Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Major/Program
Creative Writing
First Advisor's Name
Lynne Barrett
First Advisor's Committee Title
Committee Chair
Second Advisor's Name
John Dufresne
Second Advisor's Committee Title
Committee Member
Third Advisor's Name
Maneck Daruwala
Third Advisor's Committee Title
Committee Member
Keywords
Fiction, Identity, Place.
Date of Defense
3-5-2019
Abstract
The Dancing Policeman and Other Stories, a collection of short stories set in India and the United States, looks at ordinary people facing challenges in societies undergoing economic and social change.
Some have historical settings. In “Faithful Naren,” a young man learns the complex political realities of British rule in early 20th century Natihati, West Bengal, while in the same town in the 1960s, a teenager deals with injustice in “Sabotage.”
Others take place in a present where past practices persist. "Shit Gibbon" centers on a store clerk driven to gambling rather than sacrifice his son's future. In “Road to Gede,” a man who finds the dead body of a prostitute seeks help from the father who sold and disowned her.
As in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, characters crossing cultural and national lines must face the expectations of family and society. In “Bloom,” an Indian student in Reno, Nevada learns lessons of empathy and how to face shame from a girl who would be considered unacceptable back home. The American-born Indian protagonist of “Rob, the Savior” returns to Natihati aiming to restore a temple his family has sponsored and confronts the worshippers’ belief in the religious ritual of animal sacrifice.
Whether struggling to survive in a changing home town or trying to learn the ways of a distant new one, the characters in The Dancing Policeman and Other Stories are compelled to explore the boundaries of what it means to be human.
Identifier
FIDC007647
Recommended Citation
Kanjilal, Satyaki, "The Dancing Policeman and Other Stories" (2019). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4036.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/4036
Included in
Fiction Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons
Rights Statement
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