AN AMERICAN MEO

Rahim recounts her time in India as a human rights activist in this memoir.

The author was born and raised in Florida, though she visited India, her parents’ native land, often as a child. She is a descendant of the Meos, a dwindling tribal group with a religious lineage that is both Islamic Sufi and Hindu, an identity that makes her something of a “cultural artifact in the flesh.” Rahim felt a distance from her own cultural heritage, an alienation she experiences as shame, poignantly depicted here. While studying at the University of Chicago, she found a history book containing a picture of her grandfather, Yasin Khan, an important man who joined in the 1930s peasant protest against agricultural tax hikes and participated in the Indian independence movement.After graduating college, she visited India—her parents’ home village of Mewat, outside of Delhi—for the first time as an adult, experiencing the region with fresh eyes. “Despite numerous visits, the scenes are always a bit unfamiliar, awakening, as if I am seeing these places new with the same curiosity.” The author decided to stay for six months and found work at an NGO in Delhi (as befit her abiding interest in social work and human rights) and ended up staying for years, reconnecting with both her family and her heritage. Rahim’s remembrance—she calls it a “hybrid memoir”—is eclectically structured, including poems, family recipes, black-and-white photographs, and other miscellany. This very personal approach can be a barrier to entry for the reader—the author’s idiosyncrasies occasionally undermine the book’s universal resonance. Still, a relatable and even moving account of her alienation emerges, conveyed in elegant and meditative prose. Her account captures something essential about the anxieties of cultural dislocation, especially relevant in this age of globalization.

A thoughtful memoir, poetically rendered.