Category Archives: Indian American
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Truth: if not for Sunil Malhotra, I would never have finished Abraham Verghese‘s bestselling first novel, Cutting for Stone. Immediately opened upon receipt more than two years ago, for some reason, my bookmark never moved beyond the first few chapters …
Timing mattered: I realize now to fully appreciate Stone, I first had to read Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste (for Ethiopian political context), The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (for medical background), and Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (for an overview of women’s societal maladies). Then Sunil Malhotra’s mellifluous narration embodied the characters (after which, with his many talented voices still in my head, I returned to the page because my eyeballs are quicker than my ears).
The final result is, in a word, wondrous.
On September 20, 1954, conjoined twin sons – ”tethered together” at the head by a “short, fleshy tube” – violently enter the world in Missing Hospital’s Operating Theater 3 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Born to an Indian nun who dies, and a British surgeon who vanishes in shocked stupor, they are named Marion (for the pioneering American gynecologist) and Shiva (who was “all but dead until [his adoptive mother-doctor] invoked Lord Shiva’s name”).
Now at 50, Marion Praise Stone examines his life: the twins’ Ethiopian childhood intertwined with their nanny’s daughter Genet, their cleaving when Marion is forced to flee their homeland, his training in a New York inner-city “Ellis Island hospital” (far removed from a more genteel “Mayflower hospital”), the shattering events that lead to reunion, and his ultimate trip back home. His telling repays a debt: “What I owe Shiva most is this: to tell the story. It is one … which I had to piece together. Only the telling can heal the rift that separates my brother and me. … Where silk and steel fail, story must succeed. To begin at the beginning …”
And thus the prologue ends and the epic begins. Over the next 500-plus pages (or 24 hours if you let Sunil woo you to the end), ShivaMarion will vividly inhabit your imagination; Verghese makes sure their residence is long-lasting, using his formidable literary skills to both unravel and bind the twins’ story amidst the chaos of immigration, colonialism, missionary life, political occupation, and so much more. More remarkable, however, are the small reminder seeds Verghese plants chapter after chapter, scenes so unforgettable that the tiniest triggers will cause you to envision ShivaMarion once more long after the final page: a hurt thumb, Middlemarch, helpless puppies, stalled motorcycles, even The New York Times.
Wait no more. Be ready. Be haunted. Be enthralled.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, African, Indian African, Indian American, South Asian American
Hot, Hot Roti for Dada-ji by F. Zia, illustrated by Ken Min
For young Aneel, having his grandparents come live with him is like having built-in playmates, not to mention “… his grandparents’ stories were the best of all. Aneel loved hearing about the faraway village with the green wheat fields and the swaying coconut palms.”
One day, while his grandmother is too busy chanting her Hari Oms, Dada-ji, his grandfather, is happy to tell Aneel about his youthful days of wrestling water buffalo, tying together hissing cobras, and even juggling three elephants! Dada-ji’s strength, of course, came from stacks and stacks of his own mother’s “fluffy-puffy roti” accompanied by her “tongue-burning mango pickle.”
Longing for roti, but unable to convince anyone in the house to make it, Aneel decides he’ll make them himself! Indeed, as his surprised family looks on with encouragement (and hunger), Aneel figures out by roti number 10 how to make the perfect circle for the perfect fluffy puff. And the hot, hot roti for Dada-ji gives both grandfather and grandson all the strength they need to find grand new adventures together.
First time book illustrator Ken Min‘s stylized, angular faces are bursting with expressive energy – check out grinning Dada-ji in his headstand, the startled elephants in mid-air, Aneel’s worried mother as he takes over the kitchen, and Aneel’s own glee as he soars into the blue sky. Zia’s story warmly celebrates the exuberance of imagination, and rewards the tenacity of can-do attitude.
If I had one little, minor, tiny complaint, it might be that a roti recipe would have been much appreciated, especially since Aneel himself makes the process look so possible … and delightfully delicious. Mmm mmmm good indeed!
Tidbit: Talk about internet magic … you can try out Aneel’s roti recipe by clicking here!
Readers: Children
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Indian American
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
I won’t lie: at almost 600 pages (or almost 21 hours if you choose the audible option), Siddhartha Mukherjee‘s 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction is a Commitment (yes, capitalization intended!).
But commitment can come with vast rewards and, in this case, get ready for a massive infusion of exacting history, lingering mysteries, and scientific discovery. More than the undeniable erudition, the book’s most memorable moments are, of course, the true stories that Mukherjee (who is both physician and researcher) seamlessly weaves throughout – inspiring, wrenching, hopeful, driven, miraculous – of both the famous (Sidney Farber, Mary Lasker …) and the everyday important (Clara, Jimmy, Germaine …).
