Life After by Sarah Darer Littman

Daniela Bensimon lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina with her mother, father and younger sister Sarita. Her father owned a clothing store and was able to support his family. Life use to be good but that was before the Argentinean Crisis of 2001. Government corruption and high debt contributed to a recession in Argentina. As a result, people lost faith in the banks and wanted to withdraw their money, changing their pesos into the safer dollar currency. The government attempted to halt this by restricting the amount of money people could withdraw from their accounts. The result was demonstrations and protests. The government of Fernando de La Rua collapsed and eventually Argentina ended up with a new president, Eduardo Duhalde. He decided to allow the peso to float against the dollar which resulted in drastic devaluation of the peso and a huge increase in inflation. Many people could no longer afford to pay for goods. Among them, was Dani's father who decided to close his clothing store. As a result, Dani's family was forced to subsist on the salary her mother earned as a nurse.

Besides the economic woes, her family has suffered terribly from a terrorist attack on the AMIA building on Monday July 18,1994. This attack, which happened on the same day as Dani's 7th birthday, killed her Tia Sara who was 8 months pregnant, as well as 84 other people. For Dani's father, the death of his sister has been a trauma he has never quite recovered from. This tragedy followed by the loss of his store has sent him into a deep depression that sees him often having violent outbursts.

For a while Dani tries to hold on to the life she once had and to cope with her family's poverty and her father's depression. She still meets her novio, Roberto (Beto) after school and they walk and kiss in the park. Beto and Dani discuss the possibility of their families leaving Argentina. Many of Dani's friends and relatives have already left including her best friend, Gabriela Tanenbaum (Gaby)who has emigrated to Israel along with many other Argentinean Jews. Eventually, Roberto also leaves, settling in Miami with his family.
Dani's mother continues to insist that they leave too but finally when another tragedy almost strikes, Dani's family decides to accept the offer of her Tio Jacobo to settle in New York.

Life in New York is very very different from life in Argentina. This new life is what Dani calls her Life After. Her family settles Twin Lakes, New York with the help of the local Jewish Family Services organization. While her sister Sarita goes to the local elementary school, Dani begins classes at the enormous Twin Lakes High School. High School is fraught with many challenges, including taking classes in English and trying to make friends in a culture so very different from what Dani is accostomed to.

On her first day she meets Brian Harrison who helps her navigate the school and tells her he is "personal GPS". Dani soon discovers that Brian is one of the good things. Their blossoming friendship holds the promise of something more if Dani can figure out where she stands with Roberto whom she hasn't seen in more than a year.

Another good thing about Twin Lakes is Jon a young student in Dani's class. Dani can relate well to Jon because like her, he is also an outsider, someone who is different from everyone else. But Dani also has to contend with Jessica, who at first is mean and who humiliates Dani on her first day at high school. It's not long though before Dani discovers that Jessica's unfriendliness is hiding a big hurt. It is this hurt that helps both Dani and Jessica connect.

I enjoyed reading this book very very much. First of all, I learned about the Argentinean crisis which most people probably have forgotten or maybe never even knew about because of the tragedy of 9/11. Littman does give us some background to the crisis at the very beginning of the book which is helpful. She also includes the AMIA (Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina)bombing of 1994, which I'm betting is unfamiliar to most North Americans. The terrorist theme is a strong one in Life After. The hurt of terrorism knows no boundaries and hurts us all whether in America or Argentina.I especially liked the way she portrayed young people as rising above the effects of terrorism to become stronger people.

Secondly, most of the characters who were central to the storyline, were well developed, realistic and interesting. Dani's struggles and worries about life in Argentina and in the United States were realistically portrayed. This was true not only about the situations Dani had to cope with at school but also her concerns over Roberto, whom she remained faithful to. Brian was an especially likeable character who was kind and respectable towards Dani.

I feel that Sarah Darer Littman did a good job of telling the story of a young immigrant, her struggles, her hopes and dreams and her successes in a positive and uplifting manner. My only complaint about this book is that it took very long to move from Life Before (Dani's life in Argentina) to Life, After. I'm sure part of this was due to the author setting up the circumstances for Dani's family leaving Argentina and also providing the reader a contrast to the two cultures and societies.

Overall a very good read!

Book Details:
Life, After by Sarah Darer Littman
New York: Scholastic Inc. 2011
281 pp.

EGG A book by Alex T. Smith

Every now and then it's good to throw a picture book or two into the mix. I often come across some truly delightful ones while doing the holds list at my branch. EGG is one such book.


First the cover got me. Great artwork, in fact, FANTASTIC artwork with lots of colour and a crazed fox(y) character.

Next, the title page is set up like the opening credits to a movie...

Starring VIVIEN VIXEN as FOXY DuBOIS. Introducing EDWARD L'OEUF as EGG.



Recommendations on the back cover are hilarious! "Full of cheep gags!" Farmer's Weekly Hennin Coop; "A cracking success!" Eat Magazine. Oh yeah!


Who could resist?

Although EGG starts off reading like a movie, "Of all the suspicious looking houses in all the deserted woods in all the world, he had to roll up to hers...", it is really a fractured fairy tale.

Foxy DuBois is always kind to strangers, so when a seemingly timid, tiny pink egg shows up at her doorstep she is very welcoming. Egg, politely notices the chicken decor throughout the house and settles in for some five-star treatment by Foxy. But Foxy has an ulterior motive and a disturbing plan. Will she succeed?

A great read aloud by author-illustrator Alex Smith. It always amazes me how so many picture books, though great for children, really work for adults too!

Where I Belong by Gillian Cross

In Where I Belong, the story is told in alternating voices of four teenagers whose lives come together in a very unexpected manner. 

Adbi

Fourteen-year-old Adbi  (Abdirahman) Ahmed Mussa, an ethnic Somali, was born in the Netherlands, where his mother fled to when things turned ugly. His mother Maamo was pregnant with him and his father, Ahmed Mussa Ali, was desperate to get her out of the country. He stayed behind because his parents were sick, but he promised to come get them when the country became safe again. It never did. So Adbi and Maamo, his mother lived alone, with his father sometimes visiting. After Adbi, there was Fowsia, Maryan, and Sahra. When Adbi was ten, his father sent them to England, to a place called Battle Hill where his friend Suliman Osman and his family along with many other Somalis lived. Adbi and his father kept in touch through the internet which he accessed from one of  the internet cafes run by Uncle Osman Hersi's son, Suliman Osman. His mother told Adbi that they had to save money to bring Abbo to England. When Adbi was thirteen-years-old, they finally had enough money to bring Abbo over but after the money was sent, they never heard from him. His mother asked other Somalis to find out what happened to Ahmed Mussa Ali and eventually Adbi and his family learned that his father was dead.

One day Adbi arrives home to see his Uncle Suliman Osman and his wife, Auntie Safia visiting their flat. His uncle tells him that his sisters need an older sister to watch over them and to that end they want to bring over the daughter of a man in Somalia. They tell Abdi that her name is Khadija and that she is fourteen-years-old. He agrees for her to come to England to live with his family.

Khadija

Khadija Ahmed Moussa is a thirteen-year-old native Somalian who lives in a remote village with her younger brother Mahmoud and her siblings, Zainab and Sagal. When she was younger, her father was a rich man who owned many camels, sheep and goats, as well as having businesses in Mogadishu and Beledweyne. Her father had a second wife, but Khadija never saw her as she and her brothers and her mother travelled from one pasture to the next. Then things changed. The rains stopped, her father came and took three of the camels away to sell. He returned briefly a second time, with a camera and took pictures of Khadija. The third time he came, her mother told her that she would be going to her father's house in Mogadishu. At first Khadija believes she is being taken away to be married, however, on the way, Khadija's father reveals that she is going to England where she will get an education. Khadija argues with her father because she wants to stay with her family. 

They meet a smuggler who tells Khadija that he is her Uncle Guleed Mussa Ali and he will take her to England. She is given a plastic suitcase by her father with a few items of clothing in it. When Khadija tells her father that she didn't ask to go he tells her that life is getting harder in Somalia, and that if she goes to England eventually she will be able to help the family and maybe someday, even Somalia. Her journey begins with a boat that takes her to Kenya. From there she travels by road and then by plane to England. Once in England, Khadija travels by train and then is left at a telephone box where she is met by Adbi. She will live with Adbi, his mother Maamo and his sisters. 

Freya Dexter

Freya is the daughter of iconic fashion designer, Sandy Dexter and former war photographer David. Her father who has photographed the wars in Darfur, Afghanistan, Rwanda and Somalia, now teaches photography and does photography portraits. Her parents are separated but remain on friendly terms with each other. Freya spends most of her time with her dad who is more reliable and grounded than her flighty mom who is always trying to create a new avant-garde collection.

