Sunday Salon: August 5, 2012

It's been some time since I have done a Sunday Salon - my blog posting has taken second place to some major work commitments and it has been hard to keep up with reviews never mind Sunday Salon. I had a burst of productivity today and got some blog posts written so I decided to write a Sunday Salon to check in with everyone.

Despite all the craziness at work, this has been a good summer so far. Over July 4th, I went on an impromptu trip with a college friend to Mexico. It was wonderful to sit admiring the gorgeous water and to catch up on some excellent reading. While there I read Life's A Beach by Claire Cook (link to review), Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker and Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead. Not bad for 4 days! My friend also read some great books - she especially liked The Red Book by Copaken Kogan. Sarah Laurence also recommended this one on her blog so I have put it on my list.  Beautiful views, great books, excellent company and good margaritas - what a recipe for a vacation!

Review posting has been slow but I have posted the following reviews since my last Sunday Salon (titles link to my reviews):

Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Morag Prunty (which is a pen name for Kate Kerrigan) - my first Weekend Cooking post
The World We Found by Thrity Urmigar - recently out in paperback if you want to pick it up
And Laughter Fell From the Sky by Jyotsna Sreenivasan  - a great immigrant story!
Little Princes by Conor Grennan - an inspiring memoir
Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy (audio) - the news of the beloved author's death this week was very sad - she will be missed
The Queen: A Life in Brief by Robert Lacey - this is surely Britain's year between the Jubilee and the Olympics

Speaking of the Olympics, I am obsessed with the coverage and it is eating into my reading and sleeping time!  I know Olympic competition is grueling for the athletes but it is not so easy on the spectators either!  Ha - just kidding  - I am so impressed by how much these athletes have accomplished and am loving watching them make history.

How has your summer been so far?  Are you watching the Olympics?  Any favorite reads from the summer?

Weekend Cooking: Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Morag Prunty

In Recipes for a Perfect Marriage, author Morag Prunty (who also writes as Kate Kerrigan) blends the stories of modern day Tressa Nolan living in NY and Tressa's grandmother Bernadine who lived in Achadh Mor, Ireland with treasured Irish recipes. The result is a novel that parallels the lives of the two women generations apart at they adjust to married life and celebrates the tradition of passing recipes down in families.

Tressa Nolan is a successful food writer living in New York City.  She spent summers with her grandparents in Achadh Mor, Ireland and learned how to cook and bake at her grandmother Bernadine's side.  She idolizes her grandparent's marriage and expects to find the same partnership when she finally settles down.  At 39, she impulsively gets together with Dan who is the super in her building.  They have little in common but Tressa is inexplicably drawn to Dan and accepts his marriage proposal.  And then the real work begins . . .  Tressa realizes she may not love Dan is not sure there is enough between them to make it worth persevering through the hard times.  The differences between them become magnified and Tressa questions her decision to marry Dan.

Bernadine and James's marriage seems perfect to their granddaughter Tressa but when she is given her grandmother's journal Tressa realizes all is not as it seemed while she visited them. Bernadine had her sights on another man as a young girl and was devastated when that did not work out.  She married James but never felt the passion she had felt with her first love.  James loved her but she struggled to reciprocate even though she dutifully played the role of his wife.  Similar to her granddaughter, Bernadine often resented her husband even though, like Dan, James offered Bernadine a comfortable life.

The book alternates between Bernadine and Tressa's stories as each of their marriages go through various stages. It is a good lesson in persevering  - either woman could have quit their marriage a number of times but they stuck with it (perhaps in Bernadine's case because there was no other option) and rode the ups and downs of their marriages.  There were times I was annoyed by both women - they each had these good, hardworking men who adored them and yet they were still dissatisfied and frustrated by the efforts of these men to please them. Their ungratefulness made it difficult for me to feel empathy for them. At the same time, I did enjoy the parallels in their stories and, of course, all the references to places and traditions in Ireland.