Before you delve into this book, however, might I suggest two others to read before which will infinitely enlighten and enhance your appreciation: Intuition by Allegra Goodman for a fictionalized overview of the machinations of a research lab (for example, Weinberg’s lab in Emperor, also in Boston, also working on turning cancer cells into normal, becomes that much more accessible) and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (neither Lacks nor her HeLa cells are mentioned by name, but her undeniable role in cancer research is referenced often).
As behemoth as the contents are, Mukherjee offers a clever, illuminating shortcut on just three pages, 463 to 465: “Recall Atossa, the Persian queen with breast cancer in 500 BC …” and from there, Mukherjee remarkably, concisely follows the course of 2500 years of cancer history and research, even projecting into 2050 when “… [t]his War on Cancer may best be ‘won’ by redefining victory.” The rest of the book’s pages explicates, elucidates, and enlightens.
Reading Emperor is certainly a personal journey (I found a relative-by-marriage on page 229!), even more resonating if you have lost anyone to the disease. While honoring the remarkable progress in cancer research, Mukherjee is insistently forthright – his table of contents follows with a sparse page of sobering data: “In the United States, one in three women and one in two men, will develop dancer during their lifetime.” And 459 pages later, he admits, “The question then will not be if we will encounter this immortal illness in our lives, but when.”
And yet Mukherjee’s honesty is never maudlin, balanced by moments of sheer wonder as, for example, he is awed by the “miraculous moment of [his] daughter’s birth” (even as he’s harvesting the rich stem cells in her umbilical cord). He follows her birth with something akin to re-birth for a “routine spectrum of survivors,” the ‘routine’-ness of their survival bearing witness to their transformation from victim to victor in the cancer war.
As we reach that final page, we can believe that when we come in contact with the disease, we, too, will hope for, even dare to expect, that our survival will be routine …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Biography, .Nonfiction, Indian American, South Asian American
Author Interview: Anjali Banerjee
With her past seven published novels – written for audiences that range from middle-grade readers on up – Anjali Banerjee didn’t particularly mention male body parts in any great detail. Maybe a twinkling eye here, capable hands there, but she certainly didn’t dwell. But as the saying goes, there’s a first time for everything.
Indeed, welcome to Haunting Jasmine, Banerjee’s eighth novel, her third for adults: Page one opens with an avid discussion on the fidelity factor of male genitalia based on ethnicity, complete with images of… well, shall we say… gold-embroidered formalwear for the faithful Bengali member. Five pages later, our betrayed heroine is not above asking the elephant god Ganesh to put a curse – à la Lorena Bobbit – on her heartbreaking spouse’s non-Bengali, all-American private parts. Oh, ouch.
Painful initial details aside, Banerjee’s latest is actually another easy-breezy, deftly entertaining love story, this time with spine-tingling twists. Searching for respite from her cheating soon-to-be-ex, the eponymous Jasmine heads home to remote Shelter Island in the Pacific Northwest where she’s agreed to watch Auntie Ruma’s bookstore for a month. Auntie Ruma needs the time to have her “heart fixed in India,” and only Jasmine can be entrusted to take care of the historic Victorian and the treasures – literary and otherwise – that reside within.
Books and writing – and certainly some multi-culti magic – have always been a part of Banerjee’s life. Born in India, and raised in small-town Canada and later big-city California, Banerjee found special inspiration in her literary maternal grandmother, herself an English writer who called India home.
From the moment Banerjee “could pick up a crayon and scribble,” she started writing. She wrote her first story at age seven, and in spite of “preposterous premises and impossible plots,” she never stopped. While she’s “not sure of a specific moment when I decided to become a writer” – she did have a few career detours as a veterinary assistant, an office manager, a law student, to name a few – Banerjee readily acknowledges that “writing has always been part of who I am.”
Since publishing her first title in 2005 – her lauded kiddie novel Maya Running, about an awkward young Indian American girl who goes through a 13 Going on 30-sort of transformation (sans the timely fast-forward) and becomes an assertive, multilingual beauty overnight – Banerjee has managed to publish more than a book a year. Even with five books for middle grade readers and three more for us oldsters, all out in just six years, Banerjee insists, “I’m not that prolific!”
In case you’re about to set off for the library or local bookstore, you’ll need the rest of Banerjee’s titles: In addition to Maya, her other younger-reader novels are Rani and the Fashion Divas, The Silver Spell, Looking for Bapu, and most recently Seaglass Summer; her adult titles before Haunting Jasmine are Imaginary Men and Invisible Lives (with nary a mention in either about certain appendages. Ahem).
