Tanuja Desai Hidier,
Born Confused
Scholastic, 2002.

Born Confused has been released to tremendous hype and has even attracted the attention of Larry King. Written by a young Indian American, Tanuja Desai Hidier, the novel is classified as "young adult fiction". Before I proceed, I must confess that I am no longer a "young adult" and all my comments must be evaluated in that light.

The jacket of Born Confused claims: "This is a story about finding yourself, finding your friends, finding love, and finding your culture—sometimes where you least expect it." I should have known I was already in trouble then. The story revolves around the primary protagonist Dimple Lala, who is having a serious identity crisis and trying to fit in. She moans, "Of course I had to be like them (white Americans). But how was I ever going to be like them? That was more than half the problem. I was born different—it started from the skin and seeped all the way in, till nothing matched."

Dimple is moving along through high school with a set of parents who love her too much—a mother who smelled of "If you Like Chanel No.5 You’ll Love and gentle-on-the-hands dishwashing liquid and spices", and a father who was a big fan of Lata Mangeshkar. Dimple has a best friend Gwyn, who acts like she is the Marilyn Monroe of the new generation. Dimple envies Gwyn for her beauty, her boldness and ease. Gwyn in turn secretly envies Dimple’s rock-hard family. At one point she even exclaims: "You’re so lucky that you have more than one part of the map that means something to you. I wish I had something like that. A culture, a country."

Trouble floats along in the form of Karsh Kapoor, who Dimple dismisses at first. Of course, Karsh turns out to be Mr. Sensitive and extra desirable when best friend Gwyn trains her sights on him. In the end (after an agonizing 400 plus pages), everything turns out rosy and just right.

Desai, as an author, shows a lot of promise. The plot chugs along at a fairly good pace and the dialog is quite funny in many places. But the book is ridden with so many clichés it was enough to make me gag. Dimple's white American boyfriends turn out to be jerks, her hottie, Julian, sees Dimple as nothing more than a potential "kamasutronic" babe and then unceremoniously dumps her. Ditto for Gwyn’s bf who thinks nothing of abruptly walking out on her. Gwyn, the white best friend, of course has to come from a broken family and have a never-present mom who does drugs. And yes, the Indian boyfriend has to be Mr. Sensitive and very aware of his feet in both cultures and make Dimple realize the true meaning of her culture and the importance of being herself.

I fully appreciate the teenage identity crisis and the angst that accompanies deep self-introspection. When the voyage has been undertaken and resolved though, does one necessarily have to swing from one end of the pendulum to the other? In the end, Dimple admits that an Indian classmate, who wanted to be called Jimmy Singh now wants to be called his Indian name, Trilok (Jimmy) Singh. And Dimple is comfortable at last with bringing defrosted samosas to school and addressing her boyfriend as "jeevan saathi". These images hint at a solution to the identity crisis but as images they are so extremely contrived, it is hard to take them seriously.

Born Confused will be remembered as one of the first significant contributions to fiction targeted mostly at Indian American youth. Sadly though it is nowhere near being a great one.

Poornima Apte
October 5, 2002

Poornima Apte lives in the greater Boston area with her husband and two daughters. Her passions include reading, gardening and often, writing. She reviews books for Desi Journal, curledup.com and mostlyfiction.com.

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