Neila C. Seshachari http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20C%20Vol.%20... Home Arc hive s Re ading Room Se arc h Editorial Info Books Subs c ribe We s t Links Winter 2001, Volume 18.2 Convers ation Neila C. S es hachari Writing As Spiritual Experience: A Convers ation with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Neila C. Seshachari (Ph.D., U of Utah) Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (PhD, UC-Berkeley) came to the United States in is a Professor of English at Weber State 1976 when she was 20 years old to earn her Masters Degree at Wright State University, where she teaches University. Poet, short story writer, and novelist, she is a prolific writer who twentieth-century American literature has published four books of poems (Dark Like the River, The Reason for and critical theories, among other Nasturtiums, Black Candle, and Leaving Yuba City), two novels (The Mistress of courses. Her most recent publications Spices, Sister of My Heart), and a collection of short stories (Arranged include an edited collection, Marriage) since 1988. She has edited two collections of American multiculural Conversations with William Kennedy literature: Multitude (1993) and We, Too, Sing America (1998). Her numerous (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1997), and a recognitions for poetry and fiction include awards from Barbara Deming pioneering chapter titled "Asian-Indians Foundation (1989), Santa Barbara Arts Council (1990), Gerbode Foundation of Utah: The First Recognition" in Asian (9993), Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, Bay Area Book Americans in Utah: A Living History (State Reviewers Award for Fiction, PEN (Oakland), Josephine Miles Prize for of Utah, 1999). She is currently working Fiction, Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize, and Pushcart Prize, the last two for on a book-length study on the subject. Leaving Yuba City. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Houston Other authors she has interviewed University and has taught at Diablo College and Foothill College in include Alan Cheuse, Ann Beattie, May California. She is a founding member and President of Maitri, a help-line for Sarton, Maxine Hong Kingston, and South Asian Women in the Bay Area. William Kennedy. Read fiction by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni previously published in Weber Studies. You have Masters and PhD degrees in academics. Your dissertation on Christopher Marlowe at the University of California_Berkeley was written under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, and it's titled, "For Danger Is in Words: A Study of Language in Marlowe's Plays." How did you get into creative writing and make it your career? Yes, that w as quite a departure for me. It certainly w asn't anything I had planned because I had intended to study literature and then teach it in college. For many years I did just that as w ell, although now I teach purely creative w riting. I think w hat happened is that although I loved the Renaissance and I continue to love it, at a certain point w hen I w as getting my PhD at B erkeley, my political consciousness w as changing. I felt that my life as a w oman of color living in America w as so divorced from w hat I w as intellectually spending all my time on that a great dissatisfaction, a kind of crisis of consciousness, rose up in me. I figured I had to start w riting about w hat w as of importance in my life, and one of the big things w as the act of immigration and the w ays in w hich it had changed me, the w ays in w hich it had really made me see the w orld differently and see my place as a w oman in the w orld differently, the w ays in w hich it had made me appreciate my ow n culture as w ell as question my ow n culture, and question my life in India, and all that w as very important to me. So I started w riting tentatively, not very w ell. I w rote some pretty bad poems at first. Your poetry is infused with questions of social justice. Yes, right from the beginning. The roles for w omen and the structures of patriarchy that w omen struggled w ith have been very important as points of exploration in my w riting. That's how I've moved into w riting; it w asn't something that I had planned at all. And as I w rote, I did not, for many years, think of myself as a w riter. It w as only after Arranged Marriage came out and w on a number of aw ards that I began to think, "Oh, maybe I am a w riter." And so your appointment at Foothill College was not in the writing program. No. It w as purely for literature. I taught all kinds, but especially 20th Century and multicultural literature. 1 von 9 16.02.2010 11:23 Neila C. Seshachari http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20C%20Vol.%20... Before you came to this country when you were nineteen, had you written any poetry? Had you written any plays, short stories? No. I didn't w rite in India. And your first collection of poetry was published in India? It w as published in India, but that w as many years after I came here. I w anted my first w ork to be published in India. And I had no connections w ith Indian publishers, but I w rote to P. Lal, w ho is the editor of Writers Workshop, and I sent him some poems and I said, "I don't know w here to place these or w here to send a book. Do you know anyone w ho w ould be interested?" He w rote back and said that the Writers Workshop w ould be interested in publishing them. And then, for your second book, did you go to an American publisher here? How were you received then? B y then I w as already publishing in magazines, so it w as not a problem. This leads me into a question about your audience, your readers. In Yellow Light: The Flowering of Asian American Arts (Temple U, 1999) edited by Amy Ling, I remember you have answered that specific question: Who is your audience? Would you enumerate that again for me? Sure. When I'm w riting, I really try not to think about audience because that concept seems very limiting to me— because as soon as I, at least as a w riter, begin to think of a particular audience, I become consciously or subconsciously very influenced by w hat I think that audience likes and w ould w ant me to w rite. I think that's very detrimental to the w riting process. So I try not to think about audience at all. B ut once the piece is w ritten, and I think about w hom I w ould like to reach, I think about many different kinds of people. On one hand, I w ould like to reach people of my Indian background, Indian-Americans, South-Asians, and I certainly hope that my w ork w ill have for them the pleasure of recognition. In terms of others or a larger readership… I think of the author as being at the center of these rings or circles, these concentric circles. Describe them for our readers. The South-Asian circle is one of the first. The larger second circle is the Asian-American one, and then a larger one still is of w omen of many cultures, the large readership for w hom I w rite in terms of w anting my w ork to reach them. B ut ultimately, I think the audience is w hoever is interested in our books. And so w hen you w rite w ithout thinking about anyone in particular, w hen you're doing the very best you can, in some w ays you w ill reach people that you never even dreamed of reaching. That to me is the ultimate success. For me as a reader, that has been the case in w riters I thought I w ould have nothing in common w ith and find no pleasure in their books, but w hen I read them, I learned so much from them. I have noticed there are two kinds of readers: those who go only for the acknowledged canon which comprises only white writers with a sprinkling of a few African-Americans and Native Americans, and some others who are normally not given to reading Asian writers or any writers of color. And they react, "Oh, this, this writer…I can't say the name!" When that happens in my classes, I say to my students, "You have a good education. Apply phonics and read." This reminds me of a funny story. When I first published and got an agent, my agent w ho w as a very good agent— and w e are now good friends— w as very concerned about the same thing. She said, "Oh, your books w ill never be successful because no one w ill be able to pronounce your name and remember your name, so they w ill not be able to go and ask for your books at a book store." She said, "I really think you need to change your name. Let's think of really shortening your last name. How about `Diva' instead of Divakaruni." And I didn't say anything because… she has a very unusual, difficult last name herself [Dijkstra], and I just didn't say anything.