Freya first learns about Somalia after her mother comes to pick her up from her father's flat. While there Sandy selects a bunch of books on Somalia, which puzzles both Freya and her father David. The next morning at breakfast, Sandy shows Freya pictures in one of the books of a woman in a beautiful patterned headscarf, and raves about the design. She doesn't seem to notice the buildings in the background with bullet holes  or the ruin and devastation. Her mother believes fashion "...is a way of understanding the world...". Freya knows her mother will be immersed in this for hours so she meets up with her friend Ruby for lunch. When she returns she finds the flat empty, her mother gone, and a message from her mother's apprentice, Stefan that she will be away for a few days and directs  her to stay with her dad. Having picked up a few groceries, Freya is annoyed but goes to her father's flat.

Mahmoud

Back in Somalia, Khadija's younger brother remembers her smile, as she left in the car. In Somalia the drought has dried out their pastures, and the sheep were sold to buy food for the camels. The wells dried up and Mahmoud and his family set out to walk to the last well they hope might have water. They are beginning to realize that unless it rains, they will have to walk to the camp to ask for food. This is what happens and so Mahmoud and his sisters and mother walk to the camp. 

As they walk, one by one their camels begin to die and this means that Mahmoud much carry more of their bundles. When the arrive at the camp they find hundreds and hundreds of "makeshift shelters" with many children playing in the dust. The conditions in the camp are shocking to Mahmoud and his little sisters. They are eventually alloted a space to set up a shelter. A fight by young men in the camp destroys both their shelter and all the food they have saved. As they work to rebuild their shelter of poles and mats, Mahmoud's only hope is his sister Geri in England.

With all the major characters now introduced the story moves forward in alternating voices. Six months after arriving in England, Adbi, Khadija and the Somali community learn that Somalia has been hit by severe drought. They know this not from the English news but from the Somali news sites that the older men in the Somali community read. At first Adbi doesn't really understand the implications of the drought because he believes most of Somalia is desert. When he accompanies Khadija to Suliman's internet cafe, Adbi sees pictures of the drought in Somalia. For Khadija the images are heartbreaking and troubling. She wants to help her family but the only way is to send money. She sends Mahmoud an email asking him how they are and Khadija decides she needs to get a job.

Noticing that Auntie Safia is struggling in her store, Khadija offers to help out and she is hired to work two evenings a week. Khadija intends on sending the money back to her family in Somalia. But when Maamo learns of her job, she is furious because it means Khadija must walk home late at night and also because of the low pay. Adbi reluctantly agrees to walk Khadija to and from her job.

Meanwhile Sandy Dexter has returned from Paris and is busy researching Somalia for her next collection. While making breakfast, Sandy asks Freya how a picture of a woman wearing a burka makes her feel. Sandy believes that Freya felt curiosity about what it would be like to wear a burka and she brings out two black burkas. Sandy wants both of them to wear the burkas and walk around Battle Hill, but Freya refuses. She feels this is disrespectful and rude because they are not Somalian. So Sandy goes by herself. However, after her mother leaves, Freya changes her mind, dresses in the burka and takes the bus to Battle Hill. When she puts on the burkha Freya notes "Veils are all about hiding...." but she comes to feel that it might be a source of power. 

Freya manages to find her mother in Battle Hill where she is watching a heated discussion between a boy and a girl, whom Freya notes is not only beautiful but graceful. Her mother has a knack for spotting the next runway model. The two people arguing are Adbi and Khadija because Adbi doesn't want to accompany her to her job. His friend Rageh is being sent back to Somalia to teach him better behaviour and Adbi wants to see him before he leaves. Sandy approaches Khadija with a potential offer of work and gives Khadija her business card with the name of a modelling agency on the back. Adbi is suspicious of this entire encounter especially since Sandy reveals herself to be a white Western woman. But Khadija isn't so dismissive. 

Together they check out Sandy Dexter on the computer at school. They discover that she is a famous fashion designer who designs clothes for a great deal of money. Khadija realizes that woth this job she might be able to bring her entire family out of Somalia. Abdi tells Khadija that Maamo and Auntie Safia will never agree to her working in this job, but Khadija asks him to keep this a secret until they find out more about the job.

A week later, Adbi and Khadija skip school to show up at the Meredith (Merry) Fox agency. When they cannot locate Sandy, Merry calls Freya at school and asks her to come to the agency. Eventually Sandy shows up and Khadija is made to walk up and down. Sandy pretends that she doesn't like Khadija and tells Merry she will put them in a taxi. However, once on the street Sandy and Freya get into the taxi with Khadija and Adbi. Unknown to Sandy, Merry Fox sees them get into the taxi. In Sandy's workshop, when Khadija sees Sandy's "mood board" she realizes that this strange woman has fallen in love with Somalia. To Freya, the items on the mood board are "...a bunch of feathers, and cheap jewelry, and some garish secondhand fabric that wasn't even cleaned."  When Sandy asks that they bring Khadija's parents to talk about money, both Adbi and Khadija hesitate. Sandy tells them that the show isn't until September but that they mustn't tell anyone else because it is to be a secret and she needs the permission of Khadija's parents.

However, Freya isn't impressed with her mother. At home with her father she rants about how her mother seems unconcerned with the reality of what is happening in Somalia and is using it to create her next collection. So she sends her mother an email suggesting she take a risk and go to Somalia. 

Meanwhile, when Maamo and old Uncle Osman discover that Khadija and Adbi have been absent from school they question the two. At first they lie in an attempt to keep Khadija's secret but then she decides to tell them that she's been offered a job that could make her enough money to bring her family to England. When they refuse to reveal what the job is, Uncle Osman takes Adbi's phone. He promises to help Khadija's family but Adbi wonders how Sandy Dexter will now contact him. To keep a watch on Khadija, Auntie Safia has her work every night and pays her thirty pounds a week.  But Khadija hasn't forgotten Sandy Dexter's offer. Things become even stranger when Auntie Safia offers Khadiija five hundred pounds and then asks her what she really wants. Khadija tells her that she wants to get an education so she can help her family back in Somalia.  And Khadija, desperate to reach out to her brother Mahmoud, sends him an email from Suliman's cafe, revealing that she's received a job offer that will provide her with enough money to really help them.

After several months, Sandy discovers Freya's heated email and decides that to put her Somalia collection into context she is going to do the catwalk in Somalia and will stream it live into London Fashion Week. Freya's dad is horrified and angry at what Sandy is planning telling her she doesn't understand what the country is like. Eventually Sandy does connect again with Adbi who inexplicably finds his phone in his backpack and arranges to meet with him and Khadija and their parents. However, things turn ugly when Adbi gets a second phone call from an unknown man in Somalia who tells him they have Khadija's brother, Mahmoud and that she needs to pay them ten thousand dollars in ransom. A second phone call this time tells Khadija to have her friend Sandy Dexter help her get the money. Khadija believes that her email to Mahmoud was intercepted and is responsible for what has happened to him. 

For Adbi, there are two questions: How will Khadija get the money to save her brother? Who will help her and Adbi save Mahmoud? Because Khadija and Abdi feel that Maamo will never allow Khadija to display herself on the runway they seek the help of Abdi's uncle, Uncle Osman Hersi and the imam. When Uncle Osman tells them he cannot pay the ransom, Khadija seeks the help of his son, Suliman. He reveals that it was him who returned Adbi's phone and they decide to reveal Khadija's modelling offer.  It is Suliman who poses as Khadija's father, meets Sandy, David and Freya and agrees to make all of the arrangements for Sandy's show and for Khadija to travel to Somalia. It is Suliman who accompanies Khadija and Abdi over to Somalia for the fashion show. But once in Somalia, things take a mysterious turn as the kidnappers learn of the location of the fashion show, threaten Sandy and come to the village with Mahmoud demanding that his ransom be paid. When Sandy refuses to pay the money, things move swiftly to a final, strange resolution, and the revelation of who is behind the kidnapping.

Discussion

The novel, Where I Belong attempts to explore the theme of belonging in what is a somewhat bizarre and frankly, probably highly unlikely series of events. The story might have been more believable and been able to more thoroughly explore this issue if it had been simplified.

The novel has two storylines, told by four narrators: Adbi Mussa, Khadija and her brother Mahmoud, and Freya. The main story is that of a two young Somalis, Adbi Mussa and Khadija Mussa the Somali girl his family takes in to help her family. Adbi has never been to Somalia, having been born in the Netherlands and emigrated to England. He lives with his mother  and his three sisters in Battle Hill with many other Somalis.  His father is supposed to have died a few years earlier in Somalia. The young Somali girl they take in, who is called Geri by her family, is given the name of Khadija Mussa by the human smuggler. Khadija has left behind her parents and her younger brother Mahmoud in the hopes of getting an education and then helping her family. That possiblity comes in the form of an opportunity to model a new collection for a fashion designer named Sandy Dexter.

