Reading Group Guide

1) Describe the dynamic between Ram and Alice during the first part of the novel. Why is Ram afraid of Alice’s interest in Brahmin culture? If he is a symbol of assimilation, is he effective in that role?
2) What does ‘samsara’ signify for Alice? For Ram? How about Nela? Explain the strain her “shame” caused her family.
3) How is Alice’s state of mind reflected by the clothes she wears? The juxtaposition of a Christian cross with a gold Ganesh around her neck?
4) Throughout the novel, the author interweaves a good deal of Hindu ritual and celebrations. Discuss the role they play in the story, how tradition affects Amma, and how food reflects the national character.
5) What does Alice’s illness represent to Ram? Does he enable it? How do they make her depressive episodes seem less threatening to their son Sam?
6) Does Amma really accept Alice at the end? After she recovers the function of speech, she tells the story of her life to Alice. Does she suspect that Nela is at the threshold, listening?
7) Alice and Amma could be said to heal each other. Alice and Nela also bond together to move their lives forward. Why does Alice insist on keeping Nela in the loop, disobeying Amma? At what emotional cost does Nela’s independence come?
8) What do you make of Nela's character anyway? Explain the significance her trip to India to pray to gods she does not believe in for her estranged mother’s health.
9) In what way is Alice's relationship with Ram an expression of her inner self? In what ways is it a search for belonging? Are there any other options?
10) How does the author use illness to help reveal the characters? Think about how Ram’s and Sam’s asthma, and Alice’s depression, deepen the reader's understanding of the characters.

Five Faves

1)Favorite phrase in Shiva’s Arms?
vidama pidingarathu (the way samsara gets its hooks into you and won’t let you go)

2)Favorite maxim or proverb in the book?
The elephant should not marry the mouse

3)Favorite description?
“Soon the lawn bloomed with bright saris. Heads tilted upward to try to see what Amma saw--light traveling to each person, to take with them wherever they went.”

4)Scenes that made you want to visit India?
The celebration of Golu; Nela offering her hair at the temple.

5)Favorite scene revolving around food?
When Amma makes her famous dosa at Ram's house.

Q and A

You tackle several big themes in your book—culture clash, mental illness and its effect on a family, the ways in which tradition dies hard. Do you believe that you have a core subject, and will write through its permutations, as Faulkner did with race, for instance?

It’s tempting to lose myself in such a complex subject as the Indian diaspora, especially as the ramifications evolve, but there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.

What challenges did you face in writing about such charged subjects?

If I’d known how immersed in South Indian culture I’d become in order to write Shiva’s Arms, how strong its pull would be, I might have hesitated. I wanted to place my Indian characters in Kerala, with customs, belief systems, and food particular to that region. To get close enough to convince my readers, I had to do research. I read books, and spoke to immigrants “this side,” but I knew I would also have to write letters, make calls, parse the accents of the relatives on the other side of the world who had distanced themselves from me, the perpetually unsuitable bride.

I wanted to hear their stories, I needed them to cooperate. There were negotiations—mostly promises on my part not use certain information that could spread throughout India. When I learned from some aunties that my manufactured fictional family scandal was basically true, it was impossible to reassure them that fiction could afford privacy. In a culture convinced that everyone is looking, it surprised me when the chorus went from “Don’t tell that!” to “This is the way it really happened.”

How do you approach a complex plot? Do you outline, or chart the narrative arc beforehand?

I start with an image, a phrase, or an idea. Like poetry, fiction distills language and meaning. In a poem every word counts, sound and syllable. In fiction, the sentences must advance plot or reveal character. With a novel, revisions are more rigorous, more of a juggle. With so much to take into consideration—characters, scenes, and points of view—it seems counter-intuitive that a novel is more forgiving. But I find that its sprawl makes it more tolerant. “In the novel or short story you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival,” May Sarton wrote.

That’s not to say that it’s an orderly progression. When characters run amok, and suddenly have their own plans, it’s hard to force them back into the author’s. Mary Lee Settle advised that empathy without identity is one way to keep control of a character, but it's difficult to maintain that distance. Transformation, the way the characters change, what conclusion the narrator comes to, are born out of writing one’s way into the piece again and again, trying on different plots, tone, voice. I feel my way.

Did your empathy for the main character stem from your real-life observations, or did you lean more heavily on imagination and research?

When I first met my new family, this passage from Wonderland’s Alice popped into my head-- “What if I should fall right through the center of the earth…oh, and come out the other side, where people walk upside down?” I knew the basics—don’t touch the men, no shoes in the house, have a fry pan uncontaminated by meat handy. But there were an overwhelming number of ambiguities to sift through, from the comic head-shaking that looked like No but meant Yes, to the serious conflict between freedom and family. So---all of the above!

With all the talk about platform and branding, have you considered writing a sequel to SHIVA’S ARMS?

Actually, I have and I am: RESCUING RANU, which follows Nela back home after the close of SHIVA’S ARMS. It explores altruism and principles from evolutionary biology the way SHIVA’S ARMS explores multicultural relationships and the Catholic principle of reconciliation.

Inspiration

I get the question: "What inspired you to write this?" a lot. The idea for the book took hold as I witnessed conflicts between immigrants and the family members they leave behind. What is lost and what is gained? Stories my husband told me about his childhood in India and my own position as an “unsuitable bride” provided both setting and emotional center.