Credit: Brown Eyed Baker

One of those traditions is cooking and the author includes many Irish recipes in this book.  One of my favorite, albeit most basic, is Irish brown bread.  My grandmother in Ireland would make it and we would enjoy a slice with jam at breakfast and again at tea.  It is simple but it's appeal lies in the simplicity.  Here is the recipe:

1. 3 cups whole wheat flour
2. 1 cup all-purpose flour
3. 1 teaspoon baking soda
4. 1 teaspoon salt
5. 1 1/4 cups buttermilk
6. 1 large egg, lightly beaten

1. Preheat the oven to 375°. 
2. In a large bowl, whisk both flours with the baking soda and salt. In a small bowl, whisk the buttermilk with the egg; stir into the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon until a rough dough forms.
3. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and knead until smooth. Form the dough, put a cross in it and put it in the baking pan. Bake for about 50 minutes, until the bread has risen about 1/2 inch above the rim of the pan. Let cool to warm or room temperature, then slice and serve.     

Check out this Pinterest Board created for the book by the author.

Weekend Cooking is hosted each Saturday by Beth Fish Reads.  Participants are invited to share their food-related posts.  Check out what others have linked up this weekend!

 

The World We Found by Thrity Urmigar

The World We Found by Thrity Urmigar centers on four women - Laleh, Nishita, Armaiti and Kavita - who attended university together and were very close at that point in their lives.  Circumstances, as they often do, have intervened in the years since university to put distance between the four friends.  When Armaiti is diagnosed with a terminal illness, she wants the friends together again so they plan a trip to her current home in the United States to be with their friend in her time of need.  The road to this reunion reveals much about each of the women and puts one of them in a position to challenge the life she has chosen.

Laleh, Nishita, Armaiti and Kavita were passionate in college and participated in protests for socialist and humanitarian causes.  They were very close and completely aligned, or so they thought, in their beliefs.  Following college, the four women went in different directions.  Laleh married her college boyfriend who is now a successful businessman; he and Laleh lead an affluent life in Bombay even though Laleh at times bristles against the materialism in their lifestyle.  Armaiti ran off to America and married a man there from whom she is now divorced despite their amicable relationship and shared adoration of their teenage daughter, Diane.  Even though she has connected little with her past in India - to the point that her daughter Diane knows very little about that part of her Mom’s life- she is compelled to reach out to her friends for one final reunion when she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Kavita is a successful architect but hiding the fact that she is lesbian.  Despite her and her friends’ very modern sensibilities, Kavita worries about being accepted in a society which is still so traditional in many ways.  

Finally, Nishita has perhaps the most interesting story of the four women.  Like Laleh, she has married her college boyfriend Iqbal.  He has, however, changed dramatically since university and has embraced his Muslim faith and customs in a way her never did during their more progressive college years.  He has imposed these strict customs on his wife and she has sacrificed much for her life with him.  She has been completely cut off from her family and even given up her name - she is now known as Zohar. Laleh and Kavita are determined to find her so she can join the reunion but finding her, although challenging, turns out to be easiest part of this journey. Zohar does not enjoy the freedoms taken for granted by her friends and will not be allowed by Iqbal to travel to the US even if they can provide the funds to pay for travel.  They are appalled by the changes they see in their friend and are committed to making sure she comes with them on this trip to Armaiti.  Zohar is ambivalent about making the trip  - on the one hand, she is thrilled at the prospect of reuniting with her friends and with the woman she once was but on the other hand she is terrified to challenge Iqbal and to leave a life she has become accustomed to even though she is very dissatisfied.

My Thoughts
I LOVED this book. The writing is spectacular but very accessible and Urmigar brings modern India to life through her characters in a way few other authors can do. By introducing you to these four women, Urmigar also introduces you to segments of Indian society and in covering their history she covers the history of India.  All the while, you are immersed in the lives of these characters and the history and sociology just become backdrops to the story.  They give the story relevance and ground it in reality.

I read this book quickly - I kept turning pages to see what what happen next on the journey to the reunion.  There is suspense as the women conspire to get Zohar out from under her husband and his family which adds to the pace of the story.  I am now a confirmed Thrity Urmigar fan - I knew I liked the author after reading The Space Between Us (my review) and I was not disappointed with her  newest.  My advice - READ IT!

Life's a Beach by Claire Cook

Life’s a Beach by Claire Cook is a breezy light-hearted story about Ginger Walsh, a forty-one year old lacking direction and living over her parent’s garage, and her crazy family including tightly wound sister Geri and bickering parents. Ginger is still a kid at heart and finds living an adult life with commitments including a marriage and steady job intimidating and boring.  She is, however, at a crossroads as she questions whether her completely unfettered lifestyle is what she really wants for the long haul.

