Fitting Indian by Jyoti Chand

Sixteen-year-old Nitasha Gupta lives with her mother and father and her older brother Shaan in Southern California. Her family is East Indian. Nitasha hates the constant smell of tumeric and garam masala in her hair and on her clothing. Her mother is always on the phone to her sisters or yelling at Nitasha. She resents her parents always telling her to say "haanji like an obedient India robot." They don't seem to like her having an opinion and want her to study to become a doctor. Like her brother, Shaan. He has the perfect job and is "Perfectly engaged to a perfect Indian lawyer." His fiance is Karishma.

Nitasha wants to work but her father tells her to focus on her studies, while her mother tells her "Young girls don't go to work." However, Shaan worked in high school. 

Nitasha and her family attend Arya Samaj every Sunday. Nitasha knows it is not good to drink at a religious ceremony but she gets small bottles of alcohol from her friend Ava's house. The havan or ritual is led by Nitasha's paternal grandmother. She lived with Nitasha's family but left when Nitasha was four-years-old after a fight with her mother. At this week's havan, Nitasha meets Nick whom she's known all her life. He was Nitasha's first and only boyfriend and her first and only kiss. However when her father found a love letter she wrote Nick, he took her for a drive and emphatically reminded her no boyfriends, and no love letters. But Nitasha is determined they will not choose her husband. There is much Nitasha doesn't understand including arranged marriages, calculus, Hinduism. But she does like Arya Samja.

Nitasha is worried because she doesn't have a date for homecoming. Her best friend, Ava has had many boyfriends. She's going to homecoming with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Dylan. Nitasha wishes her mom was like Ava's mom who lets her do what she wants. But Ava doesn't really know Nitasha, that she wishes she was "hot. Blonde, Skinny, tall, pretty." Nitasha asks Ava to help her dye her hair blonde.

After an confrontation with her mother over her phone, Nitasha cuts herself. She lies to her parents, telling them she's tutoring Ava in AP Chemistry. Instead, they go to Ava's new friend Chloe's home where they do a makeover of Nitasha, dyeing her hair blonde. Chloe and Ava discuss losing their virginity, but Nitasha isn't interested in this aspect of Henry, a boy she likes. She tells Ava and Chloe "there's so much more to him."

At the party at Jack's house, Nitasha drinks so many shots of tequila that she is sick and at the Samja the next day doesn't feel well. While talking with Nick outside the Samja, Nitasha reveals that her grandma hates her mother therefore her and that although she loves her dad, he doesn't stand up to his mother.

In Nitasha's ceramics class, her teachers notices Nitasha's cuts on her arms. She asks if Nitasha is alright but Nitasha makes the excuse that she cut herself on the laundry basket. The teacher reminds Nitasha that she is always welcome to come to the art room during lunch hour. During lunch, Henry who just flirted with another girl, approaches Nitasha to ask her to help tutor him in biology. He flirts with her too. What Nitasha doesn't realize is that Henry likes Chloe.

That night while Ava is over, Nitasha learns that Henry has asked Chloe to homecoming. This devastates Nitasha especially when she realizes that her friend knew Henry was not really interested in her. This situation leads to Nitasha drinking and cutting.

Nick's family comes over for dinner and while their parents gossip, Nick and Nitasha talk about her missing homecoming. When they kiss, Nick realizes that Nitasha has been drinking and questions her. Nick's father has been in recovery for six years and he's concerned that Nitasha is drinking alone. She reveals that she was sad because of what happened between her and Ava, and Chloe and Henry. Just then Nitasha gets a text from Ava asking her to come to the afterparty.

