Indian Writers Who Write in English

Because I grew up in India, and because I am interested in fiction about various cultures in contact with each other, I have sought out and read many novels by Indian writers writing in English. Starting in about the early 1980s, there was an increasing number of such novels being published. Some of these writers live in and write about India itself; more of them, the ones being published in the West, have either grown up in or moved to the United States, Canada, or the UK; many of their novels are about the experience of being immigrants, of being pulled between two cultures. By the end of the 20th century, fiction by Indian authors seemed ubiquitous, and was very well received and reviewed. Salman Rushdie and others have decried the fact that literature in other, indigenous (i.e., non-English) languages of India is rarely translated and still more rarely published outside of India. Similar concerns have been expressed by African writers. I understand this concern, and hope that more such fiction will be translated and published. In the meanwhile, though, I celebrate the wealth of Indian fiction that we readers have access to. Below I list some of the Indian authors whose work I have particularly enjoyed, and whom I particularly respect. Some of these authors have published numerous novels and short story collections; here I include one or two titles for each authors as samples.

Samina Ali - Madras on Rainy Days
Anita Desai - Fire on the Mountain
Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - the Mistress of Spices; Queen of Dreams
Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns
Ginu Kamani - Junglee Girl
Jhumpa Lahiri - The Namesake
Kamala Markandaya - Nectar in a Sieve
Gita Mehta - A River Sutra
Rohinton Mistry - Family Matters; A Fine Balance
Bharati Mukherjee - Jasmine; Desirable Daughters
Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children
Nayantara Sahgal - Rich Like Us
Manil Suri - The Death of Vishnu

Books on Women's Liberation

The second wave feminist movement, then called "women's liberation," took place mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. I can still remember the excitement of the movement, and of the startling and thought-provoking political/social/ideological/theoretical books coming out of, and contributing to, the movement. Their topics included politics, the law, health, literature, religion, and more. Women's lives and opportunities have substantially improved since that time, largely because of this movement and these books. Yes, there is still a long way to go, absolutely, and yes, these opportunities are far from fairly distributed; race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and other factors still limit the opportunities of so many women. We need to keep fighting the good fight for equity and for better lives for all women. But today I would like to pause for a moment to honor the groundbreaking books of the movement, and to thank their authors for their important insights and for their courage in writing about this topic for which so many people (and laws and practices) had such hostility and disdain at the time. The following books, some of the ones I read/studied/learned from during the 1970s, are representative of all the books by all the brave women writing at that time.

Against Our Will, by Susan Brownmiller (1975)
Beyond God the Father, by Mary Daly (1973)
The Dialectic of Sex, by Shulamith Firestone (1970)
The Female Eunuch, by Germaine Greer (1970)
The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan (1963)
Literary Women, by Ellen Moers (1976)
A Literature of Their Own, by Elaine Showalter (1977)
The Madwoman in the Attic, by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979)
Of Women Born, by Adrienne Rich (1976)
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, by Adrienne Rich (1979)
Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by Andrea Dworkin (1979)
Reinventing Womanhood, by Carolyn Heilbrun (1979)
The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir (1949)
Sexual Politics, by Kate Millett (1970)
Sisterhood is Powerful, edited by Robin Morgan (1970)
When God Was a Woman, by Merlin Stone (1976)
Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her, by Susan Griffin (1979)
Women's Estate, by Juliet Mitchell (1971)

"Where the God of Love Hangs Out"

Unlike much tediously predictable contemporary fiction, Amy Bloom's new short story collection, "Where the God of Love Hangs Out" (Random House, 2010) never stopped surprising me from beginning to end. Such originality is bracingly refreshing, and I savored every minute of reading this collection. Bloom, a psychotherapist, presents us with unique, intriguing characters and situations. Her stories explore family, love, divorce, illness, race, and much more, but never in a familiar way; there are always twists. There are twelve stories in the book, every one of them compelling, but the most riveting are two linked sets of four stories each. The first set, "William and Clare," focuses on two longtime friends who in middle age become lovers and eventually divorce their spouses to marry. One of the things I value about this set of stories is the way Bloom shows that the love of older people can be just as deeply passionate as that of the young. The other set of stories, "Lionel and Julia," revolves around the kind of ad hoc, complicated family that is becoming so common these days: a cobbled-together unit composed of ex-spouses, stepchildren, and half-siblings, no less close for being unconventional (very unconventional, in one case in particular). In many of the stories, there is unorthodox, even reprehensible behavior, but one of Bloom's strengths is her power to make readers suspend our usual moral judgments because of our connections to the specific, very human characters involved. We can't help becoming entangled with, empathizing with, and even falling in love with some of the characters, despite their messy lives.

