Like reading a dream

The Vine of Desire - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
New York: Anchor Books, 2002

When I was in college, I went through a phase where it almost felt like I could get enough literature by South Asian female writers. Really this was pretty much just Divakaruni and Arundhati Roy, but in my head it was much more. Anyway, I heard both authors give readings on campus, which was lovely. And what I really liked about Divakaurni was that she was based in the East Bay, so everything had an extra tinge of familiarity. And there was a lyrical quality to both writers, where things seemed lush and rich beyond themselves. (This is also a trait I have ascribed to Canadian writers, thanks to Michael Ondaatje and Joy Kogawa.)

I digress. Vine of Desire is a follow-up to Sister of My Heart, which I read in college and do not remember AT ALL. Fortunately, the novel stands alone just fine. The main characters are friends, sisters essentially. At the opening, one has lost the baby she was carrying and is adrift. The other has lost her husband, so that she could keep her baby, and is likely drifting. Anju, the former, insists on bring Sudha and the baby out to California. This despite knowing that her husband has nurtured a desire for Sudha. So now you have three injured souls (and an adorable baby) in a single apartment. And no one is capable of communicating in any truthful fashion. And obviously things go badly.

The plot isn't much of a surprise. But the writing is simply lovely. Chapters come in different forms, different styles, and we see the perspectives of not only Anju and Sudha, but also Anju's husband Sunil, Sudha's suitor (if that's the right word) Lalit, and even the baby Dayita. Divakaruni is extremely compassionate toward her characters, and you ache for each of them, over the pain they feel and the pain they cause.

Re-discoveries, Obasan

In twelfth grade, I took the AP exam in English Language. It included a reading passage about a young girl getting on a train with her grandmother, and the accompanying preparations and observations. What made it spectacular was that it was not a voluntary trip - they were Japanese-Canadian, and being relocated to the interior.

This wasn't my first encounter with the internment of North Americans of Japanese descent during WWII; I had read Farewell to Manzanar in middle school. Perhaps more importantly, I was "in love" with Paul Kariya, whose father had been born in a Canadian internment camp.

The passage was gorgeous, and the topic was one that interested me, so I made a note of the novel - Obasan, by Joy Kogawa. That summer, during a drive to Vancouver, I read the book. And while I have yet to meet Paul, I did two projects on the Japanese internment camps while in college.

But I digress. The thing to know about Kogawa is that she writes lyrical, evocative prose. Opening at random, I find the following:

The handwriting in blue-black ink is firm and regular in the first few pages, but is a rapid scrawl later on. I feel like a burglar as I read, breaking into a private house only to discover it's my childhood house filled with corners and rooms I've never seen.

Or another:

I stand beside her and over the redness of my body she scrubs vigorously, like an eraser over a dirty page. The dead skin collects in little rolls and falls off into the water. She exclaims at the rolls.

And it builds to a painful, yet still poetic, crescendo. Lovely, just lovely.