Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents by Minal Hajratwala

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 430 pp. $26
Genre: Indian diaspora, memoir, travelogue, history, non-fiction,migration



Sorry it's taken me so long to come up with another review...I have been reading "Leaving India" by Minal Hajratwala and although it's not a door-stopper it's not one of those books you can speed up, hence the delay.

When I first heard about "Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents" by Minal Hajratwala, and what the publishers had to say about it -

Leaving India: My Family's Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents . Beginning with her great-grandfather Motiram's original flight from British-occupied India to Fiji, where he rose from tailor to department store mogul, Hajratwala follows her ancestors across the twentieth century to explain how they came to be spread across five continents and nine countries. Hajratwala ... (more)brings to light for the very first time the story of the Indian diaspora and its shaping by the historical forces of British colonialism, apartheid, Gandhi's Salt March, and American immigration policy. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

- I thought I would lap all of this up in one sitting...after all....being an Indian myself and with relatives all over the world this could have been my story...but after a great start I found myself easily bored with the book. I just felt there were too many detailed descriptions and anecdotes about far too many members of this humongous family, some of which were nice to read and others, downright boring. The part I liked the best was when Minal turns the microscope on herself and writes about her experience with racism in the US and her coming out to the world and her parents about being a lesbian. It was the part that touched me the most...such a pity I had to wait till the end to read it.

I think you will be well served to just listen to a couple of numerous interviews Hajratwalla has given NPR and other radio stations and, ofcourse, ifyou are still clamoring for more, there is always the book.

Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin

Publisher: Penguin

Date: 06 Mar 2006

Pages: 304

Genre: Non-fiction, travelogue, Politics, Burma







The condition of Burma, especially after the military crackdown on its revered monks in 1998 and more recently, a few of weeks ago, is a running sore on the face of democracy. Interestingly enough George Orwell seemed to know what was in store for Burma's future way back in 1948 when he wrote his dystopian novel "1984", or so Emma Larkin (a pseudonym) an American journalist seems to theorize in her travel memoir, "Finding George Orwell in Burma"

Larkin uses Orwell's book "Burmese Days" ( a fictional story but based on his experiences in Burma as a policeman in the British colonial service). to guide her through modern Burma (1995). She visits the same places that Orwell did collecting testimony from average Burmese laboring under a totalitarian regime and finds it, well, Orwellian.

In Burma there is always the feeling that you're "being watched", your conversations taped and your movements tracked. Political dissidents disappear completely, their names and lives simply vanishing from historical records. The State's brutal physical force includes torture, rape,beatings, forced relocation, destruction of villages and forced/slave labor. It also manipulates the emotional life of the Burmese people... its psychological power is so fierce that fear,paranoia and self-censorship threads through every conversation and gesture. All this makes George Orwell something of a prophet and Larkin is convinced (as are other Burmese citizens) that Orwell did not write just one book ("Burmese Days") about Burma's police state, but a trilogy that also includes Animal Farm and 1984.

Although Larkin uses Orwell's writing as a narrative hook, her book could easily stand alone as a travel, social and political commentary on modern Burma. Larkin's prose is quite wonderful and full of delicious observations of the Burmese people... their love of books, the tea shops where they gather to converse amid steaming cups of chai, their love of the cinema . We are treated to wonderful images of sugarcane juice vendors squeezing fresh cane through a mangle; people making daily visits to the neighborhood pagoda,where colorful shrines draped in garlands and candles dot the base of the building; market alleyways stacked high with multicolored longyis, silks and terracotta trunks and so much more, but the colorful images are lures as Larkin delivers a bracing dose of reality on the police state that is Burma.

(Burmese women traveling in a train)

Boy Monks in Burma
pic courtesy Asian Explorer

This book is a must-read for people interested in Burma. Thank you, Sanjay, for recommending it to me.

Update: I just heard from Penguin USA that Larkin is the guest author on their Blog this week. She recently returned from a couple of weeks in Burma and is writing about her experience and observations on the Buddhist monk protests and other Burma/Myanmar military regime crackdowns.

You can find her posts here

(I've closed comments because we recently discussed Burma and the Saffron Revolution here)

A Year Without Made in China: One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy by Sara Bongiorni

Publishers: Wiley

Hardcover/235 pages/June 2007

Genre: Non-Fiction/Memoir
/Business

Watch the author on You Tube







When my daughters were younger they played a game around the house. The rules were simple, the first player to name 10 things in the room NOT made in China was the winner. Let me tell you, it was one of the hardest games to win. It was then it dawned on me how China had crept into our home without us even realizing it.