A second story involves Freya Dexter and her fashion designer mother Sandy Dexter and her photographer father, David who are separated. Sandy becomes interested in Somalia and the fabrics she sees in books. On a walk through Battle Hill dressed in a niqaab, Sandy spies Khadija and Adbi having an argument and eventually convinces her to model her new collection for Paris fashion week. Sandy also decides that she will live stream her collection from the desert in Somalia. 

The two stories gradually weave together when Adbi and Khadija learn that her brother Mahmoud has been kidnapped and that a ransom of ten thousand dollars is being demanded. Since her modelling job was a secret, the two cannot understand how the kidnappers in Somali learned of it. This is gradually revealed during the fashion show, when Adbi comes face to face with the father he believed was long dead but is now a Somali pirate and the uncle he believed was actually helping Khadija. 

Although the novel's title, Where I Belong suggests an exploration of the theme of belonging, this is given a somewhat superficial treatment mainly becuase it is eclipsed by a story driven by action rather than by the characters. The idea that a Western white woman could travel into Somalia, a country in the depths of a civil and humanitariou crisis and hold a fashion show in the middle of the desert seems highly improbable. The show is held within a village where the people are very poor: they live in houses made of "branches and mats", some of which are dismantled to make a "dressing room" for the models. One can only imagine what the villagers, whose culture is so different, would think and how they would feel at the intrusion of Westerners with a great deal of money in such a poor country. Gross attempts to get around this by having a Muslim man, Suliman Osman make all of the arrangements, from afar, in England. The risk of a wealthy, famous Western woman being kidnapped and extorted or worse would just make this extremely dangerous.

The theme of belonging is briefly treated in the character of Khadija who is struggling with life in England. She is given a fake name, Khadija, which feels like her identity is stripped away. In England, Adbi's mother Maamo won't talk about Somalia, and neither will the Somali girls at school. She wishes she had spent more time watching the desert on her drive with her father, because that was where she felt like she belonged. "I wish I'd kept quiet and looked at the country instead...I shall never travel through the desert like that again -- as someone who belongs there. That journey was the end of everything I knew before." That feeling is lost in England.  "Ever since I arrived in England, I'd been like a frozen girl. When my father handed me over to the hambaar man, he sent me into a world where no one knew me and no one cared who I was."  When she encounters Sandy Dexter, Khadija is recognized as a Somali and this makes her feel seen.

When Khadija first meets Sandy on the street in Battle Hill, her recognition of Khadija as Somalian make her feel "seen". However when Khadija arrives at Sandy's wearing a niqab she learns her name is now to be Qarsoon. "Qarsoon. Hidden. Another new name, to cover up the one the hambaar man told me to use. " Once again Khadija feels hidden. When she returns to Somalia for Sandy's fashion show, Khadija remembers the smell, 

Khadija begins to suspect that something isn't quite right from the very beginning. She wonders if anyone read her email to Mahmoud about being offered serious work? She is also suspicious of Suliman Osman's involvement - he seems to have an solution for everything. Before they leave to meet Sandy Dexter at David's flat, she discovers that Suliman has a gun under his car seat. She begins to question if they can trust him and asks Adbi if it's possible that Suliman listened to the message from Sandy on his phone. In Somalia, when Khadija learns that images can show up on several computers that she really begins to understand what may have happened - that in an internet cafe, someone may have seen her email she sent to Mahmoud in Somalia about her possible job. 

In Somalia, Khadija is focused on her brother Mahmoud after photograph the kidnappers provide of Mahmoud with his broken teeth and learning from Adbi that Sandy is not certain if paying the ransom is the right thing to do. "I felt like I was in the kind of dream where real things are unimportant and tiny details shake the earth. My brother had been captured by violent, ruthless men, but no one seemed to care whether he lived or died. The only thing that matter was how my eyes were painted.... So much money being spent on such trivial, frivolous things. What did these people think they were doing?"

Adbi is also beginning to explore where he belongs. Unlike Khadija, he doesn't have a connection to Somalia, having been born in Europe and raised in England. Meeting Sandy Dexter and seeing her world changes his perspective on his tight-knit Somali community. When his Uncle Osman confiscates Adbi's phone and tells him that what he does can affect the entire community and that he will try to help Khadija's family, Adbi notes, " A few days ago I would have believed him. Until then, I'd thought he was a really powerful, important man who could make big things happen. But that was before I'd stuck my nose into Sandy Dexter's world. Now I knew I'd spent my whole life inside a narrow box. All the real power and money were outside -- and that was where I wanted to be."

.

In Somalia, Adbi struggles to connect with what is supposed to be his homeland even though he has never lived there. They drive through villages with small houses, children driving scrawny goats and women carrying heavy bundles. "I kept struggling to connect.This is your country, I kept telling myself. This is where you belong. But I didn't even know what that meant...What was it like living here all the time? Looking after goats like those boys we'd passed on the road? It was impossible to imagine. What did they do for music? Where did they meet their friends?"  He doesn't understand life in Somalia as it is so different from his own experience.

Adbi helps to thwart the kidnapping when he recognizes the "...battered leather sheath" with a distinct "deep, jagged scratch" that one of the men has attached to his belt as belonging to his father. Initially he believes he is confronting his father's murderer but in fact, it is his father. He also has the courage to confront Suliman Osman who he claims organized the kidnapping. 

After the resolution of the kidnapping, Khadija goes on to model and is able to help her family. She belongs in England, but Mahmoud wants to remain in Somalia, living the quiet life of a nomad as his family has done for years. She is able to help her family stay in Somalia and to replenish their herd of camels.  Adbi feels drawn to becoming a photographer so he can show people the truth. He comes to realize that he doesn't belong in Somalia, a country he's never lived in. After exposing his father as one of the kidnappers, Adbi doesn't follow his father as he leaves. As Khadija states, "He could have chosen to go with his father....Have you thought of that? He could have stayed in Somalia forever. But he didn't. " Freya undestands that Adbi "knows where he belongs".

Freya also struggles with where she belongs within her own broken family: does she belong with her father, or her mother, or both? Freya is supposed to be living with her mother but this does not seem to be working out. Sandy is an eccentric, self-absorbed woman, whose single-minded focus on her work leaves Freya feeling abandoned by her mother. Sandy is often absent both physically and emotionally. When Freya returns from her mother's workshop after they first meet Khadija and Adbi, she expresses her outrage over what her mother is doing. She tells her father, "Look at all this Somalia stuff of hers. There's a whole country there -- a whole culture-- but she doesn't care about that. She's just ransakcing it for design ideas."  Freya continues, "She hasn't been to Somalia and seen the children with no legs and the towns that are shelled to bits. That's what she ought to do if she wants to be cutting edge.If she wants to explore the interface with reality."

She sends her mother, whom she calls by her first name, a heated email challenging her over what she is doing regarding Somalia. Later when her mother announces that she is in fact going to go to Somalia and do the show there, Freya tells her father " 'It's got to be serious, ' I said, 'Otherwise, why have I spent my life taking second place?' "  This emotional abandonment continues as Sandy becomes focused on creating her collection and setting up the show in Somalia. Sandy schedules a meeting with Khadija and Adbi and their "father" who is really Suliman Osman on Freya's birthday, cutting short her daughter's party and angering Freya. But Freya is also as ruthless as her mother, manipulating her parents to get what she wants. And she wants to go to Somalia so she threatens to reveal the identity of "Qarsoon" to a photographer named Tony Morales.

When Khadija reveals the truth of what is happening, Freya thinks, "I knew what it was like to have all your hopes hanging on Sandy. On what she might do. If she felt like it. I wanted to say something comforting, but there was only one thing I knew for certain...Sandy won't think about anything now until the show is over. She's totally focused on that. If it goes well then --yes, she might do something for you. She can be very generous sometimes."

Surprisingly, Sandy has the show continue even as the kidnappers show up with a badly beaten Mahmoud, Freya is horrified. "What was Sandy doing? How could she let the show carry on? It was monstrous --outrageous--for girls to be parading up and down out there when someone's life was at risk." Sandy confronts the kidnappers, ordering them to let the boy go, indicating that she will not give in to their demands. Not surprisingly, the kidnappers are undeterred. After the show, with the kidnappers having left, Freya asks her parents to get back together, a wish many children from broken families harbour. Her father, in telling a Somali folktale attempts to show Freya that they both love her and that she belongs to both of them. 

Overall, Where I Belong is a novel that attempts to explore the important theme of belonging but does so in an overly complicated way through the eyes of Somalian refugees caught up in kidnapping and extortion. This book may be of interest to those wanting to read something a little different.

