To Spin a Yarn is to Pick up the Pieces: Art, Storytelling and Healing in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams

Abstract

This paper explores how Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s female protagonists undergo displacement, trauma and loss of identity in their survival. Here, storytelling acts as a part of therapeutic survival. Through the protagonist, Jaya, a dream teller and her daughter, Rakhi, a painter, this novel demonstrates that “to spin a yarn” - to narrate the dream and “to pick up the pieces” - pain of migration, loss of identity and historical violence 9/11. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni always uses her intricate way of writing, which shows the immigrants spinning a yarn and how they pick their pieces to know their identity for their origin, purpose, self-satisfaction and healing. Using the themes of art, storytelling and healing, this paper explores the importance of finding one's identity as an immigrant to survive in foreign countries. This research explains how Jaya and Rakhi bridge their identity gap between Kolkata and Berkeley through their way of finding. Healing which acts as a mechanism of recovery to survive and self-reinvention.