Pedagogical Strategies in Discussing Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage

In the fall of 2004, I taught Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s collection of short stories Arranged Marriage (1995) in a course on Indian short fiction. Although my class was passionately involved with the text, the students were divided into two groups: those who disliked Divakaruni’s politics but admired her craft and those who thought highly of both her thematics and her aesthetics. A third subset of students, who believed her tropes relied on stereotypes and her prose to be trite, emerged later. Having wrapped up one discussion after another on our contradictory characterization of Divakaruni as melodramatic, feminist, Orientalist, radical, complex, simple, realistic, over-wrought, deft (amongst many other descriptives), I now believe that this heated debate is exactly what a classroom text should inspire. However, certain pedagogical strategies need to be implemented while teaching Divakaruni in general and Arranged Marriage in particular so that students can approach the text with greater knowledge of the political, social, and literary issues underpinning Divakaruni’s work. One of the best-known South Asian American women writers today, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a prolific author who has written many essays, poems, and shor