Brent has a Ph.D. in American culture, with a specialization in film studies, from the University of Michigan. She is a freelance writer and teaches courses in the history of American cinema. In the following essay, Brent discusses descriptive language in Desai's story "Studies in the Park."

Desai's fictional style is known for its elaborate and detailed descriptive language, which effectively evokes the internal mood and landscape of a firstperson narrator. In "Studies in the Park," Suno is a young man whose family has put severe and incessant pressure on him to "study, study, study" for a major exam which will determine his future educational and career track. Although his parents have attempted to maximize his study time by sending his uncle away temporarily and giving his room to Suno, and although his mother attempts to nourish his mind with tall glasses of sugared milk, Suno...