The afterparty turns into a disaster for Nitasha, leading to devastating consequences. Nick and Nitasha attend the afterparty at Henry's home. However to do so, Nitasha lies to her mom, telling her they are going to get Froyo. Nick says they might check out the new Hindi movie afterwards. They arrive at the afterparty and dance together. Ava comes over and apologizes to Nitasha and the two girls begin drinking shots.  After doing four shots Nitasha wants to dance but Nick wants to leave. Ava promises to get Nitasha home safely and Nick leaves. With Nick gone, Nitasha takes Henry upstairs but he's not really interested in what she has in mind. Very drunk, Nitasha begins undressing and dancing on his bed. It is at this point that Chloe enters the room and is furious. She takes a video of Nitasha dancing on the bed and leaves vowing to get revenge.

The next morning at Ava's house, Nitasha is sick and gets and angry phone call from her parents telling her to come home immediately.  Ava tells Nitasha that Henry is worried about her and that Chloe is furious at finding her with Henry. While they talk, Ava discovers that Nitasha is cutting herself and questions her as to why she does this. Ava asks Nitasha why as best friends, she's been lying to her. She begs Nitasha to stop hurting herself and Nitasha promises to stop if she won't tell anyone.

At home, Nitasha's family is angry with her as they had no idea where she was. Her father brings her something to eat and tells her "This is not how Indian girls behave." When Nitasha argues with him, he tells her that she can't behave like American girls.

At school, things quickly unravel for Nitasha. When she goes to apologize to Chloe, she angrily tells Nitasha, "I'm going to make sure you go down for this." Chloe posts the video she took of Nitasha in Henry's room and it quickly garners millions of views. When Ava expresses surprise at Chloe, she responds, "Who cares? She has cuts on her arms and thighs that you can't see on the video. She's legit psycho."  Nick picks Nitasha up from school and expresses remorse about leaving her there but he explains that because of his father's alcoholism, he can't be around alcohol like that.

Twenty-four hours later, Shaan has seen the video and angrily confronts Nitasha. He tells her this can have consequences far into the future for her as colleges Google applicants. Soon the consequences spiral out of control as the video spreads. There is a magazine feature with the video about teens and drinking. Nitasha's parents learn of the video and are furious with her. Her Ama slaps her in the face and Shaan states that Karishma's parents have seen the video and want to break off the engagement. Ama ji screams that Nitasha's parents are at fault for giving birth to her and she tells them they are no longer welcome at her Samaj. Then Nitasha's father disowns her and her mother cries that she has ruined their name. In an act of utter despair and wanting to feel nother, Nitasha cuts, drinks and then overdoses on pills.

But this desperate act opens the door to self-discovery, revelation and healing both for Nitasha, her mother and others in their South Asian community.

Discusion

Fitting Indian is a graphic novel that explores the struggles first generation Indian-Americans encounter growing up and how parental and cultural expectations can sometimes be overwhelming. The author, Jyoti Chand states in her Acknowledgements that many of the events in the novel were inspired by her own life events.  She "deeply struggled" with her mental health as a teenager and eventually was able to also overcome issues with acohol consumption. Chand writes that although this is Nitasha's story "...it's also familiar to so many of us-young South Asian women who were put into a box too early in life and told how life should play out. Many of us struggled and still struggle silently, and some of us were lucky enough to have second chances to live a more fulfilling life."

Nitasha Gupta is a first generation East Indian teen girl who struggles under the weight of her cultural expectations. "Good Indian girls" do not work, they do not have boyfriends, and especially do not write love letters. However, it seems the same expectations are not placed on her brother Shaan who was allowed to work in high school. This cultural expectation likely revolves around the East Asian culture of arranged marriages in which families scout for good marriage prospects for their daughters and sons. A girl who works or has had boyfriends may be considered difficult or unsuitable as a prospective bride and there are many expectations placed on young Asian women. However, Nitasha doesn't want her parents to choose her husband. She wants to make her own choice. She wants to date, to attend homecoming, prom and have a boyfriend.