When we read articles about sweatshops and forced labor in China, not to mention the recent news articles about tainted food from there, my husband and I will go tsk, tsk at the news, resolving to buy less from China, but, truth be told, when it comes to prices Chinese products win hands down every time. So when I saw that business writer Sarah Bongiorni had written a book (A Year Without "Made in China") on her family's boycott of Chinese goods for a whole year, I knew I had to read it!

On Jan1, 2005 Sarah Bongiorni decided that she and her family would go without buying any Chinese-manufactured products for one whole year. What they already owned would stay and gifts or loans were fair game. As anticipated, it was very tough trying to locate non-Chinese goods and when they did, they were asked to pay exorbitant prices. There's a wonderful chapter in the book which chronicles her search for a pair of sneakers for her 4-year old son Wes. Despite her best efforts she couldn't find a pair of non-Chinese white sneakers, finally she had to buy an Italian-made pair of sneakers online for $68...a steep hike from the usual $15 that she would have spent at Payless.




Here are a few things she and her husband learned about China:

1. Toys, electronics, lamps, footwear, holiday decorations and increasingly, furniture and clothing are consumer areas that are almost completely Chinese dominated.

2. Even when something is tagged as "made in America" it is quite likely that it is made up of Chinese components or comes in Chinese packaging.

3. A lot of people think that China makes only shoddy and cheap things, but, no, there are a lot of increasingly high-end products coming from there, including Barbie-shaped chocolates and even wedding dresses!

4.Broken appliances are liable to gather dust because the spare parts are all Chinese made.

5.Even celebrating the Fourth of July - with its fireworks, flags etc. - was next to impossible without Chinese made goods.

Finally she learns that a normal life without Chinese products isn't possible. That we are so deeply tied to China that I can't envision how we could step back now

The book is entertaining and reads at a fast pace. The author livens it up with hilarious anecdotes,conversations and mini lessons in global economy and creativity. She's funny, outspoken and when she becomes frustrated with the complexity of her task, which happens a lot, you get frustrated along with her. You come away realizing that going without Chinese goods is a herculean task...are you up to the challenge?

Personally, I would love to buy more non-Chinese products, but not at the expense of my sanity. There is a chapter in the book which describes how the Bongiorni house became infested with mice. Rather than buy easy Chinese-made mice traps, they set about placing narrow-mouthed plastic bottles containing bits of cookies and candy, all over the house hoping that the mice would come for the treats and stay trapped in the bottle. Me? I would have bought the traps regardless of where they were made.

So, I guess the question is, are you worried about China taking over your homes and if you are, are you prepared to do something to stop it if you think it can be stopped? Are the recent "tainted food" articles just what American businesses need to realize that they can capitalize on Chinese weaknesses? Let me know what you think.

28 Stories of AIDS in Africa by Stephanie Nolen,"Away From Her" and the winners of the booksprice.com prize.

Category: Current Affairs - International, Political;
Non-Fiction

Format: Hardcover, 416 pages

Publisher: Knopf Canada

Pub Date: April 24, 2007

Price: $34.95

Author's Website: www.28stories.com

Globe and Mail special feature on AIDS




A is for AIDS; B is for beautiful; C is for Chinua Achebe; D is for diamonds and E is for the high cheek-boned Ethiopians....Africa is known for many things, but the one issue Africa needs the world to know about right now is that there are 28 million HIV-infected people in Africa (800 people die of AIDS everyday in Africa) and unless something is done it is going to ravage the continent. Yes, I know about donor fatigue and numbing, I suffered from it too, but if you read this book of 28 Stories (one story for every million sufferers) you will change your heart and mind.

The author of these stirring 28 stories is Stephanie Nolen, the Globe and Mail's Africa correspondent and indeed perhaps the lone reporter in the world to report solely on AIDS . There are two groups of people in this book, the ones whose stories are told because they impart political, medical, social, physiological and economic information about the disease which is necessary for the reader to know and understand and the others are stories of people actually known to the author, people who are went public with their HIV diagnosis and have become activists for other sufferers in Africa.

For more information on the 28 people that inspired this book please go to Stephanie Nolen's website to read about these people, some of them even have video clips. Among my favorite stories are those of Tgist Haile Michael the 14-year old orphan from a slum in Addis Ababa who was left to take care of her 7-year old brother Johannes all by herself after both parents died from AIDS and Moleen Modimu a 31-year old wife and mother dying from AIDS in Zimbabwe even though the corner pharmaceutical store has the retro-virals she needs. Mugabe's government has made it virtually impossible for any African to afford the treatment they need.

