Resumo de Queen Of Dreams - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni arrived
on the literary scene with her 1997 debut novel, ?The Mistress of Spices.? Her deft yoking of the Indian diasporic
reality with myths from its ancient culture within a woman-centric milieu has
proved her strength ~ sustained through poems, short stories and novels.

What does it mean to be a woman of
colour in the US?
How deeply do immigrant Indians draw their identity from a faraway culture? Do
alien rites of passage enrich familial bonds within an individualistic society?
Are materialism and spiritualism at loggerheads within an Indian-born existence
in the west? How does contemporary India
appear to a US
immigrant? These are issues Divakaruni has often explored with lyrical
finesse.

Hers is a poetic voice, even when
couched as prose. Divakaruni renders the mundane magical through metaphor. She
condenses experience powerfully. She heightens select moments, imbuing them
with emotion. She suggests depths without emphatic statement.

A social activist, a teacher of
creative writing and now a bestselling writer (translated into over 11
languages), Divakaruni?s has been a dream run so far. Her craft is explored
within distinct boundaries. A multicultural world evoked through potent, moving
narratives. A rooted exploration of the self within a conflict-torn, yet
enriching, dual culture.

In ?Queen of Dreams,? Divakaruni delves deeply into the schism between
the mythical and the real as existence. It is a multi-layered tale about Rakhi,
a US-born divorcee and single mother ~ and her late mother, a dream teller. As
the past and present coalesce, as chapters interlink Rakhi?s potent present
with excerpts from her mother?s dream journals, the seemingly illusory past
illuminates reality around 9/11.

Are Rakhi and her intimate circle
labelled terrorists because they look different? Can the India of the Vedas and the Puranas
make her mother?s dream existence comprehensible to Rakhi, unraveling a
lifelong puzzle? Does her father?s new avatar within his community bridge the
tradition-today divide? Within the elegant narrative, these shimmering strains
swim into view, delicate as water colours on handmade paper.

As the two central protagonists
evolve, the supporting cast comes into its own. Especially Belle, the feisty
Punjabi lass born in the USA,
whose connections with her roots grow organically out of unusual circumstances.
And Rakhi?s father, as he rescues her from bad times through skills stemming
from his past. Her husband, Sonny, however, remains more of a cipher. Was that
a deliberate artistic choice?

Divakaruni has her finger
accurately on the diasporic pulse, fusing eastern values with western ethos.
Her writings course with her identification with a brave new world forging to
life. Her sensitivity to contemporary voices, today?s issues, is threaded
through with an ongoing search for identity, beyond anthropology, beyond sociology,
beyond academia.

Yet, within Divakaruni?s oeuvre
(and the context of diasporic writing), ?Queen
of Dreams? falls short. Not in terms of literary skill, evolved plotting,
virtuoso dialogue or nuanced characterization. Nor even with regard to deftly
modified pacing or recreations of authentic occasion.

Where does it falter? Mainly in
scenes summoning up the dream teller?s past, which seem to echo a Divakaruni
read before. Possibly a recollection of wraith-like elders and an otherworldly
life from the creation of Tilo in ?The
Mistress of Spices?? There is a
troubling formulaic approach to this imaginary world. As if Divakaruni?s magic
masala was not mixed right to flavour this particular dish. Could this creative
device turn into a stumbling block?

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