Nitasha is also dealing with parental expectations. She loves her ceramics class and wants to be an artist but her parents envision her going to medical school to become a doctor like her older brother Shaan. These expectations place enormous stress on Nitasha at a time when she is struggling to understand herself and determine what she wants in life as she enters adulthood. These pressures lead to Nitasha drinking and to cutting as ways to deal with her pain and her lack of voice. She is pushed over the edge when a video of her intoxicated and partially undressed goes viral, causing her embarrassment and shame for her parents.

Through the character of Dr. Baizley, Jyoti Chand offers some perspective on mental illness in the  Asian community. She points out to Nitasha that there is a stigma around mental health issues in some cultures, in this case Asian and South Asian communities. Nitasha points out that her aunt is bipolar but that no one in her family acknowledges her illness nor talks about it. And as Nitasha journeys through counselling and group therapy it is revealed that Nitasha's mother also attempted to take her own life  many years earlier. No one spoke about what happened, the silence and secrecy influencing the Gupta family dynamics. The unresolved issues led to continued conflict between Nitasha's mother Sunita and her mother-in-law that eventually began to affect Nitasha as well. 

When Nitasha and Shaan's father is hospitalized with high blood pressure, Shaan reveals that he found their mother when he was fourteen years old. He tells Nitasha, "The only thing I kept thinking was that she didn't love me anymore. Like, why would she do that if she loved me?"  However, when he found Nitasha, he has realized that it has nothing to do with him but that his mother was in pain.

Nitasha's struggles lead her to confront her family's attitudes towards mental illness but also those of the her South Asian community. With the help of Shaan's fiance Karishma, Nitasha arranges for one of Karishma's friends, who is a therapist to begin offering group therapy at their Samaj. Nitasha stands up to her grandmother who doesn't want this to happen.

The novel ends on a very upbeat, happy tone. Karishma's family allows the engagement to Shaan to proceed. Nitasha's parents both stand up to Ama jji. Her father sees the letter Nitasha wrote him and realizes that he has been very harsh with his daughter. He stands up to his mother, protecting both Sunita and Nitasha.Nitasha comes to recognize that her parents really do love her. Nitasha does receive an apology from Chloe for what she did. Nitasha tells Chloe she hopes she's learned her lesson. Readers learn that Chloe was bullied at her last school and in an effort to fit in at Nitasha's school she herself became a bully. Although Henry asks her to prom, Nitasha takes the lead and asks Nick. 

Chand uses the motif of the lotus flower to show how Nitasha is like the lotus. Her mother explains "A lotus lives in the murkiest waters yet remains clean and beautiful. It is always pure regardless of what comes its way. The lotus flower always rises above." She reminds Nitasha, "I want you to remember  that, no matter how muddy things get around you, be like the lotus and keep reemerging more beautiful each and every time."  This is a message all readers can take to heart in times of struggle.

Book Details:

Fitting Indian by Jyoti Chand

New York: Harper Alley    2025

Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin

Twelve-year-old Ebo is in a Seahawk Inflatable Rubber dinghy that should only how six people but has fourteen passengers. He is traveling with his brother Kwame and two friends, Nuru and Razak, hoping to reach the shores of Italy and a better life. In the boat they are arguing- they've been at sea for three hours and it is cold and dark. Razak is struggling to navigate the boat. Ebo remembers how they came to be in this situation...

Nineteen months earlier, Ebo's brother Kwame left suddenly, without telling him, to try for Europe. After checking throughout the village and running to the bus depot, Ebo realizes Kwame has left. After putting his Uncle Patrick who has been "caring" for him to bed, Ebo sets out after Kwame, boarding the bus to Agadez, Niger. In Agadez, a woman remembers Kwame after she sees Ebo's photograph, but she has no other information. 

Every day Ebo tries to find work but is turned away. Ebo befriends an older man named Penn after he finds a package of anti-septic wipes. He used the wipes to trade for food. A lucky break happens when Ebo is asked to sing at a wedding and he finds Kwame.

It takes Ebo and Kwame twenty-one weeks to save for passage across the desert on a truck that is filled with many others. Their water bottles are taken from them and they are allowed one mouthful of water when the truck stops. The traffickers show no mercy, not even stopping when a man falls off the truck.