Book Details:
Where I Belong by Gillian Cross
Maple Vail, York PA: Holiday House 2011
245 pp.

Orchards by Holly Thompson

Kanako (Kana) Goldberg who is an eighth grader, is being sent to Japan to spend some time with her mother's family. She is being sent there for the summer after the suicide of Ruth, one of her classmates.  Ruth was found in the Osgood orchards, having hanged herself from one of the apple trees. She left a note on her dresser leading her parents to call police and to counselors being brought in. Kanako tells her parents, 

"why?

I protested

it wasn't my fault

I didn't do anything!"

Her mother calls her older sister, Kanako's aunt in Shizuoka and in spite of Kanako's protests tells her,

"all she'd say
row after row
in tight-lipped
talk-down
do-as-I-say
Japanese
was

you can reflect

in the presence of your ancestors"

All twenty-nine girls from Kanako's grade eight class are being sent somewhere. She was part of a clique of girls who were mean to Ruth. Kana likens her clique to the structure of an atom, in which Lisa, head of the clique, is the atom and the other girls are like electrons arranged in shells around her. Ruth, the girl who committed suicide was "in the least stable most vulnerable outermost shell".

Kanako's father is a Russian Jew while her mother is the youngest of four children born to her grandparents who are mikan orange farmers. Her mother's family lived in a Shizuoka village of only sixty families where the son inherited the family property. Since there was no son to inherit the property, Kanako's oldest sister married a man  who took on their family name and inherited the farm. Her mother packs her suitcase full of gifts for the family back in Japan as well as ten books on responsbility, and self-discovery.

Kanako is met in Narita by her cousins Koichi and Yurie. As they drive to the farm in the van, Yurie tells Kanako that she will room with her. When Kanako last visited her Baachan three years ago after the death of her grandfather, her Jiichan, Baachan made comments about her size. Kanako's aunt and uncle bow to her and welcome her to their home. For the first three days, Kanako wakes early, even before Yurie who gets up early to help with chores before going to her job at the pharmacy.

On her fourth day in Kohama, Kanako's uncle takes her to meet the homeroom teacher and principal of the middle school she will attend while in Japan. She will attend class part time for four weeks. So every weekday morning, along with two other girls from Kohama, Kanako pedals her bicycle up a steep hill to the school situated on top of a hill of mikan terraces. Kanako can read Japanese because she took classes in New York. As Kanako watches the students in this school she remembers how Ruth sat and talked with Jake Osgood whom Lisa wanted to date. 

In the afternoons, Kanako helps in the mikan groves, thinning clusters of excess mikan fruit from the trees. Kanako's aunt asks her about her school in New York her mother's business but nothing about what happened even though she's sure her aunt knows.

When Kanako sees the same situation developing in her Japanese school, a girl ostracized and ridiculed, she attempts to do what counselors told her back home, reach out, but the girl isn't interested in her help or friendship. Kanako tries to connect with her friends back home, but it seems things have changed: they are polite and restrained.

In a flashback, Kanako reveals how her parents met: her mother, after failing her college entrance exams, took a job in the district agricultural office and then flew to New York. There, living with three Japanese, she took community college class and worked at a Japanese restaurant where she learned how to wear a kimono. It was at the restaurant that she met Kanako's father who was a law student at the time. Soon they were meeting on Sunday for brunch. However, Kanako's Jiichan and Baachan lured her mother home with the promise of money to purchase land for hothouses so she could start her own business. Kanako's mother came home to Kohama because she felt that Kanako's father "didn't fit her future". She returned to working in the agricultural office while planning to set up a business to grow "salad greens and heirloom vegetables". However, Kanako's father didn't give up and after graduating he flew to Narita, located the home of Sachiko Mano and proposed to her mother in the driveway. They married three weeks later and eventually moved to a suburb of New York City. Eventually her parents bought a small house with enough land for some greenhouses for her mother to grow Japanese vegetables. 

As the business thrived, Kanako and then her sister Emi were born. Their family visited Japan but it wasn't long before Kanako began to realize that the relationship between the two families was strained. They never stayed with Jiichan and Baachan but at other relatives homes. It was when Jiichan got cancer that he changed towards Kanako and her family, teaching her many interesting things. Considering this, Kanako begins to consider what Lisa's life may have been like.

Once school is done, Kanako works full days on the mikan farm. And in the silence of the hard work, Kanako has time to think about Ruth, what happened that fateful day in Osgoods orchard and how she can be better going forward. Her time with her mother's Japanese family leads to acceptance, forgiveness and healing.

Discussion

Orchards by Holly Thompson is a free verse  novel that explores the issue of bullying and teen suicide. In the novel, Kanako is part of a clique of grade eight girls who bully their classmate, Ruth. The girl at the center of this clique, Lisa likes a boy named Jake Osgood. When they see Jake and Ruth spending time together they bully Ruth, whom they assume is attempting to interfere. What they do not know is that Jake whose sister is bipolar, is attempting to help Ruth who has started to suffer from intense mood swings of depression and manic happiness. Because of their bullying, Ruth hangs herself in the Osgoods' orchard, leaving a suicide note that implicates the clique of girls. 

Kanako's family sends her to stay with family in Japan in the hopes that while she is away she can think about what happened. As Kanako spends the next three months with her mother's family in Japan, she experiences an inner journey of self-revelation and discovery. 

Initially Kanako views Ruth with anger and a complete lack of empathy for what happened to her. Bullied and not included, Ruth is described by Kanako as inconsequential, like a "least stable" electron in the outer shell of a clique whose atom was a girl named Lisa, known for her "biting wit". 

Initially Kanako can't comprehend why she and her friends are to blame for Ruth's suicide.

"still

I don't think I

personally

did anything to drive you

to perfect slipknots

or learn to tie a noose..."

Instead, she callously blames Ruth for her banishment to Japan.

"because of you, Ruth,

I'm exiled

to my maternal grandmother, Baachan,

to the ancestors at the altar

and to Uncle, Aunt and cousins..."

Kanako wonders if things would be different if she had grown up Jewish attending synagogue and Hebrew school and going to Ruth's Bat Mitzvah. She also believes that Ruth should have told them what she and Jake Osgoods talked about. 

As she works in the mikan orchard thinning fruit, Kanako thinks about Ruth and wonders if she should have approached her at the mall, eaten lunch with her in the cafeteria, or invited her to be a part of her group in science, even though she seemed to want to be alone. But she also curses Ruth in an moment that shows her lack of gratitude towards her Japanese family, after Baachan is not pleased with her mother sending over more sun hats.  

In remembering how her parents met and the way her Japanese grandparents felt about their daughter marrying an American, Kanako begins to realize that there are "two sides to every story" and that this might apply to Ruth and what happened to her. Kanako's grandfather, Jiichan was mean to her mother and father and their family because he was hurting from the loss of his daughter who had moved to America after her marriage. Kanako wonders if Lisa living with her godparents instead of her parents was what made her so mean to Ruth.

fault and blame --
both seem so easy to place
but much harder
maybe
to erase

I think
there must be at least
two sides
to your story, too, Ruth,

and maybe knowing
more of Lisa's side

In an attempt to banish thoughts of Ruth, Kanako tries to find comfort in being very busy and adapting to life in Japan. A trip to Tokyo on Marine Day, with older second cousin Asuka, provides some relief to Kana, but when she returns, the long days of work in the mikan orchard provide opportunities for more soul searching.

In remembering the days after Ruth's death, Kanako considers how when people began blaming the grade eight girls, their sadness turned to anger and how they blamed Ruth,
"they were just words, Ruth,

what Lisa said

you didn't have to listen

to words

four words

hurled

in jealousy"

Kanako remembers how a group session with a counselor led them to learn that there was another side to Ruth's story, that she was experiencing depression and believed that she might be bipolar and that Jake was trying to help Ruth because his own sister was dealing with the same issues. 

It is Kanako's grandmother, Baachan who really helps her process what has happened and helps her when new tragedy strikes. Kanako comes to realize that her mother's family knows far more about what happened than she realizes. At the prompting of Baachan, Kanako reaches out to Jake via a letter and he responds back about how he's trying not to hate himself and others for what they didn't do. 

"I try not to hate Lisa

for what she did

but it's hard

I try not to hate myself, too

I try not to hate all of us

for what we didn't do"

Kanako considers what she could have done would include talking, listening and including Ruth. And she hopes that there is a way to show people that she and her friends are different now. Even though Jake does reach out to Lisa, she also commits suicide, devastating Kanako.  It is Baachan, normally reticent and sharp with Kanako who helps. She stays with Kanako, feeding her and sleeping beside her. Jake's message to Lisa is revealed as one that offers encouragement and a way forward for all of them.

