Women are generally represented as silent victims dominated by patriarchal and global norms of subjugation and repression. However, contemporary Indian English writings by women attempt to engage and grapple with living realities of women of various strata of society and endeavour to project life in all its richness and complexities. They have moved from ‘re- representation’ to ‘self- presentation’. Bharati Mukherjee and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni express myriad voices of those who are considered the subaltern. The images of women in their writings have undergone a categorical makeover from interpretations of self-sacrificing women towards self-asserting and selfdefining women within the broader structure of social sphere. Mukherjee’s and Divakaruni’s writings deal with the women in the new global world. Their accounts of the experience of the diaspora and its effects upon women not only provide the readers with insight into the lives of million South Asians who currently reside in the United States, but also present a model with which we can better understand the processes through which minority identities are constructed.
Research Scholar, Department of English, Magadh University, Bodh-Gaya
