Bapsi Sidhwa papers

Born August 11, 1938 to Gujarati Parsi Zoroastrian parents Peshotan and Tehmina Bhandara, Bapsi Sidhwa is an American–Pakistani novelist whose books, including “The Crow Eaters,” “The Pakistani Bride,” “Cracking India,” and “An American Brat,” have gained international acclaim for their exploration of the identity issues of Pakistani Parsi immigrants to the US, their life-styles and their culture.

After she was born, Bapsi’s parents moved from Karachi to the city of Lahore, a large influence on Bapsi’s later writing. Bapsi contracted polio at the age of two, and was nine at the time of the Partition--both events shaped her later writing, especially through the character of Lenny in “Ice Candy Man.” In 1957, Bapsi received her BA from Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore. She married at the age of 19 and moved to Bombay for five years before she divorced and remarried in Lahore with her second husband Noshir Sidhwa. She had three children in Pakistan before beginning her career as an author.

Bapsi is perhaps best known for her collaborative work with Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta; Her novels “Ice Candy Man (1991)” and “Water: A Novel” formed the basis for the latter two films in Mehta’s “Elements” Trilogy, “Earth,” and “Water.” In addition to her novels, Bapsi has written essays and reviews for publications, and travelled for speaking engagements, spending a great deal of time abroad before settling in Houston. Bapsi has also taught at Columbia University, University of Houston, Mount Holyoke College, Southampton University, and Brandeis.

Bapsi’s work focuses especially on improving the struggles of women in the Indian subcontinent, and she served on the advisory committee to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Women’s Development in pursuit of that goal. Among her many honors, Bapsi received the Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe/Harvard, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz (Pakistan’s highest national honor in the arts), the LiBeraturepreis in Germany, and the 2007 Primo Mondello Award in Italy.