What Was The Function Of

Mother Teresas Detractors Have Accused Her Of Overemphasizing Calcuttans Destitution And Of Coercing Conversion From The Defenseless. In The Context Of Lost Causes, Mother Teresa Took On Battles She Knew She Could Win. Taken Together, It Seems To Me, The Criticisms Of Her Work Do Not Undermine Or Topple Her Overall Achievement.

You See For Me, America Is An Idea. It Is A Stage For Transformation. I Felt When I Came To Iowa City From Calcutta That Suddenly I Could Be A New Person . . . What America Offers Me Is Romanticism And Hope . . . Suddenly, I Found Myself In A Country Where

Through My Fiction, I Make Mainstream Readers See The New Americans As Complex Human Beings, Not As Just The Other.

In India, There Are Real Consequences To Inattention; Drivers Who Jeopardize Pedestrians Can Be Lynched On The Spot.

I Am Aware Of Myself As A Four-hundred-year-old Woman, Born In The Captivity Of A Colonial, Pre-industrial Oral Culture And Living Now As A Contemporary New Yorker.