Cousin Sheila is writing a book about migration – why people migrate and the effect of migration on the world through time.
She recommended a writer to me – Jhumpa Lahini – and as she’s a good writer herself, I took her advice and began with a book entitled ‘Whereabouts’ which is quite a slim volume telling the tale, through a series of short stories, of a woman who leaves her familiar city to work away for a year….
“I might have said no, I might have just stayed put. But something’s telling me to push past the barriers of my life.’
Jhumpa ends the story ‘In the Shade’ with the words….
’Nor can we escape the shadows our families cast’.
I then began to read ‘The Lowland’. When I started to read it I liked how she writes, I still like how she writes, but I wasn’t sure how much I’d be interested in the subject matter – the political troubles in India in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s.
Then the main character, Subhash, goes to America and his experience of such a different place and way of life is of great interest, made especially so by how well Jhumpa writes of it.
He returns to India after his brother is murdered by the Authorities, then returns to America where he is joined by his brother’s widow, who is now his wife, Gauri.
Gauri’s experience of America makes for fascinating reading – seeing through other eyes. Jhumpa writes simply but clearly of the young woman’s introduction to a way of life which is utterly strange to her. She buys a packet of cream cheese (sounds suspiciously like Philadelphia) and, not knowing that it’s meant to be spread on something, eats it straight from the wrapper ‘like chocolate’ enjoying it so much that she licks the wrapper.
Jhumpa is writing of a time not long ago but very, very different from today. Even the lack of ‘Security’ on the University campus, which delights Gauri after the restrictions of life in Calcutta, isn’t what she would encounter now, in Trump’s America.
When I write about a book I don’t tell too much of the story, as my aim is to encourage folk to read a good piece of writing for themselves. Which is what I hope I’ve done here! And I’m looking forward to reading Sheila’s book when it’s completed as she’s a good writer and……. she’s family.
Families often get fragmented by migration. Sheila and I are children of migrants, but we still connect.
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