So Haunting Jasmine starts with quite a saucy departure from your previous novels. What prompted the impulse?
The departure seemed right for my character, a jilted divorcée whose husband cheated on her. He dashed her dreams for a perfect life and a happy marriage – her thoughts seemed appropriate for the situation! [... click here for more]
Author interview: Feature: “An Interview with Anjali Banerjee,” Bookslut.com, February 2011
Readers: Adult Continue reading
Haunting Jasmine by Anjali Banerjee
What better way to get over a broken heart than moving into a unique, welcoming bookstore, filled not only with fabulous books but a few wise (less than living) writers, too? As long as they can spin a convincing yarn, why quibble with such minor details like life and death? Sign me up and throw away the key!
In Anjali Banerjee‘s third novel for adults (her eighth overall), about-to-be-divorced Jasmine heads home to remote Shelter Island in the Pacific Northwest where she’s agreed to watch Auntie Ruma’s bookstore for a month. The respite is just what Jasmine needs to extricate herself from her painful LA life, filled with constant separation battles with her cheating soon-to-be-ex. Auntie Ruma needs the time to have her “heart fixed in India,” and only Jasmine can be entrusted to take care of the historic Victorian and the treasures that lie within …
Without Crackberry and internet access, Jasmine is forced to unplug. Instead of planning complicated investment strategies, she’s soon drawing on literary reserves she didn’t realize she had to lead the local book club, then donning magic rabbit ears for a much younger audience. The local townies seem to know a bit too much about her, her bookstore’s single employee Tom is less than patient with her, and that mysterious stranger is a bit too bold!
Meanwhile, books are either glowing or tumbling off the shelf, she’s seeing and hearing things that are just not rationally possible, not to mention the dust and disorder wreaking havoc on her good senses. How will she survive a whole month …?
Banerjee has created another fast, light read, this time with a few spine-tingling twists. Jasmine seems to almost be an adult version of her last middle grade title, Seaglass Summer, with both protagonists finding respite and renewal on a Washington coastline island. Two books, two islands … might this be the early beginnings of a 21st-century, chick lit version of Yoknapatawpha County in the Northwest? It’s already starting to sound like an inviting literary destination …
To check out other entertaining titles by Anjali Banerjee on BookDragon, click here.
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, Indian American, South Asian American
At Home with Madhur Jaffrey: Simple, Delectable Dishes from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka by Madhur Jaffrey
What perfect timing! Madhur Jaffrey‘s newest cookbook makes for a toothsome companion to one of last week’s posts, Indivisible, the first anthology that brings together contemporary American poets who trace their roots to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Put the two titles together and you’ll be salivating over the unlimited possibilities for literary feasts: read a few choice pieces from Indivisible, then prepare and share some delectable delights from Jaffrey’s latest. Without a doubt, Jaffrey is the empress of the South Asian kitchen for the most delicious reasons and her new cookbook is a gorgeous, colorful spread for the eyes as well as the palate.
South Asian cooking often seems “daunting,” Jaffrey admits, because of what seems to be a complex combination of just-right spices and seasonings. But Jaffrey is determined to simplify some of those recipes for you here, and even promises to “hold your hand through the entire process with clear instructions and detailed explanations.” How can you turn away from such an enticing offer as that?
My tummy’s already rumbling again … Salmon in a Bengali Mustard Sauce, Everyday Moong Dal, Green Lentils with Green Bean and Cilantro, Peach Salad, all enhanced by the perfect cup of Masala Chai … read and eat. Read and eat some more … mmmm, mmmmm, mmmmmmm …
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Nonfiction, Bangladeshi, Indian, Indian American, Pakistani, Sri Lankan
Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry edited by Neelajana Banerjee, Summi Kaipa, and Pireeni Sundaralingam
The title – Indivisible – the editors explain, is “a word taken from the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.” Through the 49 diverse American voices represented here with roots in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, Indivisible explores “[t]he issue of whether unity and pluralism may be reconciled …” The editors starkly remind that in a post-9/11 world, the “voices [of many South Asian American poets] had been diminished by the tide of anti-Muslim and xenophobic sentiment arising after the attacks.” Given the recent Quran burning threats and the ongoing debates over who is welcomed as Ground Zero’s potential neighbors, that oppressive tide unfortunately remains challenging at best.
Regardless, creative expression will not be stemmed. Through many years of devoted labor, three tenacious editors – Neela Banerjee is a journalist, fiction writer, and editor; Summa Kaipa is a literary curator, psychologist, and magazine editor; and Pireeni Sundaralingam is a playwright, literary judge, and scientist – have created a remarkable collection that pays homage to a “multiplicity of languages, cultures, and faiths” while acknowledging the “inherent contradictions in grouping together writers of such differing backgrounds.”