Ebo, Kwame, Nuru, Razak and the others are abandoned in the desert when Libyan men stop their truck, fill it with contraband cigarettes and take off. The group spend days walking, suffering from thirst and the burning sun. They find a jeep with dead men, but it has sealed water bottles and eventually they do cross the desert. Ebo and his brother work to pay for rides from town to town until they reach Tripoli, on the Mediterranean Sea. On the ride into Tripoli, Ebo and the others are smuggled past a check point. By this time Ebo is very ill and Kwame must get illegal medication to save him. While Ebo recovers, Kwame works so they can pay for passage to Europe.

Razak and Nuru visit every day with news about the boats. They argue about what to do and whether they can trust the men with the boats. After the storm drain they are living in is checked by soldiers, Ebo, Kwame and Razak make the fateful decision to book a boat to Europe. The trip to Italy will bring both heartbreak and happiness.

Discussion

Illegal is a graphic novel that effectively portrays the plight of the thousands of men, women and children fleeing war, persecution, and economic hardship in Africa and the Middle East. With few resources available to them, many must work hard and place their trust in people who traffick in human beings. The result is often death or the loss of those they love.

In Illegal, Ebo and Kwame's journey begins in their village in Niger, to Agadez. the fifth largest city in Niger, situated in the middle of the Sahara Desert. To get to the Mediterranean Sea, Ebo and Kwame have to travel through the Sahara, a dangerous journey due to the extreme heat and cold, but also made more so because they must rely on human traffickers to make the journey. Their destination is Tripoli, the capital of Libya and from there they will cross the Mediterranean Sea to land in Italy.

Colfer tells Ebo's story in two parts. The story opens with Ebo, Kwame, and their friends in a rubber dinghy in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. The situation is dire as it is evident the boat is overcrowded, the motor is failing, and they are lost. This causes Ebo to remember how he came to be in this situation. From this point on the story alternates between the events that occurred in Northern Africa as they journeyed from Agadez to Tripoli and the current terrifying situation in the boat on the Mediterranean.

Unlike many refugees, Ebo and Kwame and their friends are not fleeing persecution or war, but are economic migrants. Their parents are both dead and there is no one to look after them except an elderly uncle who spends the money they earn on drink. Although Ebo attended school, there are very few options for a young person in his situation. 

Illegal perhaps best captures the desperation Ebo and Kwame experience, willing to risk traversing the Sahara Desert with traffickers who cram refugees onto trucks and who don't care about the safety of their passengers and even extort them for water. They are again at the mercy of traffickers who take their money but provide boats that are overcrowded and not seaworthy. 

The novel also captures the trauma that refugees like Ebo experience, after seeing people die in the desert and drown in the sea. Ebo also experiences the trauma of almost dying himself during the crossing and of witnessing his own beloved brother drown. 

Illegal does end on a hopeful note with Ebo reuniting with his long-lost sister. The novel's back matter offers a map of Ebo's Journey, a Creator's Note written by the authors and illustrator, and another refugee's experience, titled Journey: Helen's Story. 

Illegal offers young readers the opportunity to experience the humanity of refugees, their hopes and struggles. Written in 2017, Illegal was inspired by the 2015 crisis which saw mass immigration from Africa and the Middle East into Western Europe. As the creators of the graphic novel note, all these migrants and refugees are human beings.

Book Details:

Illegal by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin
Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky     2018
122 pp.

Alone: the journeys of three young refugees by Paul Tom

In Alone, readers will explore the real-life stories of three young refugees as they journey alone to the safety of another country. 

Ashfin is thirteen-years-old and lives in Iran. In the summer he and his family often slept on the roof of their house because it was so hot. While his country has been at war, it is only now that it has come to his city. Now instead of spending nights on the roof, they hide in basement with the lights off. Afshin can't wait to become a soldier as he feels he is a superhero. War seems exciting to him. But his parents have other ideas: they decide to send him away to Canada. 

