50books_poc | Entries tagged with indian-british

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee is a mystery written by a Scot of Bengali descent, taking place in 1919 Calcutta: "Desperate for a fresh start, Captain Sam Wyndham arrives to take up an important post in Calcutta’s police force." I agree with this book's politics but it really shows that the author had never written a novel before, in particular in the dialogue. Characters speak their subtext or otherwise exposit in that "unrealistically monologue coherently about national politics for six paragraphs" kind of way. I am a little interested in reading the next books in the series, because maybe the writing will improve.

spiralsheep.livejournal.com

6, 7, & 8. Three poetry collections by Moniza Alvi: Carrying My Wife, A Bowl of Warm Air, and The Country At My Shoulder (all three collections are available together in an omnibus also called "Carrying My Wife"). I have to admit, out of about 150 poems, there were three that did anything for me. I mostly found the expression of content incomprehensible, possibly due to the author reaching for innovative imagery, and the aesthetics of form uninteresting, but she's a comparatively popular mainstream Establishment poet so my judgement is extremely questionable (and I haven't heard her read her own work live). There are two of the poems, which did speak to me, at my dw journal.

9. The Redbeck* Anthology of British South Asian Poetry, edited by Debjani Chatterjee, is a nearly 200 page collection with a wide variety of content and style, which I enjoyed. There are two example poems at my dw journal and a third example poem but, of course, three poems can't reflect the breadth (or depth) of this anthology.

* I keep misreading it as "Redneck". ::facepalm::

10. The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan didn't appeal to me visually as much as the previous Tan books I've perused but the gist, that it's more important to be happy than to fit in, is another good theme, especially for kids.

Note to tag wranglers: "british-asian" and/or "british-south-asian" is correct usage and, yes, some of the authors (and/or their subjects) are also caribbean / african / &c.

Tags: women writers, poetry, anthologies, asian, british-asian, pakistan, britain, british, caribbean, african, bangladesh, india, indian, indian-british, pakistani, bangladeshi, pakistani-british, bangladeshi-british, british-south-asian, asian-australian, australian, chinese-australian, picture books

tala-tale.livejournal.com

"Gifted" by Nikita Lalwani. ( Read more... )

"Girl Made of Dust" by Nathalie Abi-Ezzi. ( Read more... )

"Song for Night" by Chris Abani. ( Read more... )

bulliciosa.livejournal.com

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

( Interpreter of Maladies: Jhumpa Lahiri )

holyschist.livejournal.com

I haven't been doing as well about either reviewing or cross-posting as I'd like, but here are some books I've read in the last few months:

( SF, fantasy, historical fiction, and contemporary fiction--mostly young adult--7 reviews )

(Additional Tags: Muscogee Creek Nation)

glinda-penguin.livejournal.com

9.After Dark - Haruki Murakami
If this book was a film, it'd be a film noir and in french. They'd film it in New York or Tokyo or maybe even London but everyone would be speaking French and making existential asides. It's a tale of love and hate, inexplicable events and incomprehensible motives. It leaves the reader going, yes but why and how? But that's not really important, it's enigmatic yet engaging and strangely that's enough. I could imagine a Raymond Chandler-esque voiceover talking about 'the city' as I read this and for all that the story was set in Tokyo it could have been anywhere, any big faceless city after the trains have stopped running and the night people seeped out of the shadows. Perhaps it struck me more because the last few books I'd read before it had been Chinese and had a very strong sense of place, that in contrast the location of this story felt very maleable and interchangeable. I'm not sure but that was certainly my impression.

10.The Enchantress of Florence - Salmon Rushdie
I like Salman Rushdie's books but there's just something about them that stops me from loving them whole-heartedly. The Enchantress of Florence is labyrinthine in plot and gorgeously intricately detailed in terms of historical and cultural settings and touches. Many of the locations and anecdotes were described so clearly that I could picture them clearly in my head. It looses momentum in the middle somewhat, though it picks up again towards the end (first half definitely better than the second). Maybe just the story the protagonist tells has been built up so much, and is strung out so much by him that it can't live up to its reputation? It's a good book certainly, I just can't shake the feeling that it could have been better.

