Oh Have I been BAD!
My friend, Lisa, recently chided me that SHE still looked at this website even if I never added anything to it! So today I am going to bust out a few of my recent favorites so she has something new to look at the next time she visits.
The latest in the series of books I have had to buy in multiple (because I am constantly giving them away) is The Hindi-Bindi Club by Monica Pradhan. This is both a multi-generational story and a multi-cultural story. It is written in the voices of 6 women - 3 daughters and 3 mothers. Now, all grown up, the entire lot of women tell their tales, giving the reader perspective that they themselves don't have. The writing is wonderful, humorous and serious in the right spots. The voices are all different, which makes the transition from one women to another much easier than it would seem to be. And the cherry on top is the entire book is sprinkled with recipes for classic and Americanized Indian dishes. I made the Chicken Curry and it was exactly what the book had me craving :) More than the recipes though I really enjoyed the history and perspective of the older generation. My Indian history is very sparse. But without lecturing, this book conveyed both the complications that occurred during the partition of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan and how women to who lived through and near that experience learned to relate. At some point the author points out that these Indian women, as we lump them in America, would never have been friends in India.... there they would have been too different, from far too varying backgrounds.
I don't want to scare you away here! The thrust of the book is the realtionships between women and there are many layers to explore.... the differences from within India, the differences in ages, the differences between the immigrant generation and the 1st generation (and in many ways, the differences of those 1st genners to native born Americans).
The latest in the series of books I have had to buy in multiple (because I am constantly giving them away) is The Hindi-Bindi Club by Monica Pradhan. This is both a multi-generational story and a multi-cultural story. It is written in the voices of 6 women - 3 daughters and 3 mothers. Now, all grown up, the entire lot of women tell their tales, giving the reader perspective that they themselves don't have. The writing is wonderful, humorous and serious in the right spots. The voices are all different, which makes the transition from one women to another much easier than it would seem to be. And the cherry on top is the entire book is sprinkled with recipes for classic and Americanized Indian dishes. I made the Chicken Curry and it was exactly what the book had me craving :) More than the recipes though I really enjoyed the history and perspective of the older generation. My Indian history is very sparse. But without lecturing, this book conveyed both the complications that occurred during the partition of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan and how women to who lived through and near that experience learned to relate. At some point the author points out that these Indian women, as we lump them in America, would never have been friends in India.... there they would have been too different, from far too varying backgrounds.
I don't want to scare you away here! The thrust of the book is the realtionships between women and there are many layers to explore.... the differences from within India, the differences in ages, the differences between the immigrant generation and the 1st generation (and in many ways, the differences of those 1st genners to native born Americans).
posted by Antigone | 1:46 PM
1 Comments:
I haven't been on a PC to leave a comment... but I was THRILLED to see you post this!!! The blogging world misses you!
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