Educated Women • Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016. 240 pages. List price $25. Simonandschuster.com chitradivakaruni.com. Released April 2016.
One day in 1995, Bela Dewan telephones her mother outside of Kolkota, begging her to talk sense into Tara, the granddaughter she’s only seen in photographs. Tara wants to quit college, and Bela, in Houston, is terrified that her daughter is making a mistake and throwing away her future—just as she had. Unable to communicate face-to-face, Sabitri begins to write a letter to Tara, explaining why she should stay in school, and as she writes, memories return of her own life as a servant’s daughter who dreamed of an education. She spares herself no criticism in her memoir.
So begins Before We Visit the Goddess by award-winning and best-selling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.
The three generations of women on two continents comprise one family, fractured by an insurmountable distance born of prickly relations between mothers and daughters. [Read More]
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