11.Same Earth - Kei Miller
This was something of a relief after all the tomes I've been reading lately, I devoured this little book on the commute to my temp job in only two days. Which is always nice when your pile of library books is starting to look threatening. I really enjoyed the style this book's written in, there was a real lightness of touch to the way it dealt with complex issues without leaving the reader bogged down by them. The use of language (the vernacular if you will) seems to give it a life and a character all of its own, as though the force of the characters' personality has shaped the very language to their will, made it do extra work. Strangely it reminded me of poems and stories I read at school in Scots: all Calvinist hypocrisy and tales of wee villages loosing their sons and daughters first to the city and then disappearing across the Atlantic in search of a better life... (Though, maybe, that's actually the point he's trying to make about us all being on the same earth) No doubt that helped me warm to the story, but it is nonetheless charming, if a little idiosyncratic and I enjoyed it.

12.The Glass Palace - Amitav Ghosh
One of my hopes for this challenge was to find new authors to love, and I knew by the time I was half-way through The Hungry Tide that I wanted to read everything Amitav Ghosh had ever written. The Glass Palace is completely different from that book but I loved it nonetheless. There's one of those review blurbs on the front of the copy I read that calls it Dr Zhivago for the Indian subcontinent, and while I haven't actually read Dr Zhivago that description probably gives you the idea of the epic scale of this book. Personally I love big historical epics especially ones where the author has a personal investment in the events. Also I tend to avoid those kind of books set outside of Europe due to all the skeevy colonial issues, but the advantage of this book is that it unpacks a lot of those issues in really interesting and helpful ways. I would have liked a bit more on early post-Independence India given how much we get earlier on about Uma's involvement in the Independence movement but I wouldn't have traded the Burma in the 90s section for that even if those 50 years in between seem a tad skimmed over.

Suggested Tags: Indian, Jamaican, Japanese, Indian-british

glinda-penguin.livejournal.com

I've been holding off on posting for a while as I had four books by Chinese authors out of the library and I wanted to review them all together. However, Beijing Coma is really interesting but really long so it'll be a while before I finish that and I have other books to write up.

In the Pond - Ha Jin

( Read more... )

Wild Ginger - Anchee Min

( Read more... )

The Garlic Ballads - Mo Yan

( Read more... )

Haroun and the Sea of Stories - Salmon Rushdie

( Read more... )

Low Fat Meals in Minutes - Ainsley Harriott

( Read more... )

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

Mourning his mother’s death and suffering from midlife crisis, food fanatic Simon Majumdar decides to eat his way around the world for a year. The result is an uneven but always entertaining episodic memoir of his adventures. At worst, it’s perfunctorily written and peppered with national stereotyping (“with typical Latin-American machismo...”) At best, as when he writes about his food-obsessed Welsh-Bengali family or provides precisely detailed snapshots of people he meets on the way, it’s funny and sweet.

He visited a number of places I’m familiar with, giving me that “HI BOB!” feeling one gets when one sees a movie shot in one’s hometown, though he usually went off on some path that didn’t touch on what I expected him to write about: in Santa Cruz he spends the entire trip having Thanksgiving dinner at someone’s house, and in Hong Kong he seeks out obscure restaurants only to invariably find that Anthony Bourdain got there first. (Hate to tell you, Simon, but Anthony Bourdain also visited the yakitori joints in Ueno that you enjoyed so much.) I was amused to note that in Xi’an he too was dragged to the touristy dumpling restaurant that shapes the dumplings into walnuts, geese, goldfish, etc – and since he did not say one word about their flavor, I assume he too was underwhelmed.

It’s not a great food memoir, but it is a fun one.

Eat My Globe: One Year to Go Everywhere and Eat Everything

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

33. Gautam Malkani, Londonstani

This book was wonderful. The narrator is Jas, who used to be a bit of a geek, but now is very determined to be a true hard South Asian man, and the story is told through his inner monologue, complete with his worries with trying to fit in and learn the right slang. The slang gives the story so much rhythm and distinctiveness; it was really enjoyable to read. The beginning of the book seemed slow- lots of scenes about Jas and his crew hanging out, checking out ladies, getting into fights, making small-time trouble with stolen cellphones- but when the plot started to develop, it took off very quickly, bringing together threads I hadn't even noticed where developing.

