01 Jun / Motherland by Vineeta Vijayaraghavan [in aMagazine: Inside Asian America]
Another debut, Motherland tells the coming-of-age story of 15-year-old Maya. Afraid that she has become too Americanized growing up in New York, Maya’s parents ship her off for the summer to the remote, mountaintop home of her southern Indian relatives. There, Maya is reunited with her beloved grandmother, who raised Maya for the first four years of her life until her parents mysteriously reclaimed her. In unexpected exchanges with a younger cousin who is suffering through boarding school, an older cousin from London passing through on holiday travels, a local young woman who is hired to be Maya’s companion, and an urgent young man to whom Maya becomes briefly (and comically) betrothed, Maya moves rapidly from childhood to adulthood. While no great surprises arise in the novel, Motherland is an enjoyable, breezy read.
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 2001