‘Love’ and ‘sisterhood’ in the identities of women in novels by writers of the South Asian Diaspora

This book is an exploration of the identities of diasporic South Asian women as represented in novels by female diasporic Indian writers in the U.K. and the U.S.A. The hypothesis on which this book relies is that the protagonists’ identities, especially post-migration (although the impact of their cultural practices and values pre-migration are not overlooked, either), are shaped by two main analytical categories, ‘love’ and ‘sisterhood’. They are interconnected both between themselves and with the concept of hybridity. This mixture of influences is complicated by the very fact that these characters are women. As all the lives of the women in the analysed novels are portrayed in the period following the industrialisation of the Indian state (1990), when taking paid jobs by women has become more common than before, the perspective upon the public and private spaces in relation to their ‘love’ life (especially as marriage) is an aspect to be inspected as well.

The novels under scrutiny are as follows:

100 Shades of White (2003), by Preethi Nair (U.K.)

The Vine of Desire (2002), by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (U.S.A.)

Desirable Daughters (2002), by Bharati Mukherjee (U.S.A.)