Despite the very fun, rollicking plot, there are a lot of big themes developed: how tradition becomes tradition, cultural appropriation, youth rebellion and mainstream culture, the choices people make in terms of understanding culture. And the end! I did not see the end coming at all, but it makes me want to reread the entire book to look at it with that knowledge. I thought it worked really well with the themes of the book.

Very recommended!

Current Mood: busy

anitabuchan.livejournal.com

14. Out of India: An Anglo-Indian Childhood by Jamila Gavin

Out of India is an autobiographical account of Jamila Gavin's childhood. She's the daughter of an English mother and an Indian father, both teachers and Christian missionaries. She grew up in India, first visiting England at 5, before settling there aged 11, experiencing life in England during and after WW2, and life in India during the struggles for independence and the Partition. However, as this is a book for children, she doesn't go too deeply into any of these events, instead describing day-to-day life for her and her family. And she's good as descriptions: they're beautiful and evocative.

I enjoyed it, and I think it would be a very good read for children in the right age group.

15. Bindi Babes by Narinder Dhami

Bindi Babes is about three sisters, the coolest girls at their school. Everyone loves them, even the teachers, and it's entirely possible that if anything happened to any of them, the world would end. At first, I did wonder if they were the biggest Mary Sues ever, but after reading for a bit I started to think that Dhami was just having fun. All three sisters are very self-absorbed and more than a little conceited, but funny enough to just about get away with it.

The story focuses on what happens when their aunt arrives from India, determined to stop their dad spoiling them (as he has been doing since their mother's death). Meanwhile, at school, an Ofsted inspection is coming up and making the teachers panic. The aunt was the character I liked the most, and I have to admit I loved the scenes where she foiled the girls' plans to get rid of her.

16. Dead Gorgeous by Malorie Blackman

Nova's parents own a hotel, where they live with Nova, her sister Rainbow, and their little brothers. Nova's unhappy with her life, jealous of her older sister, and suffering from bulimia. Then she sees a gorgeous boy in the lobby: Liam. Ten years ago, Liam stormed out of his house after an argument with his dad. Now, he's a ghost, trapped in the hotel.

Dead Gorgeous is sometimes funny and sometimes sad. It's got lots of great (and mysterious!) characters, all with their own problems and issues. I liked that it wasn't a romance, but instead focused on family (Nova and Rainbow, Liam and his brother, all of them and their parents). I like most of Malorie Blackman's books, but I think this is one of my favourites by her.

cyphomandra.livejournal.com

Filippo Veroneo is the youngest son of a family of jewellers in seventeenth century Venice; his father left for Hindustan before he was born and is believed dead, but the family have never entirely given up on him. His father’s masterpiece, the Ocean of the Moon, is a pendant containing a 55 carat diamond that Filippo’s mother keeps hidden; Filippo’s older sister’s husband has lost money in business, and wants the pendant, but at the same time news finally comes that Filippo’s father is alive, imprisoned, and can be freed in exchange for the diamond…

I really enjoyed the first hundred pages of this, with lots of charging around Venice, jewels, and family politics – the Veroneos are an interesting bunch. And then it all fell apart on me, and I ended up with something I really didn’t enjoy reading, which was disappointing after such a great beginning. I’ve read Coram Boy (also by Gavin) and it was a while back, but I think I had a similar but milder problem with one of the plot elements there. This actually makes me more likely to track down another one of her books (although I will stick to library versions) to see if it’s a consistent problem. Because obviously all my book reviews are conducted according to rigid scientific principles…

( spoilers. )

Anyway. Possibly I am just the wrong reader, or reading at the wrong time. Basically, I wanted to either hang around Venice when the book left or else do remarkably different things with the same set of characters, but this reaction is idiosyncratic enough that I wouldn’t necessarily discourage anyone else from reading it.

anitabuchan.livejournal.com

I've spent the last few days at the Hay book festival, and this is one of the books I got there (and went to the connected panel). 'Free?' is a collection of poems and short stories by children's writers, each one inspired one of the articles from the Declaration of Human Rights. The ones by POC authors are below.

