Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Sidhwa suffered
from polio when she was a child. After receiving
her B.A. from Kinnaird College for Women in
1956, she traveled widely throughout Asia, Eu-
rope, and North America. In 1983 she immigrated
to the United States and became a U.S. citizen in
- She has taught at St. Thomas University in
Texas, Rice University, the University of Houston,
and Columbia University. Since 1990 she has been
a writer-in-residence at Mount Holyoke College.
Sidhwa’s first novel, The Crow Eaters (1978), is a
comic satire set in British India. The novel focuses
on a Parsi family’s decision to relocate from a vil-
lage in central India to the city of Lahore. In the
city, the family’s patriarch shrewdly pursues pros-
perity without much regard for business ethics.
But his single-minded attention to his own suc-
cess brings him repeatedly into conflict with his
mother-in-law, whom he cannot outmaneuver as
easily as his business rivals.
For The Bride (1982), Sidhwa received the
National Award for English Literature from the
Pakistan Academy. Very different in tone from The
Crow Eaters, the novel focuses on Zaitoon, a young
woman from the plains who is orphaned during
the violence related to the partition of India and
Pakistan. Adopted by a man from a more moun-
tainous region but raised in Lahore, Zaitoon is un-
prepared for the marriage that her adoptive father
arranges for her with a man from his native region.
The mountains overwhelm her emotionally, and
her new husband soon becomes abusive, in part
because he has been conditioned by his upbring-
ing to permit no dissent from his wife. Juxtaposed
with Zaitoon’s crisis over her unhappy marriage is
an account of an American woman’s sometimes
difficult adjustments to life in India.
For Cracking India (1988), published as Ice-
Candy Man in the United Kingdom, Sidhwa re-
ceived Germany’s LiBeraturepreis. The novel was
also named a “Notable Book of the Year” by the
New York Times Book Review and by the American
Library Association. Told from the perspective of
a young Parsi girl who is being home-schooled be-
cause she has been afflicted with polio, the novel
juxtaposes her gradual coming of age with the
historical trauma of the partition of India and
Pakistan. The Parsi community is not as directly
affected by the partition as the Hindus and Mus-
lims, but the Parsis are nonetheless affected by the
tumult of economic, political, and cultural ten-
sions that are brought to the surface during the
forced relocations of their neighbors.
An American Brat (1993), Sidhwa’s fourth novel,
focuses on a Parsi woman who is sent by her par-
ents to the United States to be educated away from
the increasing Islamic fundamentalism in Paki-
stan. But when she transfers from the Mormon
university in which they have enrolled her to the
much more liberal atmosphere of a public univer-
sity, her parents become very concerned. When she
falls in love with a Jewish-American student, their
concern devolves into something between outrage
and panic.
Sidhwa’s short stories and essays have appeared
in such publications as Femina, Houston Chronicle,
New York Times Book Review, Pakistan Times, and
Radcliffe Quarterly.Bibliography
Allen, Diane S. “Reading the Body Politic in Bapsi
Sidhwa’s Novels: The Crow-Eaters, Ice-Candy Man
and An American Brat.” South Asian Review 18
(Dec. 1994): 69–80.
Didur, Jill. “Cracking the Nation: Gender, Minorities,
and Agency in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India.”
ARIEL 29 (July 1998): 43–64.
Hai, Ambreen. “Border Work, Border Trouble: Post-
colonial Feminism and the Ayah in Bapsi Sidhwa’s
Cracking India.” Modern Fiction Studies 46 (Sum-
mer 2000): 379–426.
Montenegro, David. “Bapsi Sidhwa: An Interview.”
Massachusetts Review 31 (Winter 1990): 513–533.
Martin KichSomebody’s Daughter
Marie Myung-Ok Lee (2005)
Sarah Thorson, adopted at birth from Korea into
a Caucasian family in Minnesota, shocks her fam-
ily by dropping out of college and enrolling in a
Motherland Program in Korea. Unfortunately,
she is the least experienced Korean speaker in the268 Somebody’s Daughter