LALW360 Third World Women: Literature and Culture 3 cr.

The course will trace the journey of the Third World women writers in the USA starting with Bharati Mukherjee’s “Middle Men and Other Short Stories.” In the first phase we study women’s suffering and hardship as cyborgs, in the process of merging themselves with the First World coming from the Third World. In the next phase, we study the female novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s “Arranged Marriage,” which portrays Indian women’s dilemma in various marriage situations in the USA and informs us about Indian culture and how marriage is perceived from different angles. The theme of marriage and mother-daughter relation will be studied further through the Caribbean writer Jamaica Kincaid’s collection of short stories,” At the Bottom of the River” and the African writer Ama Ata Aidoo’s “No Sweetness Here” by delving into the specific cultural contexts. In the third phase, we study more recent writings by women authors like Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Namesake” looking at the evolution of cultural adjustment and assimilation. The other strain that we study in this phase is the concept of “magical realism” encountered in the Indian author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel “Mistress of Spices” and in the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector’s “An Apprenticeship or the Book of Delights” which harps on the notion of solution and hope. Another attraction of the course will be an interesting array of films by Third World female filmmakers like Mira Nair and Aparna Sen among others.

Prerequisites: LALW100

Lecture/Seminar
Culturally Diverse Content
All College Elective