Pages

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Books Part I: India Related

One of my absolute favorite things to do is read, read and read some more. I would live in a bookstore, preferably BusBoys & Poets’ 14th & V location, if I could. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I got some serious reading done since I’ve been in India. So far, I’ve read roughly 15+ books and I really wanted to talk about them on my blog. I was supposed to start doing this a LONG time ago, but you know how it goes – procrastination got the better of me and I now have to find a way to tell you about these books without making a ridiculously long blog post. In the interest of reader ease, I have opted to put the books I’ve read into several categories to make it more manageable. I wouldn’t say that I have written book reviews here, more of a stream of consciousness with regard to some great books that I have had the chance to get into over the past several months. I hope you see something you like :-)
 ________________________________

Part I: Books About India

There’s an African proverb that I learned during my freshman year at Spelman College in our African Diaspora and the World (ADW) course: Until lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. This quote kept running through my head as I read City of Djinns. India has a deep  and sometimes very dark history – much of which I was ignorant to before coming here and making a conscious effort to learn more about the nation in which I had decided to spend nine months of my life. This book offers an excellent historical overview of Delhi and much of what has shaped India – the good, the bad and the ugly. The parts that interested me the most were those focused on Partition and the intense, and often violet, splitting of a nation along religious lines. Many of us think of India and our minds go straight to yoga and elephants and the Taj Mahal – but there is so much more to this place and this book tells a great story that helped me peel back some of the layers of this country and deepen my appreciation for the opportunity to be here.

I picked this book up because it was about India and the author had been recommended to us during our orientation in July. It takes an interesting look at families and the role that food/eating plays in our relationships. Focusing on the lives of Uma and her brother Arun, it is set in India for the first part and in America for the second – examining the individual lives of Uma and Arun respectively. Of particular interest to me was the focus put on Uma as being unmarriageable and the light shed on her cousin who had everything (i.e. beauty and a husband), but whose life ended quite tragically despite the cards being dealt in her “favor”. Overall, it was a good read – I’m glad I picked it up.

More books to come :-) Happy reading!!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment