Abstract
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart (1999) explores the intimate relationship between cousins Anju and Sudha, whose lives are shaped by family, marriage, tradition, social expectations, and geographical displacement. Both women experience the restrictions imposed on women in a patriarchal society, but their experiences differ. Their lives are shaped by family status, caste location, economic circumstances, physical appearance, education, marriage, motherhood, and migration. This paper uses Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality to examine how multiple social identities and power structures operate simultaneously in Anju’s and Sudha’s lives. An intersectional reading shows that gender alone cannot fully explain their experiences. Sudha’s position as a daughter from a socially complicated branch of the family, a wife, and a potential mother creates particular vulnerabilities. By contrast, Anju’s relatively privileged family position, educational aspirations, marriage, and migration to the United States create a different set of constraints. The novel thus complicates any single understanding of Indian womanhood. At the same time, Divakaruni presents female friendship and sisterhood as sources of emotional survival and agency.
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References
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- Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. Sister of My Heart. Doubleday, 1999.
- Roy, Reshmi. “‘Boundary Lines’: Education, Marriage and Hegemony in Chitra Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart.” The International Journal of the Humanities: Annual Review, vol. 9, pp. 169–180.
- L. A., Jhansy Anitha, and K. Saravanan. “Feminine Sensibility in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Sister of My Heart.” Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education, vol. 15, no. 2, 2024, pp. 241–243.