(AIDS activists demonstrate outside South Africa's Parliament in Cape Town in a Reuters file photo)

This book will get you to ask many questions of yourself and your friends, the most important one being...what can we do to lighten Africa's AIDS burden? What is it the people need? A helping hand with the eradication of poverty will go a long way, but they also need funding for schools because, in the end, education is going to be the one big thing that will make Africans want to protect themselves against this virus. Also, women's rights need to be enforced, they need to have legal protection against risky sex forced upon them by male partners or economic depression, financial independence from men should also be encouraged. This is very important when you realize that women make up 75 percent of HIV-positive Africans aged between 15-25.

Nolen's book provides a comprehensive list of AIDS care and treatment organizations in Africa and elsewhere, contact them, learn more and make the difference you know you can!

This book is the second book of the Non-Fiction challenge.





Saw a truly delightful movie on the weekend titled "Away From Her". Like the movie suggested in its promotional literature, it was a love story for grown ups. In this case the grown ups were the beautiful Julie Christie and the handsome Gordon Pinsent whose 44 year old marriage, or should I say love story, is put to the test when Christie succumbs to Alzheimer's. The movie was made by the young Canadian Sarah Polley and based on Alice Munro's short story, "The Bear Came Over The Mountain". For a truly splendid "not a review" allow me to direct you to Sanjay's Karmic Musings.




Last, but not least, we have the winners of the booklottery from booksprice.com
it's Bellezza from "DolceBellezza" and J from Jellyjules.com. Congratulations, do let me know which book you would like and I will e-mail you for your address either today or tomorrow. A big "Thank you" to everyone that participated and all the book purchasing options you gave me, you made it so interesting and so much fun! There will be more opportunities to win books, so stay tuned!

Book # 1 for the Non-Fiction Challenge

Can you guess what activity I am describing?

Here are the clues:

The English refer to it as "to play away"

The Irish, "to play offsides"

The Japanese, "go off the path"

The French, "aller voir ailleurs" (literally, to go see elsewhere)

and

The Dutch refer to it as "pinching the cat in the dark"

What on earth am I describing?

Give up???










It's Infidelity, folks!


Book: Hardcover |304 pages | 19 Apr 2007 | The Penguin Press


For those of you who do not wish to read on, I'll understand, but for the rest of you, Pamela Druckerman, former foreign correspondant for the "Wall Street Journal" came upon the idea to write about infidelity when on a trip to Columbia she kept being propositioned by married men all the time. Once she got over her shock and horror, she realized that extra-marital affairs are not frowned upon everywhere in the world and she decided to explore what the rules of infidelity were in different countries resulting in this cracker of a book, "Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee".

T0 make it more interesting and readable, I've decided to share, countrywise,what Druckerman found out about infedilty in her research and trips abroad and how it contrasts with the American view:

Let's start with Finland...

For the whole review please click on "An Anthropologist Wannabe"

Also, this is book # 1 for Joy's Non-Fiction challenge. Four more to go!

Joy's Non- Fiction Five Challenge

Well, finally, here's my selection of non-fiction titles for Joy's Non-Fiction Five Challenge which runs from May-September. I have 10 titles here but I need to get them down to five. Not sure how I am going to do that, it was hard enough whittling them down to 10! :)

Clicking on the picture will take you to the Amazon review of the book.

(thanks, beenzzz)

(thanks, Radha)

(thanks Laura)

A Little Non-Fiction anyone?

I'm very partial to the non-fiction genre but will admit I don't often read as many as I once used to. So when Joy of "Thoughts of Joy" spoke of hosting a "NON-FICTION FIVE CHALLENGE", I couldn't resist (thank you, Joy!). From what I know the challenge will be held from July-September and in that period all you need to do is read 5 non-fiction books. Easy? More details to follow.

Speaking of non-fiction, Sanjay of Karmic Musings has an excellent review of the book "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright (writer for "The New Yorker").

I've also enjoyed reading Jenclair's impressions on Suketu Mehta's "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found". She has a great review and several updates as she read along.

I am excited about having to pick 5 non-fiction titles for the challenge - knowing me, it will probably include some biographies, travelogues and science history. I am going to start combing book blogs for suggestions.

pic. courtesy: nilgravity.com