The title is a line from a 17th-century poem that evokes the beauty and romance of Afghanistan. It seems to conflict with what happens in the story. Continue reading Affection Nurtured by Common Suffering: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
In the cramped studio we rented when we first stayed in Paris a few months, a well-worn paperback of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast lay on top of three or four books on a night table. The intriguing title was familiar, the first few pages beguiling. I “knew” Hemingway, having read two of his books. Reading about 1920s Paris in Paris? Who could resist? Besides, … Continue reading Hemingway’s Paris of the Twenties: A Moveable Feast
Without a doubt, Like Water for Chocolate is a tasty read. It opens with the ingredients for Christmas Rolls, Mexican style. But it goes beyond the usual food in fiction novel. A little further down, it reads: Tita was literally washed into this world on a great tide of tears that spilled over the edge of the table and flooded across the kitchen floor. That … Continue reading Diving Into Magical Realism: Two Morsels
Disbelief. That’s my initial reaction as I follow the life of orphan master’s son, Jun Do, in Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. Is this really what life is like in North Korea? Lives subjected to unrelenting propaganda from its one radio station, and unrelenting trauma, probably almost from birth if you’re an orphan? As he grows up, Jun … Continue reading Adam Johnson’s North Korea: Fiction as Trauma Narrative
Myanmar—does that ring a bell? You guess that, maybe, it’s the same as Burma. And maybe you’ve even heard of its most famous citizen, Aung San Suu Kyi. Or, maybe, you have no idea whatsoever what Myanmar is. And you couldn’t care less. Myanmar is fascinating—rich in resources, diverse, exotic, unique, complex. Once a monarchy, invaded by the British, then terrorized by a military regime … Continue reading Fiction as History: Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace
I anticipated a great read with Reading Lolita in Tehran. It tackles two of my main interests—a woman’s journey through life, and her experience living in a culture quite different from that I live in. I strongly empathized with what I saw to be its underlying themes. But after reading pages and pages full of details to support those themes, I thought, okay, I get … Continue reading Mature Iranian Women’s Kinship with Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—Reading Lolita in Tehran
This book comes closer to home than the other two I’ve read by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Literally. It’s set in Berkeley. At some point in the story, Rakhi, the daughter of the Queen of Dreams, might have lived next to me on the Oakland Hills. If she had been real of course. Rakhi is real enough to me because she is a modern woman coping … Continue reading Queen of Dreams: Divakaruni, again
In affluent Western countries, those that aren’t “us,” the “Others,” are minority, often disadvantaged groups. In France, the Other usually comes from North Africa (the Maghreb). Like Fatma, a Berber girl, in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s With Downcast Eyes. Fatma, like the male narrator in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, moves from her home. In this case, it’s from the hills of Morocco to France where her father … Continue reading Cultural Duality: With Downcast Eyes
The Palace of Illusions A woman with five princely warrior husbands–how cool is that? I didn’t read this book; I listened to it. I borrowed it from the local library while recovering from a vitrectomy (an eye operation). The two-week tedious down time—I literally had to keep my gaze on my feet—became so much more bearable. The dramatic reader was a delight and I appreciated … Continue reading Two Novels With Indian Roots by C.B. Divakaruni
This is my honest review of Welcome, Reluctant Stranger! which I have been requested to read. Ejourney explores themes of living in two cultures. The multicultural experience is usually not treated by novelists. In her series of three novels, Between Two Worlds, EJ shows off her style of literary romance, not of the more typical romances where lovely damsels tingle and swoon continuously for broad … Continue reading Reviewing Welcome, Reluctant Stranger! A White Male’s POV
Welcome, Reluctant Stranger! (Between Two Worlds Book 3), by E. Journey, is a touching story about a woman who must confront her family’s past. Leilani Torres, a psychologist, helps people heal. But can she heal herself? When she was only nine, Leilani, her mother, and two siblings flee their Pacific country, Costa Mora. Her father was supposed to follow them to the United States, but … Continue reading Welcome Reluctant Stranger: 5 stars—Self-Publishing Review
How many ways can you get to know a culture different from that in which you grew up? One delectable way described in this review is through cuisines, which I’ve amplified in another post. Marlena DeBlasi takes a different tack in her memoir, That Summer in Sicily. While she does sumptuously describe sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures in earlier chapters, she seduces you into experiencing … Continue reading Loving A Prince And That Summer in Sicily
Who expects to be entertained reading a cookbook? Hungry, perhaps and eager to try out recipes from it. But, in fact, some cookbooks do more than give you recipes and possibly some background story behind them, so they’re not only informative, they’re entertaining. One such book is Japanese Farm Food. I know little about Japanese farms and indigenous Japanese culture except for what I’ve seen … Continue reading Nancy Singleton-Hachisu’s Japanese Farm Food
Escape Into Reality 