Established, award-winning writers such as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Vijay Seshadri, Amitava Kumar, and Meena Alexander, mix experiences with younger, break-out voices including Srikanth Reddy and Shailja Patel. From Reetika Vazirani’s search for elusive glamour in her prose poem “From the Postcard at Vertigo Bookstore in D.C.,” to Tanuja Mehrotra’s borderless memories laid bare in “A Song for New Orleans,” to Sejal Shah’s lost road trip through “Independence, Iowa,” to Sundaralingam’s own unique snowflake discovery in “Vermont, 1885,” these category-defying, form-pushing works criss-cross the country, searching, watching, discovering, being …
Lucky for us as we enjoy the journeys …
Tidbit: Co-editor Pireeni Sundaralingam makes her Smithsonian debut at SALTAF 2010 this Saturday, November 13. She’ll be sharing the stage with award-winning Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni … and me as their moderator. Uh-oh …
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins
Inspired by three years of living in Thailand with her family and visiting refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border, Mitali Perkins’ latest novel follows the lives of two boys on opposite sides of a war they have inherited.
City-educated Chiko feels compelled to apply for a government teaching position in hopes of supporting his mother while the two wait for news of his doctor father who has been imprisoned for resisting the Burmese government. When he goes to city hall to apply, he’s abducted with other young boys and taken far into the mountains to be trained as a soldier. Chiko’s academic lifestyle has not prepared him for the physical challenges of fighting life, but he makes quick friends with homeless orphan boy Tai whose street smarts just might save them both …
Tu Reh takes over the story’s narration midway through, as he must decide the fate of the seriously injured Chiko. Tu Reh is a Karenni boy soldier, a member of one of the many ethnic tribes that challenge the rule of the corrupt Burmese government. Out for his first mission with his hero father, the group finds Chiko is the only survivor of a mine blast. Tu Reh’s father quickly bandages Chiko, then puts his fate into his son’s hands – take him to the nearby healer and save his life, or leave him to die.
Both Chiko and Tu Reh are mere boys, learning as best as they can amidst inhuman, unjust conditions not of their making. But somehow, someone has instilled them with morals and goodness strong enough to counter the fighting and hatred, regardless of the imminent threat to kill or be killed … indeed, while these children have inherited war, they’re the only hope of somehow, someday ending the violence.
Perkins adds a pertinent end chapter, “About Modern Burma,” which warns of the unfortunate situation of the majority of the Karenni people even now. In her “Author’s Note,” she wisely asks her readers the toughest questions, “What would you do if your mother was hungry and your only option to feed her was to fight in the army? What if you saw soldiers burning your home and farm while you ran for your life?” In spite of such tragic, horrifying experiences, both Chiko and Tu Reh manage to find their human spirit beyond vengeful reactions … others in Perkins’ story certainly do not. She gently but encouragingly offers resources to those who “want to promote peace and democracy in Burma or help refugees fleeing from that country” at www.bamboopeople.org.
Read Chiko’s and Tu Reh’s story. Learn how young Nya Meh learned to forgive the worst atrocities a young girl could ever face and chose instead to heal others. And how Chiko’s father never forgot the kindness of his childhood Karenni friend. And how grandfather implores the hot-headed others, “If we give way to hatred, we won’t be any better than our enemies.”
Join in. Let peace start today, one reader at a time …
To check out Mitali Perkins’ many other titles on BookDragon, click here.
Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, Burmese, Indian American
Migritude by Shailja Patel
Given the sheer number of books that arrive in the mailbox, I rarely pick up a title and start reading immediately. But something about Migritude (debuting from fabulous indie publisher Kaya Press: ‘Smokin’ Hot Books’!!) demanded ‘read me NOW!’ Once opened, I could hardly put it down.
Shailja Patel defies easy check-it boxes. She’s not quite African because even after multiple generations in Kenya where she was born and raised, ‘brown’ people can’t feel safe as they watch their Ugandan neighbors violently expelled during Idi Amin’s reign of terror. She’s not at all Indian as she’s never lived there in spite of Gujarati relatives. She’s definitely not British in spite of her UK college education. And she’s not quite American as real Americans are never made to wait a frightening four hours for parents to emerge through customs after they have been held without cause.
Her artist’s life, too, is not easily defined. She’s a poet, storyteller, performance artist, activist … and her first book reflects her hybrid, morphing creativity: ”A battered red suitcase holds my trousseau – 18 saris collected by my mother, to give to me when I married,” Patel begins. “Migritude is the mantra that unlocks the suitcase, releases the stories.” She’s a peripatetic migrant with attitude to spare … welcome to Patel’s unique Migritude.