Ginger Walsh is the epitome of the “cool aunt” to her sister’s three children - she challenges her uptight sister’s rules and really tries to be more like the kids than the adults.  When her nephew Riley lands a spot in a movie being filmed locally, Ginger is the perfect choice as his chaperone on set - she is unemployed and therefore available and in need of the cash. Although she makes jewelry from sea glass, she hardly earns an income and relies on these stints provided by her busy sister.  When Ginger meets a gaffer on set her romantic interests are stirred.  She has boyfriend Noah at home but there is no commitment on the horizon there and, despite her protestations, she is beginning to crave some commitment and permanence.

This is a fun book with snappy dialogue - at times, I thought I could be reading a movie script.  The banter between witty Ginger and her nutty family is entertaining and I chuckled as I read some of it.  Despite the constant bickering with her family, it is clear that Ginger loves them and that they really want the best for her - that family love is heartwarming.  Ginger’s nephew Riley really stole the show for me - he is insightful beyond his years and I could just picture his impish grin.

The book, however, does lack substance.  There was a lot of promise in these characters and the dialogue is great but the plot didn’t go as far as I would have liked.  It would have been nice to go more deeply into Ginger’s relationship with boyfriend Noah or to really see the transformation that is hinted at as she starts to focus her creative energies and head in a single direction.  I was definitely left wanting more.  With that said, it was a breezy read which I read in a single poolside sitting while on vacation.  I will try more by this author to see if her other books pack more punch in the plot department. 

Immigrant Stories Guest Post: Author Jyotsna Sreenivasan

On Monday, I reviewed And Laughter Fell From the Sky (review here) by author Jyotsna Sreenivasan and wrote about how the main character's struggle to fit into a new country and meet her parent's expectations is very typical of many immigrants and first generation children (although we don't all go to the lengths that she goes to!).  Jyotsna Sreenivasan has graciously written about her own immigrant experience in the guest post below as part of the Immigrant Stories Challenge.  She even makes some immigrant story recommendations so read on!

In my new novel, And Laughter Fell from the Sky, Rasika, one of the main characters, reveals that as a child she cheated, imitated, and pretended in an attempt to fit into American culture.

    When I was a child I don’t remember cheating in order to fit in, but I did try to pretend that I wasn’t “different,” that I didn’t have brown skin and black hair and parents who spoke with an Indian accent. At the age of seven or eight, I was mortified if India was ever mentioned in class, because all the kids would turn around and stare at me.  I was embarrassed when my mother brought potato curry or rice pilaf to a Girl Scout potluck. Whereas my parents were proud and happy when others asked them about India, I hated it when people assumed I was an expert on India, or that I should serve as a cultural ambassador for the country.

    Rasika arrived in the U.S. at the age of eight. I was born in the U.S., but we moved to India when I was five, and came back to the U.S. when I was seven. In India I was “the girl from America,” and in kindergarten I had entertained my class by singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” By the time we came back to the U.S. I had acquired an Indian accent, yet I didn’t realize that I spoke differently from the American kids. How had I suddenly turned into “the girl from India”? In any case, I very soon began talking like all the other kids. 

    By sixth grade I had become comfortable enough with my identity to read a book that took place in India--The Road to Agra by Aimee Sommerfelt—and do an oral report on it. I felt triumphant, but my teacher just said, “Of course you would be interested in that book.” By seventh grade I sometimes wore embroidered Indian blouses to school. My senior year of high school, I did a long research report on Indian classical music.

    Yet despite my growing comfort with my ethnicity, in college when I began writing poetry and fiction, I did not draw inspiration from my cultural background. In my senior year of college I wrote a short story in which the main character dealt with a boyfriend and conflicts with her mother--problems I faced--yet I didn’t give the character any particular ethnicity. I guess I assumed she was white and Protestant. It didn’t occur to me then to give her a cultural background. She was just supposed to be “normal,” whatever that meant.