"we can't hate ourselves

just find a way to make this

turn you into someone

better than you were

that's what we all have to do

that's all we can do"

Because she has watched everything unfold from a distance, Baachan's offers a clear perspective of what has happened.Kanako asks Baachan if she thinks it was a mistake to have Jake contact Lisa but Baachan responds that it was a mistake to send Lisa away to summer school in another state alone, without any support. Baachan points out to Kanako that she has been sent to stay with family who love her and could offer her support. Lisa did not have this and could not cope with the guilt she felt. Eventually it is Kanako's Japanese family's traditions that offer her a way forward, of honoring both Ruth and Lisa and providing healing for her friends and herself.

Orchards is a well crafted novel that explores the issue of teen suicide and bullying. One of the strongest messages Thompson offers her young readers is to never assume something about someone else. Outward actions and appearances may not be a true reflection of what is going on in their life.  We can't know the battles that a person is fighting daily. This is why kindness and thoughtful empathy are so important.

Book Details:
Orchards by Holly Thompson Illustrations by Grady McFerrin
New York: Delacorte Press 2011
325 pp.

Stolen Child by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

Twelve year old Nadia Kravchuk arrives in Canada in 1950, confused and afraid. She is travelling with the only person she knows, Marusia who calls herself her mother. They have spent the past 5 years in a D.P. (Displaced Persons) camp in Austria. Once they arrive in Canada, Marusia and Nadia travel by train from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Brantford, Ontario where they are met by Marusia's husband, Ivan. Ivan has purchased land and is building a house for them so they can start a new life together.

For Nadia, it is all so overwhelming. Nadia remembers almost nothing about her past. As she settles into life in Brantford and becomes accustomed to living in a city without bombed-out buildings, Nadia begins experiencing troubling nightmares and flashbacks. These fragmented memories are often triggered by familiar sensations such as smells, tastes and even visual reminders.

When Nadia starts attending classes at Central School in Brantford, she is taunted by classmates who call her "Hitler Girl" and believe she is a Nazi. As a result, Nadia experiences shame and guilt because her memories are incomplete and seem to suggest a past that includes Nazi rallies, Hitler, black limousine's with swastikas flags and a family she doesn't really know. This causes Nadia to begin to question who she really is and to try to remember her past. Who is she? Will she ever remember?

Discussion

The reader gradually learns the answers to these questions along with Nadia through flashbacks which appear as italicized text in Stolen Child. The flashbacks are done so realistically that they often lead to more questions.

Skrypuch has written a touching novel about a very unusual and not well-known aspect of Nazi Germany - the Lebensborn program. Meaning "Fount of Life", the Lebensborn program initially focused on having German people produce Aryan children but was eventually expanded to include the poaching - kidnapping of blond, blue-eyed children from other ethnic groups, especially Poland and  Ukraine. It is estimated that at least two hundred fifty thousand children from these two countries alone were stolen. These children underwent a rigorous physical assessment and if they passed they were placed with German families to be raised as Germans.

What makes Stolen Child so effective is that it tells two stories; that of "Nadia" in 1950 trying to adapt to life as a new immigrant and that of "Nadia" the child struggling to survive the destruction of her family in war-torn Europe. Skrypuch accurately portrays the trauma Nadia has experienced: it's obvious to the modern reader that this child is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Marsha Skrypuch succeeds in educating young readers about one aspect of the Nazi eugenics program, while telling an engaging story.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is an exceptional children's author. Based out of Brantford Ontario, she has written numerous historical fiction books focusing on situations involving people marginalized by society as well those relating to the Ukraine.

Book Details:
Stolen Child by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Toronto: Scholastic Canada Ltd 2011
150 pp.

The Queen of Water by Laura Resau and Maria Virginia Farinango

The novel opens when Maria Virginia Farinango (Virginia) is only seven-years-old and living in the village of Yana Urku. Despite her youth and her poverty, Virginia has a great desire to escape her poverty, to get educated and have her own life. However, her family's grinding poverty and indigenas status will be major obstacles to overcome. In Ecuadoran society there are two classes of people; the indigenas who are the native people descended from the Inca's and the mestizos who are the Spanish Europeans who conquerored much of South America including Ecuador. The mestizos are the doctors, lawyers, teachers and landowners in Ecuador while the indigenas are usually slaves, farmers and those who serve the mestizos. It is therefore not uncommon for the mestizos to look down upon the indigenas who are poor and uneducated and to openly ridicule and discriminate against them.

Virginia is given away by her parents to a mestizo couple, Carlitos and his wife Romelia. Virginia is told she must call Romelia, "Doctorita" because she is a dentist and a teacher and that she must address Carlitos as Nino Carlitos, Nino being a term indigenas call their mestizo bosses. They take her back to their village of Kunu Yaku. The understanding Virginia has is that she will be paid a thousand sucres monthly and be allowed to return home to visit her family once per month. Of course, this does not happen and it takes Virginia only a short while to realize that she is in fact nothing more than a slave and that her mother will not be coming to get her.

Virginia, a mere child herself is forced to cook, clean and also to care for the Doctorita's young son, Jaimito who is a baby. Whenever Virginia does not satisfy Doctorita, she is beaten, sometimes so severely that her nose bleeds and she is covered in cuts and bruises. It is truly heartbreaking to read about the abuse that Virginia suffers at the hands of the manipulative, vengeful Doctorita.

At first she is never allowed outside except to wash dishes and diapers but eventually Virginia earns the trust of the Doctorita and is allowed to go on errands. Virginia gradually comes to realize that she will never be paid nor will she ever be allowed to return home. She tells herself that someday she will leave but that she is too small to undertake such a long journey home. At first she silently defies her masters but gradually her resistence becomes more open. When she does try to resist and whenever she tells the Doctorita that she wants to go to school and college and to have a career she is told that she is a longa and that she doesn't "need to read to clean and cook". So Virginia begins to plan her escape but as time goes on it becomes more and more difficult for her to leave. Besides physically abusing her, the Doctorita emotionally manipulates Virginia by telling her that if she does try to escape, her parents will only sell her again to another family.

Virginia tries to make the best of her situation. The Doctorita teaches children science at the local colegio. When the Doctorita refuses to send Virginia to school, she decides that she will learn to read. She begs Nino Carlitos to teach her to read and eventually he does. It is this step that empowers Virginia on the path to acquiring the learning she so desperately craves. But it is Virginia's love of the television character MacGyver that inspires her to become a secret-agent student. She begins by reading one of the Doctorita's textbooks, Understanding Our Universe. Taking notes in a book which she hides under the refrigerator, Virginia gradually learns all the material in the textbook. She also secretly completes all the assignments the Doctorita gives to her eighth grade students, even taking the exam and checking the answers.

As Virginia enters into her teens, the situation at Nino and the Doctorita's home becomes increasingly abusive and strained. It is at this point that Virginia finally makes the decision to reconnect with her older sister Matilde who through extraordinary circumstances she was able to reconnect with. It is Matilde who becomes the catalyst for Virginia to make other life-changing decisions, including the most important one to break free of Nino Carlitos and Doctorita.

Discussion

Queen of Water is  a collaborative effort by author Laura Resau with Maria Virginia Farinango who is a young woman from Ecuador, who grew up in the 1980's under very trying circumstances. An indigenas - a descendant of the Incas who began life in a small impoverished Quichua village in the Ecuadorian Andes, it was Virginia's "vivisima" (cleverness) that led her to break free of the discrimination and abuse she experienced to realize her full potential. "It's true, I do use my wits to fill my belly with fresh cheese or warm rolls. Or to get something I really want, like a pet goat or a pair of shoes. But there's more. I have dreams. Dreams bigger than the mountaintops that poke at the clouds. In the pasture, I always climb my favorite tree and shout to the sheep, "I'm traveling far from here!" and my tree turns into a truck and I ride off to a place where I can eat rice and meat and watermelon every day."

The Queen of Water is a book about the personal triumph of one amazing young woman who refused to accept that because of her race she somehow deserved less. Virginia overcomes so many seemingly impossible obstacles, through ingenuity, perseverance, hard work and even a little bit of luck. Even her decision to finally break free of the Doctorita is a huge struggle. Virginia states that she used her anger in a positive way, not to hurt but to free herself. "Anger is fire that can burn you up, the way it made my father hurt his family. Or it can shine like the sun and provide energy for photosynthesis. I will use my fire as fuel to live the life I want to lead. Whether I'm a longa or mestiza or whatever, Antonio was right, I have a blazing sun inside me and I will use it."

To those on the outside looking in, the choice seems obvious but it's apparent that for Virginia it took great courage to take the steps she finally did. Her choice was between living in a wealthy home with many physical comforts but where she was abused and her real home where she was uncertain of her place, her parents love for her and would once again experience poverty.

