeley. She was a graduate teaching assistant at U.C. Berkeley. She taught in California at Foothill College and Diablo Valley College. She now lives and teaches in Texas, where she is the McDavid Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

Divakaruni is the co-founder and former president of Maitri, a helpline founded in 1991 in San Francisco for South Asian women dealing with domestic abuse. Divakaruni is on its advisory board and on the advisory board of Daya, a similar service in Houston. She has served on the board of Pratham Houston, an organisation working to bring literacy to disadvantaged Indian children, and is on their emeritus board.

Works

Fiction and poetry

Divakaruni began her writing career as a poet. Her volumes of poetry include Black Candle and Leaving Yuba City.

Her first collection of stories Arranged Marriage won an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles Award, and a Bay Area Book Reviewers Award. Her major novels include The Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Queen of Dreams, One Amazing Thing, Palace of Illusions, Oleander Girl and Before We Visit the Goddess. She has also written a young adult fantasy series called The Brotherhood of the Conch which is located in India and draws on the culture and folklore of that region. The first book of the series, The Conch Bearer was nominated for the 2003 Bluebonnet Award. The second book of the series, The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming came out in 2005 and the third and final book of the series, Shadowland, was published in 2009.

Divakaruni's novel The Palace of Illusions, was a national best-seller for over a year in India and is a re-telling of the Indian epic The Mahabharata from Draupadi's perspective.

Divakaruni's work has been published in The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, and her writing has been included in anthologies including the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Prize Stories, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. Her fiction has been translated into 29 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Indonesian, Bengali, Turkish and Japanese.

Film, television, theatre and opera

Divakaruni's novel The Mistress of Spices was released as a film of the same name in 2005. It was directed by Paul Mayeda Berges, with a script by Berges and his wife, Gurinder Chadha. Her novel Sister of my Heart was made into a television series by Suhasini Maniratnam in Tamil and aired in India, as Anbulla Snegithiye (Loving Friend). In 2018 the producers NR Pachisia und Dipankar Jojo Chaki secured the rights to a film adaption of The Palace of Illusions.

Divakaruni's story Clothes from the collection Arranged Marriage was adapted into play under the title Arranged Marriage by Peggy Shannon in 2004, 2010, and 2016.

In 2013, Divakaruni wrote the libretto to a chamber opera for Houston Grand Opera, River of Light, about the life of an Indian woman in Houston. It premiered in 2014 with original compositions by Jack Perla and was shown again in 2015 by the opera company Festival Opera, directed by Tanya Kane-Parry at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center.

The Palace of Illusions was adapted into a play named Fire and Ice: Draupadi's Story by Joe DiSabatino and performed in India under his direction. A Bollywood movie with the title Mahabharat, starring Deepika Padukone as Draupadi, is being prepared in India based on The Palace of Illusions. The premiere was scheduled for 2021.

As of 2021, her novel One Amazing Thing has been optioned to become a Bollywood film.

Honors and awards

• 1996 American Book Award (Arranged Marriage)
• 1996 PEN Josephine Miles Literary Award (Arranged Marriage)
• Bay Area Book Reviewers' Award (Arranged Marriage)
• 1997 Pushcart Prize (Leaving Yuba City: New and Selected Poems)
• 2003 Pushcart Prize (The Lives of Strangers)
• 2007 Distinguished Writer Award from the South Asian Literary Association

Publications

Fiction

• Arranged Marriage: Stories (1995)Reviews of Arranged Marriage: Stories
• The Mistress of Spices (1997)
• Sister of My Heart (1999)
• The Unknown Errors of our Lives (2001)Reviews of The Unknown Errors of our Lives
• The Vine of Desire (2002)Reviews of The Vine of Desire
• Queen of Dreams (2004)Reviews of Queen of Dreams
• The Lives of Strangers (2007)
• The Palace of Illusions: A Novel (2008)
• One Amazing Thing (2010)
• Oleander Girl (2013)Reviews of Oleander Girl
• Before We Visit the Goddess (2016)Reviews of Before We Visit the Goddess
• The Forest of Enchantments (2019)Review of The Forest of Enchantments
• The Last Queen (2021)
• Independence (2023)Reviews of Independence

Young adult and children's

• Neela: Victory Song (2002)
• Grandma and the Great Gourd (2013) (children's picture book)Reviews of Grandma and the Great Gourd

Brotherhood of the Conch series

• The Conch Bearer (2003)
• The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming (2005)
• Shadowland (2009)Review of Shadowland

Poetry

• "Dark like the River", 1987.
• The Reason for Nasturtiums, Berkeley (Berkeley Poets Workshop) 1990.
• Black Candle. Poems About Women from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Corvallis (Calyx Books) 1991.
• Leaving Yuba City, St. Louis (Turtleback Books) 1997. Review of Leaving Yuba City

Anthologies

• Multitude: Cross Cultural Readings for Writers (1993)
• We Too Sing America (1997)
• California Uncovered: Stories for the 21st Century (2004)

Personal life

Divakaruni lives in Houston with her husband, Murthy. She has two sons, Anand and Abhay (whose names she has used in her children's novels).

References

References

1. "Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni".
2. Davis, Rocío G.. (2003). "Asian American Short Story Writers: An A-to-Z Guide". Greenwood Press.
3. Chitralekha Divakaruni. (December 1984). "For danger is in words : changing attitudes to language in the plays of Christopher Marlowe".
4. (2019-10-01). "Department of English Creative Writing Program Professor Honored Among Houston's Finest Authors".
5. Seshachari, Neila C.. (Winter 2001). "Writing As Spiritual Experience: A Conversation with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni".
6. Agarwal, Dr. Gunjan and Gunjan Kapil. (December 2014). "The Representation of Woman in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's ''Doors, Affair'', and ''Meeting Mrinal''". The Criterion.
7. Banerjee, Kaushani. (2017-04-11). "I see my writing as an extension of my activism: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni". Hindustan Times.
8. "Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni".
9. "Book Review: Palace of Illusions by Chitra Divakaruni @ INDIA reads Online Library cum Bookstore | INDIAreads".
10. Bhattacharyya, Madhumita. (13 March 2005). "Dreams and dislocation". The Telegraph.
11. (2018-09-26). "Entertainment News: Film adaptation of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's novel on Drapaudi in the works".
12. Dhanji, Aabida. (2016-05-22). "Canadian Premiere of Award-Winning Bollywood Play – Arranged Marriage".
13. Sloan, Will. (2016-05-12). "Podcast: Peggy Shannon on 'Arranged Marriage'".
14. Kulkarni, Pramod. (2013-12-12). "Houston Grand Opera's "River of Light" to Feature Libretto by Chitra Divakaruni".
15. (2014-03-21). "Writers, Opera, and Chitra Divakaruni's River of Light".
16. Wishnia, Rebecca. (2015-11-16). "River of Light Shines at Festival Opera".
17. Aishwarya. (2019-11-14). "Deepika Padukone Starrer Mahabharat Based On The Novel 'The Palace Of Illusions'".
18. "Previous Winners of the American Book Award".
19. (9 June 2021). "Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: 'I never thought I'd be a writer'". [[Gulf News]].
20. (May 2017). "Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee". scholarblogs.emory.edu.
21. Purdon, James. (2009-09-27). "The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni". The Guardian.
22. Saraswat, Surbhi. "Myth & Gender: A Critical Reading of Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni’s Before We Visit the Goddess." International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities 6.2 (2018): 748-754.
23. [http://www.chitradivakaruni.com/about/bio/ Author's Bio on her webpage]