( After the Hurricane by Rita Williams-Garcia, inspired by article 13. )

( Uncle Meena by Ibtisam Baraket, inspired by article 18. )

( Searching for a Two-Way Street by Malorie Blackman, inspired by article 19. )

( Jojo Leans to Dance by Meja Mwanji, inspired by article 21. )

( Wherever I Lay Down My Head by Jamila Gavin, inspired by article 22. )

Overall, I loved this and would recommend it to anyone, child or adult. Aside from the authors above it has stories from Michael Morpurgo, Eoin Colfer, David Almond, Patrica McCormick, Roddy Doyle, Theresa Breslin, Ursula Dubosarky, Sarah Mussi, and Margaret Mahy. Almost all feature CoC. Also, it's published by Amnesty International, so by buying it you'll benefit them.

kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com

Title: Londonstani
Author: Gautam Malkani
Number of Pages: 343 pages
My Rating: 4/5

Jas used to be a geek, but now he has new friends and he's desperate to fit in, rejecting mainstream white British culture in favor of all things Indian and gangsta-rap-related.

Reading this reminded me a lot of reading Trainspotting, not just because they're both written entirely in slang and dialect, though that was the first thing that pinged me as similar. Renton's decision not to "choose life" is very similar to Jas and co's attitude. They've all failed their A levels and would rather get rich stealing phones and spend the money on fancy clothes and stuff than be "productive members of society".

I enjoyed this a lot, though I was unfortuntely spoiled for the ending due to the fact that at one point when I flipped to the back to see how many pages there were, I accidentally saw a very spoilery bit.

It's hard to talk about the book without talking about the spoiler, so I'll just say it's really enjoyable and I liked it a lot. And as for spoilery stuff (highlight to read), I thought it was great, but at the same time I feel like it was trying a little too hard. There are some bits I find it pretty unbelievable that no one would say "dude, you're white" or at least look at him funny. Overall Jas just seems to be lying by omission and never mentioning to the reader that he's white, so I don't think I'm supposed to think he lied about people's reactions or how conversations went, idk.

The author has some Q&A stuff on his website where talks about the spoiler as well as his reasons for some other stuff, and one of the things he says is (highlight to read) that he wanted to write a book for people who don't normally read, which is why Sanjay was such an over-the-top villain. The Sanjay plotline was probably the main thing that kept me from giving it a five, especially his long "I'm am the villain, here let me stand here for five minutes and give you a monologue on my evil plans" speech and the fact that the whole thing with him and Jas's dad's shop just felt really contrived. So I'm not sure how I feel about people writing books for people who don't normally read, since chances are people who do read a lot are actually going to be the ones reading.

Mooch from BookMooch

puritybrown.livejournal.com

7: Indian Summer by Pratima Mitchell

YA fiction. Sarla is the London-born-and-raised daughter of a career-oriented TV reporter; when her mother is assigned to a warzone during her school holidays, she's furious at first because their plans to travel together have been destroyed, but soon comes up with an alternative: she can spend the summer with her grandparents in northern India. Her mother's not super enthusiastic about this, and Sarla can tell that there's something going on between her mother and her grandparents, but she goes anyway, and meets Bina, the granddaughter of her grandparents' chief servants. Bina's mother is nowhere to be seen, and the area is troubled by rumours of guerillas, and of Shobharani Devi, the deified bandit queen of the hills...

I loved this book. It's got its moments of humour, but for the most part it's a serious exploration of poverty, corruption, class division, family secrets, friendship, and the cultural gap between British-born Indians and those who actually live in India. Sarla is slightly spoiled, as the contrast between her situation and Bina's makes clear; she suffers a few uncomfortable moments when she's made aware of her privilege as a well-off Western-born girl, and of the limits of her perspective. Bina can be quite harsh with her and there are times when Sarla almost bullies Bina -- without really meaning to, just by the sheer force of her personality. Sarla takes her own assertiveness for granted, which Bina envies; as a servant-class girl with a shameful secret, she's been taught to hold back all her life. Yet despite the contrasts and conflicts between them, they develop a very warm and touching friendship and learn a lot from each other. Highly recommended.

