Not so Exceptional
When I was 30, a well-intentioned, non-Indian adult suggested I write a letter to my mother, let her know how she had made me feel for decades – get it all out. I smiled and said, Indian daughters don’t do...
Diaspora
Crazy Rich Nigerians
Among the flurry of novels set in Nigeria of late is The Nigerwife. It stands out because the author is neither Nigerian nor Caucasian, but is a Black English writer, Vanessa Walter. Based on her own experience living in Lagos,...
Translation – facilitor of peace? And/or an act of betrayal?
Amusingly, Kuang feels the need to begin this 540+ page novel with an author’s note on her representation of Oxford university. Accurately, she says, The trouble with writing an Oxford novel is that anyone who has spent time at Oxford...
Immigrant & Internal Pressures
The myth of the model minority has bedeviled Asian-Americans for decades: they are supposed to be the high achievers who bootstrapped themselves through American society, and are held up as role models for other immigrant groups. Prachi Gupta’s family seemed...
Grief, loss and squash
It is always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a debut South Asian woman writer, so I was very pleased to give this novel, which had been shortlisted for the 2023 Booker, a try. It begins with 11 year...
Jaffna Eyes
Let me tell you about dark men with white smiles, these Tamil men I loved and who belonged with me. In my house there were four of them. Each of my brothers resembled my father in a different way. All...
Swimming in fraught waters
Set as it is in an upscale American suburb and focusing on the few nonwhite residents, this first novel may remind readers of Celeste Ng’s Little Flowers Everywhere, but to my mind, Vibhuti Jain’s Our Best Intentions tackles a complex...
Murder noir, by the Tiger Mother
Amy Chua burst into popular public consciousness with her third book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. An memoir about her strict Chinese-parenting approach, the book was both wildly entertaining and wildly controversial. Her next book also created controversy:...
Una Vida Entera
Right from the first, I was totally charmed by this book, and also right from the first, I realised what a slim volume I was holding in my hands, and despaired that it is just not going to last very...
With the blessings of Janus
This is one of those novels which features a protagonist designed to be unlikeable. From the outset, June (Junie, Juniper) Song Hayward is openly envious of her friend and colleague, Athena Liu. The two girls knew each other in Yale,...
Black and British and a teenager
Having been widely acclaimed on the Black British Writing scene for I Am Not Your Baby Mother and Sista Sister, which dealt with the challenges of being a young black woman in modern day urban Britain, I expected good things...
The first South Asian American
In the early 1600s, America was vast and Europeans had a tenuous foothold in Jamestown, Virginia. To encourage immigration, every Englishman who brought a servant or bonded labourer to America was ‘given’ 50 acres of land. One of the Englishmen...
“It is simply mine. And that is what matters.”
When this collection came out in 2009, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was already well known from the excellent Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, but had not yet published the wonderful Americanah. This collection, This Thing Around Your Neck,...
A Library of One’s Own
Imagine a weatherproofed box of books outside a house where anyone is free to stop by and pick up a book, drop off a book, or just browse. It is such a charming idea, and seems so community-minded and friendly....
Multiracial Britain
Adekoya is a Nigerian Polish man, married to a Nigerian woman, and who identifies strongly with his Christian faith too. These identity factors are important to him, he tells his readers. He sets out to investigate and tell the story...
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