This course is a mapping of contemporary diasporic Indian women's fiction. Beginning with the moment of partition, this course will explore the ways in which Indian women in the diaspora have produced a literary voice-or, more accurately phrased, the range of voices they have produced-that engages a wide spectrum of issues. Writing against the backdrop of India as a cultural, political, and social reality (an all pressing reality, in many cases), writers from Bapsi Sidhwa to Shani Mootoo have undertaken the project of articulating the experience of women-and frequently the diasporic community at large-struggling to make a home for themselves in the metropolis. The difficulties of adaptation and accommodation, as these works show, emerge not only from outside but from within the very community they claim as theirs. Issues such as domestic violence, abuse, the repression of female desires, the silencing of female voice, the resilience and power of tradition, the expectation of family, the pressure to conform to accepted notions of "Indian-ness" (a category of experience frequently challenged by these women), are all questions taken up by these authors. And, in a range of literary genres and styles-from the humorous realism of Meera Syal to the fantastic postmodern "realism" of writers such as Mootoo, Divrakaruni, and Sunetra Gupta, from the "traditional (serious) fiction" to literature of the more popular variety. By working through these different novels, this course attempts to understand the particular ways in which diaspora has impacted Indian women's lives in Anglophone societies such as England and the U.S., and to think about the kinds of opportunities diaspora has afforded these authors. Readings will include: Bapsi Sidhwa, Cracking India; Ruth Prawar Jhabvala, Shards of Memory; Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices; Meena Alexander, The Shock of Arrival; Kamala Das, My Story: The Compelling Autobiography of . . .; Meera Syal, Anita and Me; Ginu Kamani, Junglee Girl; Sunetra Gupta, A Sin of Colours; Shauna Baldwin Singh, What the Body Remembers; Jhumpa Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies; Kirin Narayan, Love Stars and All That; Manju Kapur, Difficult Daughters; Mira Kamdar, Motiba's Tattoos; Shani Mootoo, Cereus Blooms at Night; and Marina Tamar Budhos, The Professor of Light. Requirements: required attendance, two class presentations, two 6-page essays and one 8-page essay. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 22 (expected: 22). (Post-1900)