8: Ten Things I Hate About Me by Randa Abdel-Fatteh

This has been reviewed a lot on this comm, and I don't have much to add to other people's comments. It was funny; it was touching; the plot was a bit overly predictable and the resolution a bit pat; overall, I enjoyed it, but not as much as Indian Summer.

9: Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Oh. Ohhhh. Oh, how I wish I could have read this when I was 14.

I've been hearing Jillian Tamaki's name cited positively in connection with comics for ages, but this is the first time I've ever actually read anything of hers; she drew this graphic novel from her cousin Mariko's script. (Mariko also wrote Emiko Superstar, a GN from the late lamented Minx line.) And it is wonderful. I am slightly biased because, race and geography aside, this could have been about me in a lot of ways. But it's not just empathy that drives my love of this graphic novel: it is just so damned good.

"Skim" is the nickname of Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a quiet, overweight, not-terribly-confident Japanese-Canadian 16-year-old who goes to a Catholic girls' school, wants to be a Wiccan witch, and is painfully in love with Ms Archer, her English teacher. Skim is narrated by her diary entries, complete with stricken-out false starts; there's a gap between what happens and what Kim thinks about what happens, and what she wants to think about what happens, that is handled so deftly you won't even notice the Tamakis are doing anything unusual. But they are; narration in comics is usually just another way of moving the story on, not the careful layering of perception, desire and reality that's going on here. Allied to that is the careful placing of the art: Kim is an astute observer of others, but doesn't push herself forward, and the way the panels move from one slightly off-centre image to another embodies perfectly that way of hanging back and looking at everything, but never too directly in case you get caught staring.

And I'm being all coherent here when what I really want to do is draw hearts around the Tamakis' names and send them embarrassingly gushy emails about how awesome Skim is. It's so honest and so real and so compassionate and so wise and so beautifully drawn and so amazingly written and I was Kim (...not in every way, obviously, but in several very important ways), and I love it to bits and pieces. I want every library in the world to have a copy of this book. I want every queer teenager in the world to have a copy of this book. It's just that good.

anitabuchan.livejournal.com

5. Life isn't all Ha Ha Hee Hee by Meera Syal

I'm a big fan of Meera Syal, so I pretty much knew I would like this. Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee revolves around three thirty-something British Indian women, Tania, Sunita and Chila. They're about as different as they can be, but all are strong, well-rounded characters. I liked Sunita and Chila very much. Tania, I started off liking most, which then turned to dislike, then pity, before going back to like.

I love Syal's descriptions, which made it easy to imagine this vivid blend of British and Indian culture. It didn't make me laugh out loud, but it was funny - not in a cracking jokes way, just in the observations made about various characters. I also liked the ending very much. I don't want to ruin it, but I was left feeling happy with how the three characters had changed throughout the book.

6. Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Amal has just decided to start wearing the hijab full time. She goes to a posh school and knows that most of the people there will react badly. I didn't like this book as much as I liked her second book (10 Things I Hate About Me), but I still mostly enjoyed it. I liked the characters, I liked the multicultural world Amal lived in. But it wasn't a 'can't put it down' book. I sometimes wondered where the plot was going, or why I was still reading - for a section of the book there was very little suspense. Then something happened that caught my interest again. I think this is a good book in need of a better editor - Abdel-Fattah's a good writer, but this could have been improved.

7. Bindis and Brides by Nisha Minhas

Zarleena, who has recently escaped from an abusive marriage, bumps into a man (Joel) at the supermarket, and agrees to help him cook an Indian meal for his one night stand. Except the reason she does so is that he tells her it's for his fiancee, in order to prove his love. Various misunderstandings ensue, Joel proves himself a good guy after all, they all live HEA (except the abusive ex-husband, of course). I loved the writing style, and found it sometimes very funny. But I also had some serious issues. ( Spoilers. )

puritybrown.livejournal.com

5: Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
6: Londonstani by Gautam Malkani

