Amy Tan says of Bharati Mukherjee's previous novel The Holder of the World, 'An amazing literary feat and a masterpiece of storytelling'. Desirable Daughters maintains the strong literary muscle and the tenderness of narrative that we now expect from this prizewinning author.

A Study Guide for Bharati Mukherjee's "Desirable Daughters," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

"A very fine writer, funny, intelligent, versatile and, on occasion, unexpectedly profound." --The Washington Post Book World "MUKHERJEE IS FEARLESS . . . DARING AND WITTY . . . Take the wild ride with Debby DiMartino from Albany to San Francisco, from lost child to masked avenger." --The Boston Globe "POWERFULLY WRITTEN . . . Debby has no memory of her birth parents. All she knows is that she was born in a remote Indian village, the daughter of a hippie back-packing mother and a mysterious Eurasian father, both of whom have disappeared almost without a trace. . . . Her quest for her biological parents turns into an obsession. . . . Leave It to Me . . . shows Mukherjee at the peak of her craft. . . . Mixing the Greek myth of Electra with the Indian myth of Devi, she sends Devi/Debby careening down on the Bay Area like an elemental force of vengeance." --San Francisco Chronicle "DEVI IS A BRILLIANT CREATION--hilarious, horribly knowing and even more horribly oblivious--through whom Bharati Mukherjee, with characteristic and shameless ingenuity, is laying claim to speak for an America that isn't 'other' at all." --The New York Times Book Review "STUNNING . . . An astute, ironic, and merciless insight into an aberrant version of the American dream." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

After the assassination of her husband, seventeen-year-old Jasmine leaves India to live with a middle-aged banker in a small Iowa town, only to retain some of the traditions and memories of the past.

A National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Times Notable Book: “intelligent, versatile . . . profound” stories of migration in America (The Washington Post Book World). Illuminating a new world of people in migration that has transformed the essence of America, these collected stories are a dazzling display of the vision of this critically-acclaimed contemporary writer. An aristocratic Filipina negotiates a new life for herself with an Atlanta investment banker. A Vietnam vet returns to Florida, a place now more foreign than the Asia of his war experience. An Indian widow tries to explain her culture’s traditions of grieving to her well-intentioned friends. And in the title story, an Iraqi Jew whose travels have ended in Queens suddenly finds himself an unwitting guerrilla in a South American jungle. Passionate, comic, violent, and tender, these stories draw us into a cultural fusion in the midst of its birth pangs, expressing a “consummated romance with the American language” (The New York Times Book Review).

Born in Calcutta and schooled in Poughkeepsie, Madison, Manhattan, beautiful, luminous Tara leaves her American husband behind as she journeys back to India. But the Calcutta she finds on her return -- seething with strikes, riots, and unrest -- is vastly different from the place she remembers. In this taut, ironic tale of colliding cultures, Tara seeks to reconcile the old world -- that of her father, the redoubtable Bengal Tiger -- and the brash new one that is being so violently ushered in. In this, her first novel, Mukherjee claimed as her subject the shock, uneasiness, and haphazard transformation that are part of the immigrant experience -- a theme she has masterfully woven into her subsequent novels, Wife and Jasmine, and into The Middleman and Other Stories, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Gia and Serena Pirji are sisters, but as the first-generation born in Canada to immigrant parents, their lives play out in different ways because of their skin tone. Gia’s fair skin grants her membership to cliques of white kids as a teen, while Serena’s dark skin means she is labelled as Indian and treated as inferior. This superficial difference, imposed by a society obsessed with skin colour and hierarchy, sets the sisters into a dynamic that plays out throughout their lives. In a world where white skin is preferable, the sisters are pitted against each other through acts of revenge and competition as they experience adultery, ruined friendships, domestic abuse, infertility and motherhood. Taslim Burkowicz’s vivid, sensory-rich writing style brings readers to the party scene in Goa, suburban supermarkets in Vancouver and a safari in Africa, where Gia and Serena navigate through the highs and lows of a tumultuous, loving relationship. The Desirable Sister reveals the bitter games of treachery women are forced to play to achieve the ranks of beauty and success, and ultimately shows the strength of love between sisters.

Most dads love their daughters, but they’re uncertain how they can show that love in a way their daughters understand...or figure out what their girls really need from them. Jay Payleitner has given thousands of dads great, man-friendly advice in his bestselling 52 Things Kids Need from a Dad. Now Jay guides his readers into what is unexplored territory for many of them—girl land—giving them ways to... do things with their daughters, not just for them lecture less and listen more be on the lookout for “hero moments” and take advantage of them realize that their daughters are females...and tailor their actions and responses accordingly give their daughters a positive view of the male sex Dads will feel respected and encouraged—not made to feel guilty—and they’ll gain confidence to initiate activities that build lifelong positives into their girls. Great gift or men’s group resource.