Debut short story collection “White Dancing Elephants” by Chaya Bhuvaneswar (Dzanc Books, forthcoming October 2018 and winner of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize) plunges readers deep into the psyche of women—largely South Asian women.
Characters have the darkest corners of their minds exposed (through their own admissions or by omniscient narrators) and what comes forth is usually disagreeable. At the same time, well-trodden narratives about immigration are upended regularly.
The main character in “Jagatishwaran” is a woman who refuses to feel gratitude for or awe of a sister who has emigrated to the U.S. “But it’s my sister who’s the smart one, the doctor lady,” she rants to the reader.
“She thinks of us as dull-witted rice eaters waiting for her borrowed Anglo china plates and blue jeans, silk ties and pantyhose, perfume in fish shaped bottles, white linen napkins and forks so we won’t eat with our hands, expensive bolts of brilliant cloth—smelling slightly of glue, precious…”