For VS Naipaul, "finding the centre" was paramount. For me, it’s the threshold that holds the most fascination, as it does for the characters in my novel who have divided loyalties. My desire to create this particular story focusing on cultural identity and the power struggle between mother and daughter-in-law began in personal experience. I wanted to understand the protocols of another culture, and convey the complexity that is at the heart of the momentous act of immigration. These are my themes, and I keep returning to them.

How can I write about a community to which I do not truly belong? Perhaps, the answer is I can write about it because I do not truly belong. My handicap positions me neither behind a closed door nor in the thick of things, but rather in the archway, a good place from which to observe and to have a conversation with my own divided heart.

Praise for Shiva's Arms

"Cheryl Snell's book is an interesting, lyrical, humorous at times - read about two cultures. The main character is charming, vibrant, real in the best of ways. I love reading about different cultures, and ... Cheryl Snell describes in lyrical ways the Indian culture and American artist's reactions and accommodations to that culture. And of character (three-dimensional and likeable, but not perfect) I like. Very good writing."

--Nanette Rayman-Rivera, author of Project: Butterflies, algerias, and shana linda~pretty pretty

Shiva's Arms: the cast

1. Alice. Wife, mother, daughter-in-law, artist, depressive. It's not until she learns the meaning of reconciliation that she finds her place in her extended family.
2. Ram. The husband who runs away from his Hindu culture as fast as his wife runs toward it. He tries to accommodate both his traditional mother (the namesake of the god of destruction) and his wife. The quintessential man in the middle.
3. Amma. Matriarch of a Brahmin joint-family, she must reconcile herself to the culture clash with which her son has presented her in the form of the unsuitable American bride. She will protect the ancient traditions at any cost.
4.Sambashivan, father of Ram, husband to Amma. He supports the idea of a love match for his son long before it happens. “You must marry soon,” he says when Ram goes off to graduate school in America. “Otherwise, marriage will be for companionship only.”
5. Sam, the only child of Ram and Alice. He is close to his grandmother, who sees in him a new beginning, a chance to rewrite her son’s saga. Until history threatens to repeat itself.
6.Nela, the disgraced daughter, ostracized for a small romantic indiscretion. She has gone on to become a math professor, and only returns to the family fold when Amma is stricken with a stroke.
7. Nigel, an aging self-absorbed musician with whom Nela is romantically linked. He stumbles upon a situation where it’s easier to betray Nela than to lose his daughter to her nephew Sam.

What's the Book About?

Is there a happy medium between Hindu tradition and American style or does the battle of wills between a mother and daughter in law for the love of the man in the middle trump all else?

From a seemingly simple clash of cultures between in-laws, Shiva’s Arms evolves into an exploration of freedom and the ties that bind, love and duty. Written in a lyrical style studded with startling imagery, the author uses South Indian myths and customs to explore questions of belonging--national, cultural, linguistic--as well as class and ideology. Life is breathed into very different characters, giving them each the space in which to tell their story.

Alice marries Ramesh, a man from a tradition she can’t fathom. Ram aspires to the modern way of life. Alice, eager to belong, embraces the culture her husband is trying to leave behind. At the beginning, even her wardrobe is like a costume--“She jangled an armload of gold-painted bangles…Her eyes were lined with kohl… Every time she took a step, an ankle- bracelet of little bells tinkled.” Alice is an "insider" who wants out; an "outsider" to the West, Ram wants in.
But Alice is the outsider in her mother-in-law’s mind. The old woman will protect family traditions at any cost, whether in India or on US soil. Alice’s authority in her own home is constantly challenged. Amma re-decorates at will, imposes Hindu rituals on the household, and since a child belongs to the whole family, indoctrinates her grandson, Sam, with Indian traditions. As the namesake of the god of creation and destruction, Amma Shiva both embraces and repels, emotionally destabilizing the fragile Alice, who seeks refuge in clinical depression.

Also in Alice’s world is Ram’s sister Nela, a brilliant, beautiful woman rendered unmarriageable by a romantic indiscretion. When she makes her bid for freedom, Amma disowns her, and forbids the extended family to ever speak her name again. Alice keeps up with her anyway, by telephone and mail. “She writes to me often, with news of the boy and my brother, always with plans for a trap for my mother,” Nela explains to Nigel, her longtime lover, as they sift through the latest photos of Sam.

The boy has grown up believing his aunt is dead. When he discovers the truth, he storms out to go to Nela, and shifts the power between Alice and the old woman. Amma’s health fails, and stripped to her essence, she must depend on Alice. With the help of the dishonored daughter, Alice does her duty with tenacity and ingenuity. She restores Amma to health, and in the process, heals herself.

“Samsara,” is a word that builds resonance throughout this book. This domestic sea, part of the endless cycle of birth and death, means different things to each of the characters: to Ram and Nela it is a trap, to Alice and Amma, community. But the struggle between the religious and the secular, the traditional and the modern is best exemplified by Amma Shiva, who sets the tone for a household in which relationships mean everything. That is what ultimately draws Alice in. In Shiva’s Arms, the theme of religion shows how one family uses it to care for one another in an unpredictable world.