    When I read The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston in graduate school, the light suddenly went on for me. I identified with Kingston’s feeling of not being Chinese enough for her parents, nor American enough for her classmates—the feeling of not really fitting in anywhere. I finally realized that many of my cultural insecurities were not just my own problem, but a problem shared with others of the second generation—children of immigrants, and those who immigrated as children.

These insecurities often cut across cultures. While first-generation immigrants retain their foreign accent when speaking English, and have strong ties to the home country, their children often have weak ties to the home country, and acquire the accent of the region in which they live. Julia Alvarez, a second-generation author from the Dominican Republic, titled her first book of fiction How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents.

    My first published short story, “The Peacock’s Mirrored Eyes,” appeared in India Currents magazine in 1992.  It dealt with an Indian-American teen who was conflicted about her cultural background. Since then, all my fiction has been about Indians and Indian-Americans.

    Many of my favorite books are written by authors of the second generation. A few months ago I finally started a web site that I’ve been wanting to put together for years. Second Generation Stories: Literature by Children of Immigrants (www.SecondGenStories.com) features books by dozens of second-generation authors, including well-known figures such as Mario Puzo (author of The Godfather), Maxine Hong Kingston, and Julia Alvarez.

And Laughter Fell From the Sky by Jyotsna Sreenivasan

In And Laughter Fell From the Sky, author Jyotsna Sreenivasan introduces us to two people, Rasika and Abhay, who are in early adulthood and struggling with the weight of family expectations. Both Rasika and Abhay are the children of Indian immigrants living in Ohio and each are weighed down by the expectations their parents have of them. Their parents have struggled to give their children a good life with the many opportunities life in the US offers but have also instilled, at times imposed, the traditions and values of their homeland.  The result is two children caught between two worlds - the one their parents brought them to and the one from which they came.

Rasika maintains a perfect exterior - she drives a luxury car, dresses impeccably and her beautiful face is always made up.  At twenty six, she lives at home with her parents and works for a bank.  Her parents are anxious to get Rasika married and much time is spent evaluating potential matches and ensuring they find someone worthy of their daughter and also matched in terms of caste, career and good looks. Rasika seems to agree with these external measures of the perfect match and professes to need a man that is taller than she and well employed.  

Despite wanting and needing to be the perfect Indian daughter, Rasika has also spent much of her life trying to fit in with her peers in the US.  She describes watching and following what classmates did:

We never had worksheets in India, so when I got a worksheet, I looked at what the other kids wrote. We never had show-and-tell. I watched what the other kids brought in, and I did the same. I never brought in anything Indian. I imitated to learn to be American.

This imitation has left Rasika unsure of who she really is and what she really wants.  When she does get a sense of what she wants, she denies it if it is in conflict to what is expected of her.

Abhay has also grown up with the high expectations of his parents.  Like Rasika, he has delivered on those expectations in many ways.  He excelled in school and everyone had high hopes for a bright future. Following college, however, Abhay has been drifting.  He spends some time on a commune but leaves when he is disappointed by the utopian community. He doesn’t want to follow the traditional path into a successful, well-paying career despite his parents’ disappointment in his aimlessness. Unlike Rasika, Abhay has dealt with the expectations of his parents by flaunting them openly but he is just as affected  - in an effort to eschew what they want for him, he has lost sight of what he might want for himself.

They are an unlikely couple considering Rasika’s focus on good looks and career success but Abhay and Rasika are drawn to each other.  A struggle ensues as Rasika grapples with her parents’ expectations about whom she should be matched with and her own desires.  Rasika has spent so much time modeling herself into what is expected of her that she is completely out of touch with what she wants so that she doesn’t even at first recognize her feelings for Abhay.  It is hard to imagine a modern American couple facing love forbidden by their parents but that is exactly the predicament faced by Rasika and Abhay.

And Laughter Fell From the Sky deftly examines the damage done when someone lives up to others’ expectations or to the exclusion of their own wants and needs.  This is a problem often faced by immigrants and their children as they strive to fit into their new country.  In Rasika’s case, it is compounded by the high expectations her parents have for her and her own desperate desire to please them.  Abhay faces similar challenges but to a lesser degree because he does not slavishly follow the lead of others - he is actually determined to strike out and encounters different challenges in that effort.


