Wow! This was another surprisingly great YA read. Actually it’s a book that encompasses several genres aside from YA- women, literary, historical, and general fiction. Told in different perspectives of the Das women from 1965 to the dot.com era, the readers get to see how the lives of these American women with a Bengali heritage transform and I absolutely enjoyed it.
“Maybe being American means you still have room in the heart for other things. Old things. Good things.
I loved all the perspectives of the five main characters in the story-their different but equally strong personalities, how they differ and compare to one another, how they all pursued their dreams, how they personally see their individualities, their citizenship, their heritage and culture, how they found love, and ultimately how they, despite the generation gap, still relate to the original Das, Didu or Ranee, who even though her POV is only until the last chapter, the book is largely about her too.
This was very entertaining, diverse, genuine, often funny, informative, so significant- so many important issues were lightly tackled including feminism, gender equality, identity crisis, patriotism, issues on immigrants, the 9/11 tragedy and so on. Reading this was a multicultural experience and in the end, it even managed to make me shed a few happy tears.
