Dusk in the Frog Pond and Other Stories

Voicing Muslim women's lives: migration, displacement, identity, and cultural assimilation. In the title story in this new short story collection, amidst the soft ripples of the village pond and the mirthful croaking of frogs, the demons of Ruby and Monir's fairy tale life fade away. Readers are introduced to a kaleidoscope of distinctive and unique social, cultural and centuries old traditional rural lifestyle elements in a remote village of Bangladesh. The many shades of war, its aftermath, historical distinctiveness, and rebellion forever permeate the air and the lives of the villagers. Today, diasporic literature is an integral component of the international literary fabric of timely storytelling. DUSK IN THE FROG POND is a collection of eight short stories that explore the lives of immigrants as they deal with the challenges of migration, displacement, identity, nostalgia, loneliness, socio-economic disparity, and cultural assimilation. A particular focus is the theme of arranged marriages. The main characters are Muslim women in or from Bangladesh. Some of the marriages are happy. In others the women feel isolated, often trapped and always unloved. These are powerful stories, reflecting joy and sorrow, never forgetting the eternally burning fire of hope that both lives and dies within all of us, and depicting culture, tradition, and past history in parallel force with today ís modernized world.