Those once hidden stories debuted to live audiences in 2006 and became a globe-trotting performance that combines the price of colonial history, family chronicles, mother/daughter exchanges, personal journey, and voices of women from around the world who dared speak out. From the imperialist commodification of Kashmiri into cashmere, mosuleen into muslin, ambi into paisley, the rebirth of chai as “a beverage invented in California,” Patel breaks open violent, destructive history, both distant and far too near.
To her performance recorded in ink and paper comprising the book’s first quarter, Patel adds a companion “Shadow Book,” which she describes as “an extended debrief with an old friend: an accounting of behind-the-scenes and after-the-fact stories, memories, and associations … to illuminate Migritude by offering context.”
In the third section, Patel includes the “poems [that] are the soil in which Migritude germinated” – from “What We Keep” that gives voice to a fragile elderly aunt teaching her to make “good puris,” to “Eater of Death” in which a desperate Afghani mother mourns her husband and seven children murdered by American bombs.
In the final, shortest section, Patel includes an “idiosyncratic” chronology of political and personal history, and ends with two interviews because “[a] good interview, like a good poem, throws up surprises and discoveries for its participant as well as for its readers.”
Lucky readers are certainly in for ‘surprises and discoveries’ here. Close the book and your first reaction most likely will be ‘I WANT TO SEE!’ Stay tuned: her skeletal website as of this writing is still under construction, but surely a tour schedule will be included … see you at the theater!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb by Amitava Kumar
If Rip Van Winkle were to read A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb upon waking, he would most likely shake his head and dismiss it as farce.
Alas, you’ll only find this title in the “non-fiction” section of bookstores and libraries; it’s published by an esteemed academic press and written by a respected professor of English at an elite American college. Indeed, “truth is stranger than fiction,” and “you just can’t make this stuff up.” (Although, coincidentally, journalist/novelist/poet/professor Amitava Kumar also had a novel – Nobody Does the Right Thing – published on the same day as Foreigner.)
Novel aside, Foreigner is part contemporary history, part investigative journalism, part political treatise, part memoir – and an absolute must-read. My greatest fear is that the readers who most need to read this book will not.
Kumar is an excellent storyteller. He’s also immensely convincing. Drawing on his vast, voracious knowledge of literature, film, television, and breaking headlines, Kumar makes a case that post-9/11 fear has created a not-so-brave new world of bullies and fools.
Moving fluidly between his adopted U.S. home and his birthplace of India – another country altered by concerns over terrorism – Kumar carefully exposes what he sees as the senseless abuse of power justified by the “war on terror”: “[M]uch of my reportage here is in the service of presenting the anti-terrorism state as the biggest bungler,” Kumar writes in his acknowledgements as he thanks “the non-experts,” “the losers,” and “the small people.”
Kumar first focuses on two ineffectual men, each of whom he classifies as an “accidental terrorist.” He demonstrates in rich detail the ways in which both men were victims of legal entrapment, more guilty of stupidity than actual terrorism, manipulated into crime by others who were mostly concerned with saving themselves in the eyes of an already nervous US government.
The first “accidental terrorist” is Hemant Lakhani, a nearly-70-year-old failed businessman with delusions of grandeur, who was convicted of trying to sell a missile to a would-be terrorist. The missile was a dud, shipped to a New Jersey hotel room by the FBI, and brokered by a “terrorist” who proved to be FBI informant Habib Rehman. Rehman – also a failed businessman – had considerable debts, a self-confessed track record as a liar, and a history of tax evasion. His handsome salary was funded by US taxpayers.
The second terrorist manqué is Shawahar Matin Siraj, a 24-year-old Pakistani American, convicted of conspiring to bomb a NYC subway station. Kumar wryly questions the validity of “prosecut[ing] an individual as a bomber when there is no bomb on the scene.” The lead witness against the unsophisticated Siraj – who is caught on tape insisting on “No killing” and wants to “ask [his] mother’s permission” – was Osama Eldawoody, an Egyptian-born nuclear engineer. Eldawoody was paid $100,000 by the New York Police Department to spy on fellow mosque-goers in Brooklyn and Staten Island. He became an informant via the FBI who literally arrived at his front door because a neighbor reported “suspicious-looking packages on the doorway” (clothing purchased online). The unemployed Eldawoody just “wanted to help.” [... click here for more]
Review: Christian Science Monitor, August 17, 2010
Readers: Adult
Published: 2010 Continue reading
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