An honest, mildly humorous account of growing up the child of Indian immigrants in Canada.
Gill begins by comparing her childhood to being raised Amish—except Amish children get Rumspringa. “In Indian adolescence,” she writes, “you never break free of the rules.” The author is certain if Indian children were given the same two-week period of freedom, none would choose to return to their old way of life. In her strict family, weekends consisted only of homework, chores and television; activities such as sleepovers and summer camp were strictly forbidden. For her 30th New Year’s resolution, Gill set out to accomplish a list of experiences she missed out on during her childhood, including summer camp, learning how to swim and taking dance lessons. As she accomplished items on the list, she became braver and decided to shake up her stagnant life as a publicist, so she quit and moved to New York City to pursue her dream of writing for TV. Unfortunately, her new life did not work out as planned, and Gill moved back to Toronto. The memoir ends without a resolution; the author is still pursuing her dream of becoming a TV writer. Throughout, Gill writes about her parents in a balanced way, presenting them as neither angels nor demons. The tone is lighthearted, and Gill is a heroine to root for—relatable, imperfect and prone to both success and failure. A lighthearted read for readers curious about the lives of middle-class immigrants, or those looking to identify with the experience of being an outsider.
Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59448-577-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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