Thirteen-year-old Alain lives in Bujumbura, Burundi with his two older brothers, Igor and Camille and his mother who is a businesswoman. His father is often away as he is in the army.  One day Alain learns that his father has been arrested and is being questioned by the authorities. His brothers and his mother are deeply frightened. They begin to get threatening phone calls and letters, and their house is watched at night by men on motorcycles. So Alain's family decides to flee.

Sixteen-year-old Patricia lived with her mother in a shipping container after her father abandoned them. Patricia wasn't able to attend school because she had to work with her mother so they could make enough money to be able to eat. Eventually, she was sent to live with her father's sister but when her parents reconciled she returned to live with them.

When she turned sixteen Patricia signed up to play softball and found herself attracted to another girl on the team. Eventually her secret comes out, horrifying her parents. If other people find out, Patricia could go to jail and her family will be persecuted. So as the news spreads, her parents make arrangements for Patricia to travel to New York to stay with her uncle for a supposed "softball tournament". However, this is a one-way trip.

For all three young people, their journeys will be complicated and dangerous. They will suffer loneliness, separation and poverty but like many refugees, they will also work hard, and persevere. 

Discussion

Alone is poignant account of three young refugees who flee their homelands because of war or persecution. Their stories are told in five short chapters, Chapter 1 Leaving Everything Behind, Chapter 2 Saying Goodbye, Chapter 3 It Isn't Over Yet, Chapter 4 Mama, Where Are You, and Chapter 5 Hope For Tomorrow. Author Paul Tom was born to Cambodian refugees in camp in Thailand. Now a Montreal-based director, author, video editor and curator of museum video exhibitions, Alone is Paul Tom's first book. 

Although their circumstances are different, all three refugees, Afshin, Alain and Patricia face uncertainty over their future as they travel to a strange country. All three endure the loneliness of separation from their parents, in particular their mothers. This is highlighted in "Chapter 4 Mama, Where Are You?"  Afshin must watch his Iranian classmates at lunch eat the food their mothers make for them.  Alain whose mother has died in a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, the loss is especially keen. He wakes up crying one morning. "But I'm tired of being strong all the time. I'm broken. Mama is gone forever. And I miss her so much." In Canada, talking on the phone to her mother reminds Patricia of the long distance between them and how much she misses her mother. "I was prepared for many things when I came here. But not for a life without her." Patricia states that "I don't realize that this is the last time I will feel the enveloping weight of her love." 

All three experience setbacks once they arrive in the United States or Canada. They feel the loneliness and separation from those they left behind keenly: When Afshin is invited to a classmate's home for dinner, the smell of ghormeh sabzi is overwhelming. "The smell brings back happy memories. I see familiar faces and I hear laughter, the sounds of children playing and adults talking loudly, carefree. I take a bite. The world stops. I'm caught under a wave of emotions. My throat tightens. I start to tremble. It's so intense that I burst into tears. At that moment, I can feel every kilometer separating me from my childhood and the people I love."  For Alain, the accomplishment of graduating high school is painful. "At the high school graduation ceremony, the other students are surrounded by their parents and loved ones. I pretend to look for my parents in the room. I know they're not here." The cover of Alone effectively portrays this sense of loss and of separation.

Alone highlights the experiences of three real-life young refugees who fled their countries, leaving behind family, friends and their culture, in the hopes of being able to live in peace, safety and dignity. Tom concludes Alone by letting his readers know what has become of all three refugees after being accepted into Canada. The short text and digitally created illustrations help those of us who live in countries receiving refugees, to empathize and understand, to be more accepting and to put ourselves in their situations. Few want to be a refugee, and most refugees would love to return home to their families and their countries. Alone helps us to understand and to empathize. This biography is an adaptation of the documentary film, Seuls.

Book Details:

Alone by Paul Tom
Toronto: Groundwood Books  2022
143 pp.