New Land, New Rubrics: Presenting Diasporic Experience of Asian-American Immigrants in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Selected Short Stories

Abstract

This research explored the lives and worldviews of Asian immigrants in the United States presented in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's stories in The Unknown Errors of Our Lives (2001). Central characters in Divakaruni's narratives embody the sufferings of immigrants in the New Land. Precisely it was proposed to study the stories from the perspective of the diaspora. In this collection, the researcher has selected five stories, including "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter," "The Intelligence of Wild Things," "The Blooming Season for Cacti," "The Names of Stars in Bengali," and "The Unknown Errors of Our Lives." Since the characters like Mrs. Dutta, Mira, Radhika, and Kahuku's mother emigrate from India to different zones of America, they combat issues of cultural contradiction, identity crisis, disruption and family strives. Unlike them, Tarun, Mrs. Dutta's son, and her family are assimilated into the American society, whereas the characters such as Mrs. Dutta, Didi, and Mira recurrently remember their original house and early childhood days with friends. It is because they are fragmented and frustrated in America. The study concluded that the characters in her stories are ambitious and want to live a luxurious life but because of the lack of opportunities, they could not fulfill their desires and even some of them decided to return to their homeland to get a better life.