So, okay, I like Jhumpa Lahiri. I really do. And I do plan to read her novel The Namesake (I loved the film version). But at some point while I was reading the stories in Unaccustomed Earth, I started to get impatient. I mean to say, there are only so many beautifully-crafted short stories about upper-middle-class high-caste Hindu Bengali heterosexual academics having wistful epiphanies about life as a second-generation Indian living in a city on the East Coast of the USA that I can read before I start wondering whether she can do anything else. I'd like to say I'm exaggerating, but, seriously, that's all she ever writes about! She does it beautifully, but halfway through Unaccustomed Earth I found myself longing for a story about a gay upper-middle-class high-caste Hindu Bengali academic having a wistful epiphany about life as a second-generation Indian living in a city on the East Coast of the USA. Or a lower-middle-class high-caste Hindu Bengali heterosexual having a wistful epiphany und so weiter. I mean, I kind of get the feeling that I could recreate a fairly accurate account of Lahiri's childhood and her parents' experiences moving to the US just on the basis of her stories, and while it never gets self-indulgent the way a lot of disguised autobiography does, it does get repetitive. I still like her writing, but if she doesn't start trying something different, she's in danger of growing stale.

So, anyway, after Unaccustomed Earth I felt the need for something that showed a different side of the Indian-diaspora experience, so I picked up Londonstani by Gautam Malkani. This was a good choice for two reasons:
a) it could not be more different than Jhumpa Lahiri's stories; and
b) it's really really really good.

Londonstani is a roller-coaster of a ride through saaarf London rudeboy gangsta territory: our main man is Jas, who used to be, in his own words, "a gimpy fuck", but now he hangs out with Hardjit (used to be Harjit but now it's got a D in 'cos he's well hard, innit?) and Ravi and Amit, ridin around in Ravi's mum's Beemer an checkin out all da fit ladies.

Erm, sorry. As you can tell, it's written (mostly) in phonetic dialect, which is incredibly hard to pull off, and Malkani does it beautifully, so much so that 20 pages in I was saying "innit?" at the end of every other sentence (at least in my head). It's funny and real and vivid and rattles along at a breathtaking pace; I laughed a lot reading this book, and towards the end I cried. The final twist is one of those did-not-see-it-coming things that makes all the little gaps in the narrative make sense. This book is brilliant.

b-writes.livejournal.com

This was one of my favorite books in high school and I had originally not intended to re-read it for this, but I watched the 1993 BBC miniseries starring Naveen Andrews and decided I needed to revisit the book.

The Buddha of Suburbia is about lots of things; it's about living through divorce, about coming of age, about the gulf between what you think you need and what you really do need, and the still wider gulf between those things and what you actually want.

"My name is Karim Amir," the book begins, "and I am an Englishman born and bread, almost."

Our narrator and protagonist's charismatic, engaging voice carries us through the novel's ups and downs. It's the 70's sexual revolution, and Karim's family is falling apart. Karim isn't sure what he wants to do with his life, and he spends the first half of the novel drifting around England, trying to find love and get laid, though perhaps not in that order. Karim is witty and sly, and not always as clever as he thinks himself to be.

Re-reading it as an adult, I found it a sadder book, and some of the racism Karim encountered became more obvious (Karim himself rarely notes it explicitly). But I still laughed out loud at some parts, and Hanif Kureishi has a warm, engaging voice. (The BBC series is pretty good too, though I'm not sure how it feels if you come to it before reading the book; Kureishi, who also wrote My Beautiful Launderette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, worked on the adaptation.)

kouredios.livejournal.com

I found this community by way of the RaceFail posts, and I'm inordinately happy to be able to contribute something positive other than listening, which I've been doing since January.

These first four books aren't new to me--they are books that I'm currently teaching in the 11th/12th grade English class I teach at a local charter school, the first two of which I have taught many times before as a graduate student TA at UMass Amherst. As such, I'm not sure I'm going to count them towards my 50, but I wanted to post them for others' benefit.

( Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart )

( Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories )

( Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis )

( Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner )
That's it, from me, for now.

emma-in-oz.livejournal.com

#23 - Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System (2007)

Patel brings together all the sides of food production, distribution and consumption - the exploitation of farmers in the developing world, ditto in the developed world, ditto of the environment, the tight grip of big companies, the poor service of supermarkets, malnutrition and obesity. Not a happy read but an interesting one.