When Virginia returns to her family she finds it difficult to fit in. She is neither completely indigenas anymore but nor is she metiszo either. She finds herself conflicted, often straddling two worlds and sometimes ashamed of her indigenos heritage. Virginia must come to terms with the hurt of her parents giving her away and reconcile with her parents. She eventually learns about what her parents lives were like when she was very young and how this led to the abuse she experienced in her own family.

Queen of Water is a sad, riveting account but worth the read to share in Virginia's eventual triumph. She is a true modern heroine and her story has a great message for young people and those who find themselves in circumstances that a difficult and overwhelming. There is the obvious theme of identity which threads its way thoughout the novel. More information about Virginia can be found on the author, Laura Resau's website at https://www.lauraresau.com/the-queen-of-water.  Queen of Water does follow Virginia's life very closely but certain names were changed to protect the privacy of villagers.

Book Details:
Queen of Water by Laura Resau and Maria Virginia Farinango
New York: Delacorte Press 2011
354 pp.

Movie Review: Thor

Thor is a fun movie, full of incredible action scenes with some creative twists on Norwegian mythology. It's a mixture of Marvel superhero comics characters and events as well as elements of Norse mythology, woven together in an interesting and engaging manner.

The story begins by showing the King of Asgard, Odin, waging war on the Frost Giants of Jotunheim and their leader Laufey, who are intent upon conquering each of the Nine Realms beginning with Earth. The Asgardians are victorious and banish the Frost Giants to their realm of Jotunheim. The Casket of Ancient Winters which is the source of the Frost Giants power is kept guarded in Asgard.

Years later, Odin's son, Thor is preparing to ascend to the throne of Asgard. However, his coronoation day is interrupted when the Frost Giants make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve their Casket of Ancient Winters.

Against Odin's wishes, Thor along with his brother Loki, his childhood friend Sif and the Warriors Three; Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg, decide to sneak into Jotunheim to punish the Frost Giants. It should be noted that Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg are not part of the original mythology surrounding Thor but are creations of Marvel Comics to serve as supporting characters to the superhero Thor. When Thor arrives in Jotunheim it is a devastated world, cold and dark, filled with hidden, horrible beasts. After Laufey provokes Thor, a fierce battle ensues and Odin must rescue his son and his companions before they are destroyed by Laufey. With the peace that was brokered between Asgard and Jotunheim now broken, Laufey declares war on Asgard.

After the Asgardians return home via a wormhole, Odin banishes his son Thor to the realm of Earth. Furious with Thor, because he is arrogant, brash and impulsive, Odin strips Thor of his power and places a charm on his hammer Mjolnir which also is thrown to Earth. Only one who is worthy of the power of Thor's hammer will be able to use it. 

When Thor arrives on Earth via a wormhole, he literally crashes into Jane Foster, an astrophysicist studying wormholes. Jane, her assistant Darcy Lewis and her scientist-mentor, Dr. Erik Selvig were out in the middle of the New Mexico desert studying electro-magnetic anomalies when Thor literally drops in. Slightly injured, Thor is taken to the hospital where he escapes.

Minutes after Thor's arrival on Earth, his hammer rockets out of the sky and lands not far from the town. Unable to remove the hammer, local residents flock to the site which eventually draws the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland, Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) a government agency which exists in the Marvel Comic universe. Thor overhears people talking about the hammer in a diner and sets out to retrieve it. This of course sets up the usual confrontation between the superhero and the government with Jane and her friends trying to help Thor.

Meanwhile back in Asgard things aren't going so well either. Loki become King of Asgard when Odin falls into a deep sleep. However, Sif and the Warriors Three are distrustful of Loki and his motives. They decide that they must take a chance and try to recover Thor from Earth. The movie thus juxtaposes between events occurring on Earth and those occurring on both Asgard and Jotunheim.

There are a few surprises along the way but the ending is predictable yet satisfying. The battles are thrilling, with plenty of well done special effects to satisfy the need for exploding cars, terrifying monsters and gravity-defying superhero battles and short on gore. Chris Hemsworth is cast as Thor, with Natalie Portman of Star Wars fame as his love interest, Jane Foster. Tom Hiddleston is a sly Loki out to cause mayhem, while Idris Elba is an impressive Heimdall. Overall this was a good movie, but it could have done without the romance.

poster image: https://www.amazon.ca/MOVIE-POSTER-Sided-ORIGINAL-HEMSWORTH/dp/B00CLHW3HS

Karma by Cathy Ostlere

"Racism isn't always hatred. Sometimes it's just confusion fear. It's their own hearts they're not sure about."

The novel opens on October 28, 1984 as fifteen-year-old Jiva and her father Amar (Bapu) Singh fly to India with the ashes of her mother, Leela.

On the plane writing in her journal, Jiva recalls how her parents met years ago  at a wedding in India. For Leela, a Brahman Hindu and Amar, a Sikh, marriage was forbidden. Leela wasn't allowed to leave the house for two months unaccompanied, while her Amar's mother didn't speak to him for six weeks.  Amar's father lectured him about how marrying a Brahman girl would destroy him spiritually and that he would be tied to the "Wheel of Existences".  

However neither Leela nor Amar would relent, believing that their families were offering opposition to their marriage to save face. And so three months later they wed. Their Hindu and Sikh families celebrated and accepted the union since the couple were emigrating to Canada. But while Amar's father advised him to insist Leela become Sikh, Leela's family disowned her.

Jiva's parents settled in Elsinore, Manitoba, a small town of "one thousand, four hundred, and seventy-two Christian-like souls" and three pagans: Jiva and her parents.  Her family rented an old farmhouse near the cemetery and her father worked as a mechanic, running Jack's Mechanic Shop, renting to own. Jiva was born on July 20, 1969, the exact moment that man walked on the moon. However, Leela and Amar disagreed over a name for their daughter: Leela wanted to name her Neil after the astronaut, but Amar insisted on Jiva. This name upset Leela who does not want her daughter to be named after Amar's father. Leela decided she will call her Maya, but this angered Amar who now feels he should have insisted she become Sikh or never married her.

Jiva means "soul" in Sanskrit while Maya means "illusion" or "change" also in Sanskrit. When Jiva was a young girl, her mother whom she calls Mata began to teach her the Hindu faith. However, this angers her father  Amar, whom Jiva calls Bapu. These arguments confused and frightened Jiva. 

On October 29-30, 1984, Jiva and her father arrive in New Delhi, a crowded, noisy, smelly city. Jiva is overwhelmed by the sights and sounds: a one-armed woman beggar, a shrivelled rickshaw driver, a boy selling chai tea. Her father ignores the beggars and tells Jiva to ignore them because they can't help them. In India, Bapu takes Jiva shopping because she has packed only t-shirts and jeans, having tore up all her saris after Mata died. Jiva remembers what it was like back in Elsinore: her mother wore a sari rather than pants and she remembers Mata shopping at Reena's Sari shop in Winnipeg. 

Jiva remembers how life is Elsinore was very difficult for her mother. After nine years in Elsinore, Leela finds the people unfriendly as no one will talk to her. Amar is not empathetic, telling her to wear Canadian clothes which Leela finds ugly, or just stay inside. Leela begs Amar to take her back to India but he refuses, telling her there is no money to do so. Jiva's parents' relationship begins to unravel as their different values and perspective on life begin to show in daily life.

Eventually Bapu promised they would visit India when Jiva is sixteen. But as they watched events from Elsinore, Manitoba, India fell into turmoil: Punjab became a place of "turmoil and violence"...with "Sikhs demanding a homeland called Khalistan." Bapu believed that Prime Minister Indira Ghandi would never allow Punjab to separate because it borders Pakistan and Mata began to realize that her dream of visiting India was vanishing. "How will we go home now, Amar?  Sikhs and Hindus being driven apart? Where does that leave us?"

In their hotel room in Delhi, on October 31 to November 1 1984, Bapu returns frantic, telling Jiva that there are mobs of Hindu men raging through the streets hurting Sikh men, women and children.  On Halloween, Indira Ghandi, prime minister of India has been shot thirty-two times, assassinated by her two Sikh guards. Terrified that because he is a Sikh he will be murdered, Bapu removes his turban, cuts his hair, trims his beard, and tells Jiva to wait in the hotel room while he goes to his friend Kiran Sharma who lives in the Mangolpuri District to help them leave Delhi. But before he leaves, Bapu reveals to Jiva that he brought her to India to marry her to an Indian man, as Mata requested.  Jiva is horrified and while she waits she remembers how she found Mata hanging from a ceiling fan in their house. She also remembers how her friend Helen, wearing a sari she lent her, betrays her with Michael, the boy she likes.

