mysteries of the mistress of spices

The Mistress of Spices is a lyric novel, written in a mixture of prose and poetry, in the style that has been called “magic realism”: while primarily set in this world (specifically, a run-down part of Oakland, California), it includes features which defy natural laws and give it an air of mysticism. The heroine, Tilo, comes to Oakland after she has been trained on a remote, magical island by the priestess-like Old Mistress of Spices for a vocation of ministering to others. Assuming a crone’s body and forbidden to leave her shop, Tilo shares the magic of her spices and her own psychic powers with a variety of Indian immigrants who are alienated, lonely, and/or in danger in their new homeland. Soon, however, her own independent, intense nature leads her to disobey her instructions (and the voices of her spices, which take on animate qualities). She ventures outside the shop; she falls in love with a non-Indian. In the end, Tilo must decide whether she will remain true to her calling or choose an ordinary life of mortal love, knowing that her choice will bring potentially dire effects.

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Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was born in India (Bengal) and lived there until 1976, when she emigrated to the United States to study. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. During her education, her website biography notes, she worked at “many odd jobs, including babysitting, selling merchandise in an Indian boutique, slicing bread in a bakery, and washing instruments in a science lab.” She has published in many anthologies and magazines (including the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly) and has won awards for her poetry (a Pushcart Prize, and Alan Ginsberg Award) and for her prose (Arranged Marriage won a National Book Award in 1996). The Mistress of Spices was named to several best-books lists, including the San Francisco Chronicle’s “100 Best Books of the 20th Century” list.

Divakaruni teaches creative writing at the University of Houston and has judged the National Book Award and the PEN Faulkner Award. She has continued to be active in social justice concerns, working with organizations that help South Asian and South Asian American women who are victims of domestic violence, and with a group that helps educate urban slum children in India. She lives in Houston with her husband and two sons. Her website (www.chitradivakaruni.com) includes biographical details, information on her books and awards, links to interviews, and a page about her writing practice.

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Discussion Questions

• The book shares a great deal of information about the alleged powers of individual spices. Do you believe that spices (or other food) can indeed change people’s ways of thinking? Ways of behaving? Fates?
• Tilo is clearly an independent, rebellious young woman from her earliest years. Why does she choose to become a Mistress?
• In writing about her own work on her website, the author says that women’s problems–especially the problems of immigrant women–are among her foremost concerns (she also reveals that she worked at a battered woman’s shelter in Berkeley). Does this novel have things to say about why immigrant women (or any women) suffer? Does it hold out any hope for relief? Are the spices a kind of metaphor in this equation?
• “I write to unite people . . . to dissolve boundaries,” Divakaruni has said. What kinds of boundaries are being dissolved in this novel, and how? Does food play a role in this dissolution?
• A New York Times Book Review article called Mistress of Spices’ ending (in which Tilo chooses her lover over her vocation) “predictable”; a more harsh phrase that might be used is “a sell-out to romantic conventions.” How do you respond to Tilo’s choice? Is the author ultimately compromising the theme of women’s power by having her main character deny her vocation?
• How do you respond to the earthquake at the book’s end?
• Divakaruni’s poetry has won many prizes, as the biographical sketch above suggests. In what ways is this book “poetic?” Do those components make it a better book? Do poetry and spices go together, somehow? How?