My Thoughts


I felt I could relate to Rasika even though there were times I didn’t understand her choices.  Like Rasika, I have struggled with feeling obligated to my parents for all they sacrificed in order to give my brother and me our life in the US.  Somehow, I translated that into a need to live up to all their expectations, stated or not, and lost touch with what I wanted.  Fortunately I never went to the extremes that Rasika went to and I have become comfortable doing what makes me happy and worrying less about the expectations of others. I pitied Rasika at times as I watched her trapped by obligations and out of touch with what she wants.

And Laughter Fell From the Sky is very readable and alternates between Rasika and Abhay’s point of view.  The characters (although incomprehensible at times) are fascinating and it is interesting to see Abhay and Rasika’s relationship evolve throughout the book.  I love this as an immigrant story but there is something there for most (including a parallel to Wharton’s House of Mirth which Bookchick Di writes about in her review) readers.  Whether you like an immigrant story, a story about forbidden love or a multicultural story, And Laughter Fell From the Sky has something to offer!

Check back tomorrow when the author will be here for a guest post as part of the Immigrant Stories Challenge. 

Thank you to Mary at William Morrow for providing a copy of the book for review

Little Princes by Conor Grennan

In Little Princes: One Man’s Promise To Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal, author Conor Grennan recounts how a between jobs trip to Nepal turned into a calling to help the orphaned children of Nepal.  As much as the book is about his quest to help the young orphans, it is as much about what Nepal offers Grennan - both in terms of self discovery and love.

 A Three Month Stint
Twenty-nine year old Conor Grennan decides to leave his day job and travel around the world for a year.  He had planned this trip well and saved for the opportunity to be job free for a year.  He started his trip with a three month stay volunteering at a Nepalese orphanage - his opportunity to give back before he started his around the world trip of leisure. Upon arrival at the Little Princes Children’s Home, he is charged at and tackled by a group of wide-eyed Nepalese children excited to have a new playmate join them.  Immediately, Conor is overwhelmed by their enthusiasm and worries that he has taken on more than he can handle.  There is a vulnerability in these children’s willingness to embrace him that, although endearing, unsettles Conor.

As the weeks go on, however, Conor just accepts the enthusiastic love these children have to offer.  Along with his fellow volunteers, Farid and Sandra, Conor fills the children’s days with games of cards, soccer scrimmages and school lessons. The three months fly by and Conor has to leave the orphanage for his around the world trip but he vows to come back to Little Princes.  He makes good on the promise and the children are as happy to have him back as Conor is to be back at the orphanage. Conor grows attached to the children.

As he becomes more attached to the children, Conor also wants to protect his young charges.  Nepal is in the throes of a civil war and the young children are key targets for the Maoists who would like to recruit them into their army. When Conor learns these children have been pawns in the civil war for the entirety of their young lives, he is even more determined to protect them. Conor discovers the children are not really orphans - many of them have parents but were taken from their villages by traffickers who promised their parents that they would protect them during the Civil War by taking them to the safety of the Kathmandu valley.  They would collect large sums of money from the parents for this “service” but then just abandon the children.  Orphanages like Little Princes would take the children in but they were raised far away from their families without any knowledge that their parents were still alive.




Something Must Be Done
Conor learns the scope of the problem in Nepal is huge and that orphanages like Little Princes are only able to help a small percentage of the vulnerable children. A mission is born - Grennan knows he must do whatever possible to expand the services to children in Nepal.  He starts a foundation to help the trafficked children of Nepal. Next Generation Nepal  supports a three-pronged approach to helping the children of Nepal.  First it rescues these children from the street and places them in transitional homes; second it supports reconnection and reunification by finding parents in remote villages of Nepal to ultimately reunite them with their children in these transitional homes.  Lastly, the foundation works on prevention by targeting trafficking at its root causes.  All this (and a budding romance!) from a three month stint volunteering before traveling around the world - amazing!




My Thoughts
I devoured this book - I found Conor’s story and especially the stories of the orphans compelling.  I enjoyed reading about their daily lives at Little Princes and the many funny moments as they sought to understand each other. There were many heartbreaking moments in the book as the vulnerability and suffering of these children are revealed. But, the book is also one of hope.  There is hope in the work of Next Generation Nepal but especially in the humanity of people like those working in these orphanages and their dedication to doing right by these children.  This is a book I won’t soon forget!