Jiva is brought back to the present when the hotel is set on fire and the Sikh men are forced out into the street so they can be murdered. Jiva strips off her sari, dresses in her t-shhirt and jeans, cuts off her braid, and realizing she cannot go out the front door, flees out a kitchen window at the back of the hotel. She manages to exchange their train tickets for a train to Jodhpur. On the train Jiva witnesses an unspeakable attack on a Sikh man whom she tries to save but who is burned alive. At the train station in Jodhpur, Jiva collapses and is taken to a hospital where Dr. Parvati Patel treats her. In shock and deeply traumatized, Jiva remains silent, telling Dr. Patel nothing other than the name her mother wanted for her, Maya.

At this point in the novel, the narrative switches to a new character, seventeen-year-old Sandeep on November 13, 1994. Sandeep is the brother of Parvati, the doctor treating Jiva. Sandeep is adopted, an orphan whose parents are dead and who was found under a goat in the desert. Parvati has Sandeep keep a diary to chronicle his efforts to help the mute girl who was dropped off at the Widows Home in Jodhpur. Parvati believes she is a foreigner who fled the rioting and that Sandeep can help. At the insistence of Parvati, her parents, Amma and Barindra take in Maya (Jiva) in the hopes that they can help her heal. However, at the Patel home, Maya remains mute and seems to slip deeper into distress. Their neighbours are convinced she is either a witch or a prostitute. 

As the villagers begin to harrass and threaten the Patel family, Amma insists that Barindra take Maya away. Barindra makes a deal with his friend, Farooq to take Maya to his village of Alamar where she will likely end up married to one of his grandsons. Maya continues to remain mute but it is her journey through the desert that forces her to make the decision to live...and to do that she must speak. 

Discussion

Karma is a historical fiction novel that explores the immigrant experience in Canada, against the backdrop of the volatile events in India of 1984. It covers the time period from October 28 to December 17, 1984.

Following India's independence from colonial rule by Britain in 1947, the Punjab region in northern India began to agitate for a separate Punjabi-speaking state. In 1966, the Punjab stat was divided on the basis of language into the mainly Punjabi-speaking state of Punjab and the mainly Hindi-speaking state of Haryana. The majority of people in Punjab state adhere to Sikhism, a religion that believes everyone is equal before God. Sikhs believe in reincarnation, and that only through perfect devotion to God (through good works and living well) they can break the cycle of rebirth. In Hinduism, the dominant religion in Harvana, it is believed the soul is reborn repeatedly until perfection and there are many gods and goddesses.

Through the years following the creation of these two states and into the early 1980s, increasingly militant Sikh activism led to the demand of independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan. By 1981 there was ongoing violence between Sikh and Hindus, with the desecration of Hindu temples by Sikhs. As tensions continued to escalate in Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi through the early 1980s by 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi decided she had to act. The Indian military attacked the Sikh Golden Temple killing the Sikh extremist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. This ultimately led to the assassination of Indira Ghandi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984. leading to violent rioting. Mobs attacked Sikhs in Delhi, killing thousands and injuring many thousands more. These events provide the setting for the novel.

Karma begins with the voice of Jiva who along with her father Bapu arrive in India with her mother Leela's ashes. Jiva is reflecting on the events that led up to her mother's suicide: her struggles as an immigrant in a country where her culture and beliefs are in sharp contrast to those of Christianity. This leads a lack of community, resulting in isolation and depression.  Jiva's parent also begin to experience  struggles in their marriage as they argue about a name for their daughter and what to teach Jiva/Maya to believe. Their struggles are a metaphor for the religious strife that is tearing apart their homeland of India. 

In the poem, "Mata is crying day and night", the struggles Jiva's mother Mata (Leela) experiences are brought into focus: missing the familiar landscape of home, the lack of connection and community. Leela asks Amar,

"Don't you miss your homeland, Amar? The broad plains? The fields of wheat? Our Punjab of the five rivers"" 

Amar tells her that in Canada she  has religious freedom whereas if they were to return to India his father's intolerance for Hinduism would force her to convert to Sikhism. But that is small comfort to Leela,
"But I have no one to pray with, but a daughter who won't dress Indian unless it's Halloween! I have religious freedom

but no community."

Amar tells her that hatred is as form of isolation and that in Canada there's "No blood in the soil to stain our lives. No families to tell us how to be."  This is a reference to the ongoing strife in India between Hindus and Sikhs, a foreshadowing of what Jiva and Bapu will experience themselves in the future.

Unfortunately, Jiva and Bapu arrive in India at the height of violence between Hindus and Sikhs. The overwhelming poverty in India is a shock to Jiva as is her father's indifference to it. In New Delhi, she is overwhelmed at the sight of the beggars and the street people. Her father's response is given in the poem, "Who Are You?"

"What would you have me do, Jiva?

Feed all the starving?

Buy them artificial limbs?

Buy their children?

No. Of course not, I shout back.

Just see them.

See their pain.

Acknowledge their suffering.

I am tired of pain, he says...

And besides, there's nothing we can do, Jiva. Perhaps they'll do better in their next life.

But I think he means they should have done better in their last.

Karma.

To Jiva, her father is blaming the poor and the beggars, essentially saying that they are beggars now in this life because they did something terrible in their previous life. His attitude puzzles Jiva because at home in Elsinore he notices everyone and is deferential, but in India, he is proud and confident.  However, as Jiva remembers the past, she remembers her father being unsympathetic towards the suffering of Mata who felt increasingly isolated and who begged to be taken back to India. 

As the violence escalates following the assassination of Indira Ghandi, Jiva learns that her father has taken her to India not just to bring Mata's ashes but also to force her into marriage. Left alone at their hotel, Jiva flees to escape the violence but on the train to Jodhpur witnesses unspeakable cruelty towards Sikhs as told in a poem titled "Mirage"

"They come across the yellow fields
running with dark faces and teeth bared
through ribbons of heated air
a mirage of false water.

The train slows as if waiting for them to catch up.

What's happening here?
Why are we stopping here?
Is it wolves?

But they are not wolves

(we should have prayed for wolves)

but men instead
four-limbed and angry
carrying iron rods and knives
hands gripping gasoline cans
voices shouting into the hot dry air
their fury stirring the dust like a wind.

(we should have prayed for wolves)..."

Jiva is accused by the passengers on the train of unlocking the train door. Jiva did not unlock the door and attempted to save a Sikh man who is taken and burned alive in a field. This trauma leads her to question her actions in the poem title "Guilt", as she questions whether she did enough.

"I know I'm not the one who unwrapped the turban, bound the legs, poured the gasoline, and struck the match

But I listened to the screams for mercy and was frozen

Could I have smothered the fire with my body?

Should I have died with him? Fire on my hands?

Is my silence unfounded too?"

Because she feels she didn't act, - a fifteen-year-old girl in a strange country- Jiva believes she doesn't deserve to be found by her father or loved. Her trauma leads Jiva unable to speak and tell the doctor who she is. 

At this point the novel seems to lose the storyline. Instead of the focus remaining on Jiva and her thoughts at this time, the story switches to a narrative by a new character, Sandeep Patel, adopted brother of Dr. Parvati Patel.  Jiva who has told the doctor her name is Maya, is taken in by Doctor Parvati Patel's family, although Dr. Patel never visits to see how Maya is doing. As Jiva is mute, the narration is taken over by Sandeep who is asked to keep a diary by his sister. This method to move the story forward feels awkward and not realistic as boys generally do not journal. Eventually, the Patel family's neighbours begin to harrass and threaten them about the presence of the strange girl in their home. However, they never reach out to their physician daughter for help in finding another family to take in Maya. Instead, Barindra and a stranger - Akbar take Maya on a journey across the Thar Desert. It is revealed that she will stay with Akbar's family and likely be forced to marry him. During the trip the connection between Sandeep and Akbar is revealed. When a desert storm threatens, Maya who has runaway from Sandeep, Akbar and Barhindra, must make the decision to live, and starts to speak again.

Four weeks after the riots, Jiva returns to Delhi with Sandeep to find her father. Jiva is still struggling to come to terms with the mob violence she has witnessed. She is shocked by the indifference and forgetfulness of the people in Delhi.

"The city is shrouded with amnesia.

A tattered veil of forgetfulness...

Yet four weeks later what is different? Fewer turbans? But who is noticing?

On the streets of New Delhi, who is concerned? Who even remembers?

I question the face of every man I walk by?

Was it you? Were you a part of this?

Did you take a man's life? His breath? His dreams?

Or did you stand by and do nothing?"

In the poem, "The shame", Jiva struggles to understand the Indian mindset towards what has happened,

"I don't understand, Sandeep.

Where is the shame for what happened on these streets?

Why is the city not on its knees?

