Rating: **** 4 stars

Vineeta Vijayaraghavan,
Motherland.
Chicken House, 2003

As someone born in India, of Indian parents, but now living in America, 15-year-old Maya has experienced many conflicting demands on her familial, racial and cultural loyalties. In the course of a three-month-visit to India to see her aunt, uncle and grandmother, these allegiances are going to be tested even more sharply. As her aunt reminds her at one point, “You can come here and be a tourist... or you can come here and be a member of this family, with responsibilities and obligations.”

This fascinating novel traces Maya’s journey towards a resolution of her dilemma, in a narrative which tellingly portrays problems of personal identity within a wider framework of political and national unrest. On both levels it is totally convincing, an impression strengthened by the book’s athmospheric evocation of the sights, sounds, dress and food of its Indian setting.

Robert Dunbar