Poquette has a bachelor's degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses Divakaruni's use of letters as plot devices.

"Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter" is a relatively static story. Not much action takes place in the present, in which Mrs. Dutta spends a lot of time remembering her past. In the place of a lot of action, the tale relies instead on a plot device, which helps to drive the story forward. The plot device consists of two letters in the story—Mrs. Basu's letter and Mrs. Dutta's response, the letter that is mentioned in the story's title. If it were not for these two letters, Mrs. Dutta probably would not have come to the same conclusions that she does at the end of the story. The letters become more than simple objects. They disrupt the normal pattern of...