The masses asking for forgiveness?

Crowding to temples with offerings in their mouths?"

Eventually Jiva is reunited with Bapu (Amar) through the determined efforts of Sandeep. After Bapu explains what happened to him, Jiva tells him that she wanted to die in the desert. In the poem titled "Life" she tells her father,

"It's not easy to die, Bapu,...

In the desert I thought I wanted death to find me. But life is an enormous force. It doesn't let go easily....

I also learned that our lives are not just our own. Everyone and everything is connected. Like a wide net of fine thread..."

Despite what has happened, their separation and the trauma of the riots, things are not right between Jiva and her father. Although her father wants to follow through on the arranged marriage, Jiva refuses, telling him she is in love with Sandeep Patel. He also confesses to her that two months before Mata hanged herself, he had bought plane tickets to Delhi but kept it a secret because he wanted her gratitude. He didn't ease her suffering when he could have, giving her something to look forward to and this fills him with remorse.

Ostlere offers a fitting conclusion to her story:  Jiva, Bapu and his friend Kiran who rescued Mata's urn from the abandoned hotel room, pour Mata's ashes into the Yamuna River. And Jiva and Sandeep, whose real name is Miraj (he learns this from his brother Akbar) briefly reunite by the Yamuna River and promise to find one another in the future.

Karma is a good effort to portray the horrific events surrounding the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Ghandi through the eyes of two young people: an Indian-Canadian girl and a Hindu boy. What begins as a novel about a struggling immigrant family in Canada, and a violent historical event in India ends as a love story. The novel is very long at over 500 pages, and some readers may find the middle section of the novel slow and lose interest. Parts of the storyline feel very contrived: the use of a diary by Sandeep, Maya/Jiva's sudden decision to speak again, the meeting of Pavarti on the train which saves Sandeep and Jiva, and the finding of Jiva's father by Sandeep. Sandeep Patel's narrative does contain some sexual content that could have been omitted. Better editing would have made this story more focused on the themes of the immigrant struggle and racism which Bapu and Jiva encounter both in Canada and in India. The novel's title is a reference to the concept of "karma" that events happen to a person based on their previous actions: good actions lead to good things and bad actions to suffering or problems. 

Book Details:

Karma by Cathy Ostlere
Puffin Canada 2011
517 pp.

Flip by Martyn Bedford

When 14 year old Alex Gray goes to sleep the night of December 21 and wakes up one June morning in the body of another boy, Philip Garamond (known as Flip to his family and friends), he is completely freaked out. What has happened to him? How did he get inside another boy's body? Where has he been the past SIX months of which he has no memory? And where is HIS body?

Eventually Flip learns the truth about his situation. Alex, the victim of a hit and run, is in a coma in London and has been for the past six months. Somehow, Alex has switched bodies with Philip.

Alex as Flip (Philip) explores the next few months of life,inside the body of Flip, whose life is so completely different from that of Alex. He lives in a different town, goes to a good school and lives with Philip's family who is well to do. But try as he might, Flip cannot adjust to living Philip's life. Philip is everything Alex is not. He is popular, athletic, very healthy and he has two girlfriends. But Philip is also a player and Alex is not like this.

Alex eventually discovers via the internet that he's not the only one who has experienced "psychic evacuation" - that is a soul switching bodies. But unlike the others who have experienced this situation, Alex's original body is still alive. Although he tries to live in Flip's body, he doesn't behave like Flip, he doesn't have the same interests as Flip and he doesn't want Flip's life. He also comes to realize that the nightmares he's having are a sign that Philip is fighting for his body too.

For Alex, it becomes a question of integrity, and how he lives his life.

"If he allowed himself,he could imagine things continuing like this. Merge his life with Flip's. Accept the switch, adapt and move on -- like the others of his kind had done. Carry on being Philip Garamond, or at least the new, modified Alex-as-Flip he was starting to turn into. With Alex's spirit in Flip's body, he could stay in Litchbury....complete his education at a good school...After that, a long, healthy life to look forward to, another sixty, seventy years, maybe. He could be whatever, and whoever, he liked.
But that wasn't being himself. Being properly himself. That life would mean living a lie. Lying to himself every hour of every day, for as long as it took Flip's body to die. Lying to the Garamonds. To everyone he met or worked with or became friends with in the many years to come."

Eventually Alex must make a decision about whether to stay or to try to find a way back to his own body.

The inside flap of this book states that it deals with questions of identity, the will to survive and what a person is willing to sacrifice to remain alive. Indeed Flip does push the reader to explore all of these questions. Flip also forces the reader to explore metaphysical questions. When Alex, in Flip's body climbs a rocky cliff he thinks about jumping and wonders "If he died in Flip's body, where would his soul go?"

I enjoyed this book immensely. Unlike Amy By Any Other Name, Flip has a happier ending, although with a bit of a twist. Sometimes I felt that I knew more about Philip Garamond than who Alex really was. But Alex's personality is revealed gradually. It was obvious that the tremendous contrast between rich kid Philip who had a tendency to be superficial towards others was in deep contrast to Alex who cares about the people in his life. It is this characteristic of Alex's personality that leads him to make the decision that he does.

The only thing I found a bit of a drawback in my reading experience was the author's use of English colloquialisms that Canadian teens might not be familiar with. Otherwise, an enjoyable read and a book I highly recommend.

Book Details:
Flip by Martyn Bedford
Doubleday Canada 2011
258 pp.

Movie Review: The Stoning of Soraya M

Critics compared "The Stoning of Soraya M." to Kafka, but actually nothing in the western canon of literature is comparable to the inadvertent self-parody -- the simple lunacy -- of a system of law that maintains that if a man is accused of infidelity by his wife, she must prove his guilt, but if a woman is accused, she must prove her innocence. Thus, in a single sentence, is a belief system codified. It is a system that rejects modernity, justice, equality and rationality -- and treats female sexuality as a vice.

Carl M Cannon from Soraya M, Stoned to Death for Being an "Inconvenient Wife".

The Stoning of Soraya M is not an easy movie to watch. It tells the story of the stoning of 35 year old Soraya Manutchehri, mother to seven children and married to a brute of a man, Ghorban-Ali. Ali who worked as a prison guard in a neighbouring town, met a 14 year old girl whom he wanted to marry. Although he could have divorced Soraya, he did not want to pay child support and so with the complicity of the pretend-mullah in his village of Kupayeh, Ali had Soraya convicted of adultery. The punishment for such a crime was death by stoning in order to restore the honour of Ali and the men of Kupayeh. 

On August 15, 1986, the innocent Soraya was buried up to her waist and stoned to death. Her aunt, Zahra Khanum managed to tell the story to an Iranian-born French journalist, Freidoune Sahebjam who wrote a book about Soraya.

In the religious traditions of the West, free will is offered as an explanation for such depredations, but that rationale seems grossly insufficient. When packs of armed men shout "God is Great" while disfiguring, abasing, or killing women, surely God is weeping.

The Stoning of Soraya M is riveting and at times overwhelming. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh felt Soraya's story was important and wanted the world to know that this barbaric practice was still occurring in Iran and many other Islamic countries. Filming with a cast of Iranian actors who spoke Farsi, Nowrasteh captured the horror of Soraya's fate and the brutality of Islamic legal code that has no room for mercy.

The film's greatest strength besides an outstanding script, was its gifted cast. James Caviezel (Passion of Christ) was exceptional as journalist Freidoune Sahebjam. Nowrasteh has said that two well known actors were recruited to play the part but each dropped out because their wives were concerned they would be in danger if they made the movie. Caviezel was an obvious choice not only because the film's producer, Stephen McEveety had worked with Caviezel on Passion of Christ, but also because this wonderful actor has a gift for languages. And Nowrasteh and McEveety needed someone who could learn Farsi.

But it was actresses, newcomer Mozhan Marno (an Los Angeles native of Iranian descent) who played Soraya and Iranian born Shohreh Aghdashloo who played Zahra who truly shone. Their onscreen chemistry was superb, capturing the all the drama and hopelessness of Soraya's situation.

The Stoning of Soraya M made its debut at the Toronto Film Festival in 2008 and of course is now available on DVD. Expect a high level of discomfort viewing this movie. The stoning scene is horrific and unbearable, as such a barbaric practice should be. Watching a group of human beings torture a woman to death in the name of honour is not easy. As Carl Cannon states:

I do not know, as I told one of this movie's financial backers, whether Americans will sit through a film this sad and grisly. I only know that they should. It has been said many times since 9/11 that we are in a war of ideas -- and a shooting war as well -- with men who are confident that one day all the world will be governed by this kind of law. It would not be a world worth inhabiting. I am haunted by Soraya and her sisters.

For an excellent review of the movie checkout Carl Cannon's piece.