Finding Miracles

Milly Kaufman is the typical American high school girl, pretty, popular, part of a happy family in a small town. So why, when asked to write two truthful details about herself, does she say, “I have this allergy where my hands get red and itchy when my real self’s trying to tell me something,”  “My parents have a box in their bedroom we’ve only opened once. I think of it as The Box,” and why does the appearance of Pablo, a new student from Latin America make her feel so uncomfortable? What is Milly’s secret–the one she has divulged only to her best friend?

Julia Alvarez, long acclaimed as an outstanding novelist for adult readers, turns her focus upon a young adult audience in Finding Miracles with the same skill that has made both In the Time of the Butterflies and How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents modern classics. While exploring Milly’s odyssey from the security of the family and community that she knows and loves to the unknown territory of a whole new world, Julia Alvarez creates a character and a novel that extends beyond age categories into the realm of fiction unlimited, while sensitively examining issues of identity and culture.

Please join us this month as we read and discuss Finding Miracles.

Our ongoing conversation about Naming Maya is yielding a variety of insights and observations that are bringing out new layers and perspectives–for me, at least!

Aline discusses the way that Maya’s “tradition of the two-gift (one to give, one to keep) that she and her friend followed when bringing souvenirs from their trips” shows how ” her identity was also formed by the two cultures–Indian and American–that were part of her life. I think by the end she came to understand that when it comes to cultural and family traditions, you keep some, you let go of some, you reinvent some…”

Katia agrees and also points out the wonderful phrase “What will four people say?” Since living in India, she has discovered that minding “what any four people around might say” is very much part of the country’s culture, and wonders if that particular expression is “only in Tamil or also in Hindi?” (Can anyone answer her question? I’m curious as well.)

Katia also brings up the problem of communication that lies between Maya and her mother, “with the weight of things never said that permeates everything between them,” which is a problem I remember from the Dark Ages of my own adolescence.

Discussing this book with my own mother when I was thirteen could have helped with some bridge-building, and both Aline and Katia agree that this would be “a great mother and daughter book,” particularly if the daughter is rooted in a bilingual, bi-cultural upbringing. Aline says of sharing Naming Maya with her daughter, it “will help us in our lifelong journey of building respect for and understanding of each other’s experiences–and reading it together might just be the way to get the most out of it.”

Certainly this discussion is helping me to “get the most out of it.” More food for thought can be found by going to the comment section below each post for Naming Maya, and by reading the Papertigers interview with Uma Krishnaswami. And then let us hear your voice in this ongoing conversation!