Virginia Woolf

I both admire and take great pleasure in the writing of Virginia Woolf. I am in awe of her both as a pioneering feminist thinker and writer ("A Room of One's Own," "Three Guineas") and as a novelist ("To The Lighthouse," "The Waves"). Over the years, I have read all of her novels, some several times,and most of her published diaries, letters, and essays. The book I keep returning to is "Mrs. Dalloway." This exquisitely written novel about one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway gives readers access to a woman's mind as she moves through and absorbs her world hour by hour. The events of her day range from the very ordinary to the tragic. Woolf powerfully conveys the way life unfolds, minute by minute, and how we both experience it afresh every minute and at the same time integrate it into all of our past experiences and memories. What strikes me perhaps most of all, every time I read this masterpiece,is how Woolf so vividly shows us that at any given moment we contain all of our lives, all of our experiences, all of our histories, and that these are constantly present and in conversation with each other within our minds.

Childhood Bonding with Fictional Characters

Sometimes as children we feel a strong bond with certain characters, almost believing that the characters are real rather than make-believe. One such feeling of connection is still vivid in my mind: when I read "Ellen Tebbits," by the great children's author Beverly Cleary, and believed that the eight-year-old main character's secret was just between her and me, no one else. The secret was trivial, even quaint from today's perspective: Ellen's mother made her wear woolen long underwear. I didn't have to wear long underwear, but something about sharing a secret with this fictional character made me feel fiercely protective of her, and I hoped and believed that no one else would learn her secret and embarrass her about it. I think I believed that if I wished it enough, no one else would even read the book besides me! Of course part of my connection was that, like every little girl, I loved having secrets. As a girl with three brothers, I sometimes had to protect my own secrets very carefully! (Yes, brother K., I still remember when you read my diary!). But it also seems to me now that this bond with Ellen was an early instance of the intense connections I have so often, over the years, felt with characters in books.

Books Remembered and Forgotten

My friend Mary V. recently asked me if I generally remember the books I read. I had to answer that in many cases the answer is "no." Sometimes books, especially genre books such as mysteries, are written and read for entertainment, and are soon forgotten. Other more "literary" books are just not very memorable. But the main reason for forgetting so many books is that there are just too many to remember. In my case, I read about 100 books a year, and have been doing so for many years, so it would be impossible to remember all of them. When I look through the list of "Books Read" that I have kept since I was ten years old (see my posts of 1/24/10 and 1/25/10 about this list), many of the titles bring few or no specific memories to mind. But I believe that all the books we read leave traces of themselves on our minds. I also believe that what we learn from and remember about books is cumulative: as we read more and more, and as the various reading experiences intersect and intertwine in our minds, we are constantly expanding and enhancing our universes of experience and imagination, and we are infinitely enriched by the complex worlds we as readers contain.

Not THAT Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor (1912-1975) was a wonderful English author who wrote a dozen observant, gently witty novels and four short story collections about -- mostly -- the lives of upper-middle-class women. Her stories were often published in The New Yorker. Taylor's own life was quiet and low-key, and she preferred, she said, to write books in which "practically nothing happens." But the "nothing" she describes is a compelling one; Kingsley Amis called her "one of the best English novelists" born in the 20th century. She, like Jane Austen, was especially good at portraying the kinds of self-deception we all practice. Virago Press, the excellent publisher I posted about earlier (2/17/10), republished all of her books in the 1980s, and then again republished several of her novels this decade. Thank you, Virago, once again! And thank you, Benjamin Schwarz, for the article of appreciation of Taylor's work in the September 2007 issue of the Atlantic, some of which I have drawn on here.

The novels include "At Mrs. Lippincote's," "A View of the Harbor," "In a Summer Season," and "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont," which in 2005 was made into a lovely movie starring the perfectly cast Joan Plowright. Over the years, I have read all of Elizabeth Taylor's published novels and short stories, some volumes more than once, and highly recommend her work to you.