Flashback to the day after Divakaruni came to the U.S. from Calcutta in 1976, at age 19. She was walking down the streets of Chicago with some relatives, wearing a sari, when some white teenagers called them "nigger" and threw slush at them. "That was such a shock to me, I realized that people didn't know who we were." And although she kept quiet about the incident, it stayed, and played in her mind, spurring her need to write. "I never talked to anyone about it; I felt ashamed. Writing was a way to go beyond the silence."

The Indian experience in America — and the conflict between the traditions of her homeland and the culture of her adopted country — is the focus of much of Divakaruni's writing, and it has made her an emerging literary celebrity. "Arranged Marriage," a 1995 book of short stories on the struggle between the traditional and the modern in Indian culture, won the American Book Award. Her next book, "The Mistress of Spices," described a magical Indian spice shop in Oakland, Calif., and is currently being turned into a movie, while her most recent novel, "Sister of My Heart," is a national best-seller. "As immigrants we have this enormous raw material, which is often very painful and puts us in a position of conflict, which is very good for a writer," says Divakaruni. "We draw from a dual culture, with two sets of worldviews and paradigms juxtaposing each other."

That duality, however, will diminish for the next generation. Divakaruni notes that while their parents are engineers, doctors and computer technicians, American-born Indian children are beginning to make an impact in art, cinema, fashion, literature, intellectual life and the media. "Our second generation has the family support, which gives them a solid and secure base, so they can go out and take risks," says Divakaruni, who currently lives with her husband and two children in Houston. "The first generation used up its risk-taking capability in coming to America."