Shooting Water: A Mother-Daughter Journey and the Making of a Film by Devyani Saltzman, afterword by Deepa Mehta [in AsianWeek and The Bloomsbury Review]
03 Nov, by in Adult Readers, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Hapa/Mixed-race, Indian, Indian American, Jewish, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, South Asian, South Asian American, Young Adult Readers
The turbulent mother-daughter relationship between world-renowned filmmaker Deepa Mehta and her photographer/journalist daughter is interwoven into a fascinating account of how Mehta’s latest film, Water, came to be. As the final installment of Mehta’s...
When Lina is bombarded by relatives who want to marry her off at her sister’s Indian wedding, she unthinkingly wards off the well-wishers by making up the perfect fiancé supposedly waiting for her back...
Meena is worried that she is too clumsy to be a tree in the school play. But when she takes a children’s yoga class, and improves with each week, she discovers a solidly rooted...
Recently re-released under this new title, this charming coming-of-age tale introduces teenager Sunita Sen, a tennis-playing, pizza-craving, California girl who suddenly becomes self-conscious of her Indian heritage when...
When Kellach and Driskoll’s beloved mother reappears after mysteriously disappearing five years ago, the family’s initially joyful reunion is overshadowed by the presence of evil. It’s up to Kellach and his girl-power buddy Moyra...
When her Hollywood agent sends D-lister Raveena Rai overseas to star in a Bollywood film, she gets stuck with a lecherous director and a tongue-tied though gorgeous co-star. Fun, silly romp just in time...
Got the publication date confused and held it longer than intended – but can’t let it go without saying this is a grand coming-of-age story. Jazz Gardner travels to India with her family where...
A careful examination of 48 second-generation South Asian Americans whose parents arrived from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal during 1965 and the mid-1980s. Through personal stories and sociological context, Purkayastha explores how this second...
Somehow missed this title earlier, even as it won the 2004 Paul Zindel First Novel Award. While the story is familiar – a young girl moves from a loving home filled with extended family...
Call me old, but who really wants to read about a promiscuous 16-year-old school girl who uses her so-called charm to seduce an older divorcée, her societal power to seduce her servant, and her academic prowess...
As the only South Asian in her middle school, Maya knows all about being different in her tiny Canadian town. She doesn’t speak Bengali, she’s at that awkward stage of pimples and endless limbs,...
Novelist and essayist (and frequent New York Review of Books contributor) Mishra adds to what seems to be a growing hybrid genre of memoir infused with history, philosophy, and politics. What begins...
A hybrid if I ever saw one: At the heart of the book is a sociological look at how food and ethnicity intersect in the immigrant world (think how our APA holiday tables might...
A touching, slim coming-of-age novel about young Maya who travels one summer to Chennai, India, with her mother. Both mother and daughter are still stinging from a year-old divorce. There in the folds of...
Maya Mehra, 30 and still living with her parents, gets kidnapped at LAX where she’s gone to pick up her unknown prospective husband. When she comes to, she is told that she’s...
The final installation in Mehta’s 11-title series, Continents of Exile, explores his father’s love affair with another woman, documented through their love letters – the eponymous Red Letters. Written without judgment following the deaths...
Devi’s failed suicide attempt sends her back home to her parents, where she refuses to speak but decides to cook. Before she can regain her voice – as she becomes...
An interesting departure for Desai, who turns to Mexico to tell the story of a hapless Boston graduate student who accompanies his ambitious girlfriend abroad. While wandering, he discovers a lost part of his...
Responding with Hope to 9/11: A Talk with Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni About Her Latest Novel, Queen of Dreams
Three years after the tragic events of 9/11,