The story of a teenage girl from a remote village in Nigeria whose only mission is to find a voice through education. Her trials and tribulations are heartbreaking and just when the reader feels sorrow for her, she reveals a streak of strength so powerful, that it reverberates. Her resolve to somehow get an education …
'Infidel' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. This true story is about Hirsi Ali's physical journey from Somalia to Amsterdam to the United States. Emotionally, she engages the readers to experience the dust, poverty, clannish rules, political upheaval of Somalia, and her movement from one country to another. Readers heave a sigh of relief when she runs …
Alice escapes her drab life in England by marrying the handsome Bennett Van Cleave, son of a wealthy businessman, and comes to rural Kentucky. Her dreams of a glamorous life are dashed when the America she hoped for turned out to be cold, lonely, miserable, and immensely boring. She soon realizes that her husband can’t …
Continue reading The Giver of Stars – Women Empowerment in the 1930s?
"City of Girls" by Elizabeth Gilbert takes us into the caverns of the 40s and the 50s New York City. Vivian Morris, a would-have-been-straight-laced Vasser graduate ends up being a promiscuous and down-in-the- pits kind of girl - but she is not without merit. An exceptionally resourceful and skilled seamstress, she also becomes an adept …
Continue reading City of Girls: Racy, Earthy and Oh So Profound!
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is akin to the threading of a quilt worn out not by time but by circumstances. A passionately woven tale of stirring, deep, inseparable love. In the true Shakespearean style, an event as trivial as Roy helping an elderly lady take an ice bucket to her room completely upends …
Continue reading An American Marriage: Time, Circumstances, Love – What Happens Next
"How distressing to stumble on a dominant social habitus, just when one was convinced of one's own uniqueness in the matter! Distressing, and perhaps even a bit annoying. The fact that in spite of my confinement in a loge that confirms in every way to what is expected, in spite of an isolation that should …
prachi jain 