Skip to main menu Skip to content
Learn how to use the new academic search tool, Omni.

Uma Parameswaran

Uma Parameswaran was born in Madras, India and was raised in Jabalpur. She completed her undergraduate studies at Jabalpur University, received an M.A. in English from Napgur Univeristy, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University and a Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University. Uma Parameswaran immigrated to Canada in 1966 and settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba where she continues to live. She is a retired professor of English at the University of Winnipeg and has a special interest in the area of South Asian Canadian literature. She has also written biographies of C.V. Raman, Nobel Prize winning scientist and his spouse, Lady Lokosundarai Raman, both published in India.

Fiction

A Cycle of the Moon: A Novel

Toronto: TSAR, 2010.
PS8581 .A688 C92 2010

Publisher’s Synopsis

Using a deceptively simple and intimate style, Parameswaran explores the subtleties of love, marriage, sex, and family life in a changing South Indian environment.

Fiction (Short stories)

Fighter Pilots Never Die

Winnipeg: Larkuma, 2007.

Fiction

Mangoes on the Maple Tree

Fredericton, N.B.: Broken Jaw Press, 2002.
PS8581 .A688 M36 2002

Publisher’s Synopsis

Set in Winnipeg against the 1997 “flood of the century”, this novel spans twenty days in the life of an Indo-Canadian family–the Bhaves and their cousins, the Moghes. … [In the novel], members of this extended family face their individual crises, and emerge with a better understanding of themselves as they take [sic] establish roots in Canada.

Fiction (Short stories)

Pinto Sees the Light: Stories

Winnipeg: Larkuma, 2013.

Fiction (Short stories)

Riding High With Krishna and a Baseball Bay & Other Stories

Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2006.

Fiction (Novella)

The Sweet Smell of Mother’s Milk-wet Bodice

Fredericton, N.B.: Broken Jaw Press, 2001.
PS8581 .A688 S94 2001

Synopsis

Inspired by real stories, the novella tells the tale of a sponsored wife of a landed immigrant, who soon experiences abuse followed by divorce with no spousal support from the husband that betrayed her.

Fiction (Short stories)

What Was Always Hers

Fredericton, N.B.: Broken Jaw Press, 1999.
PS8581 .A688 W42 1999

Publisher’s Synopsis

Enlightened, compassionate and humorous, these stories and a novella explore relationships, especially women-oriented relationships, and the experiences of Indo-Canadians

Awards and Honours

1999 New Muse Award (Winner)
2000 Canadian Authors’ Association Jubilee Award for short fiction (Winner)

Reading Writers Reading book cover

Anthology

Reading Writers Reading: Canadian Authors’ Reflections

Z1039 .A87 R43 2006

Parameswaran, Uma. “Shifting Gears.” In Reading Writers Reading: Canadian Authors’ Reflections. Danielle Schaub, photographer and ed. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2006, 292-293.

Anthology (Short stories)

Write Across Canada: Mapping the Country in 19 Chapters

PS8323 .C35 W75 2004

Warriar, Nalini. “Winnipeg.” In Write Across Canada, commissioned by the Ottawa International Writers Festival. Roberts Creek, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2004.

Drama

Rootless but Green are the Boulevard Trees

Toronto: TSAR, 1987.
PS8581 .A688 R66 1987

This three act play explores the interpersonal relations of members of the Indo-Canadian Hindu community living in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Drama

Sons Must Die and Other Plays

New Delhi, India: Prestige, 1998.
PS8581 .A688 A19 1998

Publisher’s Synopsis

Sons Must Die and Other Plays reflects both the evolution of the Indo-Canadian community and the evolution of the writer. At one level, these plays deal with the demands and experiences of such universals as motherhood, bhakti, transplantation etc. while at the level of specifics, they delinieate the growth of theatre in the Indo-Canadian community.

Poetry (Chapbook)

Cyclic Hope, Cyclic Pain

Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1974.

Trishanku book cover

Poetry

Trishanku, and Other Writings

New Delhi, India: Prestige, 1998.
PS8581 .A688 T75 1998

Selected Criticism and Interpretation

Blackburn, Di Gan. “Uma Parameswaran.” In Asian American Poets: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, ed. Guiyou Huang, [267]-270. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002.
PS153 .A84 A826 2002


Diddi, Deepa. “Uma Parameswaran’s Preoccupation with Feminist Concerns in Mangoes on the Maple Tree.” In Canadian Studies Today: Responses from the Asia-Pacific, ed. by Stewart Gill, R.K. Dhawan, [170]-179. Delhi: Prestige, 2009.
FC155 .P36 2008


Kandiuk, Mary. “Uma Parameswaran.” In Caribbean and South Asian Writers in Canada: A Bibliography of Their Works and of English-language Criticism. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2007, 193-195.
PS8089.5 .C37 K36 2007


Meenakumari,V. “Being and Becoming: A Study of Uma Parameswaran’s Meera.” In (Ad)dressing the Words of ‘the Other’: Studies in Canadian Women’s Writing, ed. D. Parameswari. Chennai, India: Emerald Publishers, 2008, 139-147.
PS8089.5 .A33 2008

Links

Publisher Broken Jaw Press website

Uma Parameswaran personal page at the University of Winnipeg

Uma Parameswaran page by Sonja Maria Thomas at VG: Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color