Leaving Yuba City
Poems
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Like Divakaruni's much-loved and bestselling short story collection Arranged Marriage, this collection of poetry deals with India and the Indian experience in America, from the adventures of going to a convent school in India run by Irish nuns (Growing up in Darjeeling) to the history of the earliest Indian immigrants in the U.S. (Yuba City Poems).
Groups of interlinked poems divided into six sections are peopled by many of the same characters and explore varying themes. Here, Divakaruni is particularly interested in how different art forms can influence and inspire each other. One section, entitled Indian Miniatures, is based on and named after a series of paintings by Francesco Clemente. Another, called Moving Pictures, is based on Indian films, including Mira Nair's "Salaam Bombay" and Satyajit Ray's "Ghare Baire." Photographs by Raghubir Singh inspired the section entitled Rajasthani. The trials and tribulations of growing up and immigration are also considered here and, as with all of Divakaruni's writing, these poems deal with the experience of women and their struggle to find identities for themselves.
This collection is touched with the same magic and universal appeal that excited readers of Arranged Marriage. In Leaving Yuba City, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni proves once again her remarkable literary talents.
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An abusive father ("the gorilla with iron fingers") and the suicide of a mother who puts the poet to bed and locks her in "so I would not be the first to discover her body hanging from the ceiling" open this third collection from the poet and acclaimed novelist (Mistress of Spices, 1997) as the poet, who was born in India and now lives in northern California, re-examines her origins. A section imagining the lives of the Punjab farmers who arrived in Yuba City, Calif., in 1910, takes on their voices in lush, novelistic prose poems: "I lay in bed and tried to picture her, my bride, in a shiny gold salwar-kamzee, eyes that were black and bright and deep enough to dive in." Divakaruni takes equal inspiration from other artists' interpretations of her native land, drawing on photography, film and most notably the paintings of American artist Francesco Clemente. In a section devoted to his "Indian Miniatures" series, Divakaruni's words enter into Clemente's dreamscapes and blossom into moments of startling visual clarity, as in "Cutting the Sun": "The rays fall around me/ curling a bit, like dried carrot peel. A far sound/ in the air--fire or rain? And when I've cut/ all the way to the center of the sun/ I see flowers, flowers, flowers." Divakaruni's persistent concern with women's experience often deepens as it is arrayed against varying cultural grounds. FYI: Sections of the manuscript won Pushcart and Allen Ginsberg prizes.
