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Hardcover
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN13: 9780618251292
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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An inspiring personal saga that explores the collisions of choice and history that led one unforgettable family to become immigrants In this groundbreaking work,Minal Hajratwala mixes history,memoir, and reportage to explore the questions facing not only her own Indian family but that of every immigrant:Where did we come from?Why did we leave?
What did we give up and gain in the process?
Beginning with her great-grandfather Motiram’s original flight from British-occupied India to Fiji, where he rose from tailor to department store mogul,Hajratwala follows her ancestors across the twentieth century to explain how they came to be spread across five continents and nine countries.
As she delves into the relationship between personal choice and the great historical forces—British colonialism, apartheid,Gandhi’s Salt March, and American immigration policy—that helped to shape her family’s experiences, Hajratwala brings to light for the very first time the story of the Indian diaspora.
This luminous narrative by a child of immigrants offers a deeply intimate look at what it means to call more than one part of the world home. Leaving India should find its place alongside Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family and Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million.
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| Leaving India? Not really. Actually her grand-parents leaving India and Africa. |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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I just got through this book after three attempts. The writing style is more akin to someone cataloging office furniture rather than a person's experiences leaving India. Which brings me to my main lament. I ordered this on the belief that I will be reading about a person's experience of leaving India and settling abroad. I personally left India in 1970 and I was curious to read about the author's experience. Well was I disappointed!
The main theme is about the author's family's history of leaving India early in the twentieth century and settling in Africa and then moving elsewhere. The author herself never was in India to begin with. Also the bit about her lesbian thing seemed too much like the "woe is me" syndrome.
All in all a disappointing book that I regret ordering and worse spending time reading the thing. The fault is entirely mine though because I ASSUMED that the title implied the author's experiences in leaving India and starting a new life in the United States. What was that old limerick about "don't assume lest you make a a-- of you and me"? Well it did make one of me.
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| Good Read - Very Detailed |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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There are two big books in this one book - one a very personal story of the author that she talks about in Chapter 8 and the other chapters that deal with the movement on her family members and other members of their community from their home villages in Gujarat, which is a state in India.
Chapter 8 is where the narration picks up definite momentum. Minal offers a very honest and brave insight into the struggles that she faced in initially adjusting to her new environment every time her parents moved to a new country and then later in defining who she is in terms of her sexuality. Born in San Francisco but quickly transplanted to New Zealand then to India and finally back to the states in Michigan during her teenage years, she finds being drawn into the challenge who she is vis her vis her heritage and also who she is as person.
The norms that are followed in her particular Indian community are far different from the social norms prevalent at school especially with issues of dating and being a minority and facing racist hostility in the prevalent environment in the late seventies and early eighties. She finds herself to be a loner not being able to adjust at school, although her grades are very good ,and neither finding comfort at home in terms of accepting the prevalent social norms for girls.
She finds liberation when she leaves for college at Stanford University and experiments with her sexuality and after several partners discovers she is bisexual/lesbian. In many ways this chapter is her own "outing" out of herself to not only the world at large but also to her own community members many of whom may not at all have anticipated this given the strict conservative code followed at home.
In some sense, one can say this is an evolution of the process of adjustment of the great Gujarati migration. However, here is the paradox - Minal portrays herself as an Indian trying to discover herself but in the end turns out to be very much American in many ways far removed from her roots.
Ideally, this chapter should have been the first and then the others should have evolved out of it.
The other chapters deal with the migration of her great grandfather - Motiram - from his village in Gujarat to the Fiji Islands looking for economic opportunities. He is successful and calls his other kins men also. The women also follow later. Being then members of the British empire, Indians could travel to various parts of the empire. Another similar exodus happens to South Africa with migrants trying to escape famines, poverty and hardship at home in India to better opportunities in other countries.
Minal does an excellent job in recording the prevalent economic, political and racial restrictions prevalent in the late 19th and the 20th century and how migrants adapted to it. An interesting fact - just as there is the work permit system in the current day Western countries, a similar system was in place back in the 19th and 20th century. It was called indentured labor and one was free only after serving out the period of bondage. As far as the establishment was concerned, there was this delicate balance in terms of finding cheap labor for their economies and at the same time prevent racial tensions from boiling over especially with regard to those who had served out their bondage and could start any business and settle, theoretically, anywhere.
The lives of the characters in this book have been very artfully incorporated into the current political and economic of those times.The family members did pretty well for themselves establishing themselves as tailors in Fiji and then moving up the ladder to own their own department store. Eventually, sibling rivalry and mismanagement led to the downfall of their store - the Narsey department store. Their kinsfolk in South Africa also were very entrpreneurial and started their own business especially in the eating/restaurant business - now we know of the originals of the famous "Bunny Chow".
The second big migration of the Gujarati diaspora began in the late 1980's with a coup that established a native Fijian. Facing a threat to their economic survival, many Gujaritis moved to Australia , new Zealand and some moved stateside as well.
Whats amazing is that for generations the people who moved to Fiji or South Africa kept up with their social customs and ties with India. They were very clan/caste conscious and never stepped out to form marital relationships with the natives of the countries they settled in. This, however, has clearly changed with the current generation who have stepped out of the norm to marry non Gujaratis. One can call this a second breaking out.
That begs the question - are the people who have migrated and the next generation who have established themselves in the new countries really Indians in the new countries or citizens of the new countries belonging to Indian heritage.
Thats the confusion that these folks face.
Minal also documents the challenges her parents face in the new world - typical for any first generation migration.
Minal has researched her subject very well. The only criticism that one can have is that she sees everything through a Western lens. The community "we" and working for the welfare for the family has been replaced with the "I" - what is there in this for me. I define myself and exist to reach my full level of satisfaction be it at the cost of the family. After all, people have been living for centuries in India with its prevalent customs and it cannot be that bad for all of them - I am sure there is love in the hearts of married couples. It may not expressed very articulately but to suggest that they are living at a level below what happens in the "Free World" is a bit presumptuous.
A must read for those who are in the new world and plan to be there especially if you have children growing up here.
( On a side note, Gujarat is one of the 30 or so states in India and what the novel talks about is of a very specific group within the Gujarati community.)
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| Lacks the compelling narrative nesessary to keep the reader's interest. |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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Let me start by saying that Leaving Indian is an interesting read, and an eye-opening look into the history of Indian immigration.
However, the writter fails to create the sort of compelling narrative necessary to keep the reader's attention and give the reader the desire to read further.
Every tale of the writer's family history is written very matter of factly, and lacks any sort of feeling or emotion. You'd expect such a book to be a work of great passion as it's all about the writer's family as they left India and started new lives in other contries, but it's very dry at certain points and I really had to push myself to read further.
What should have been a very exciting and interesting falls flat due to the writter's inability to create a compelling narrative within the book.
However, although Leaving India is a chore to read at times, it's still an interesting read and depicts a very detailed picture of what life was like for Indian Immigrants during the time of the great diaspora.
Many things written in the book are both shocking and disturbing to read, which makes pushing further into the book ever more difficult.
Reading ever half way through this book was more of a chore than a pleasure, and I would have much rather have learned more about Indian history through some other source.
Just something about reading this book made me feel like the writer herself had very little interest in her own family history because there's absolutely no energy or emotion in the way the book was written, and the narrative is not much different from reading a text book.
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| Political and Personal |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I learned things I never knew about Bunny Chow (a south African curry that was created because of apartheid), Ghandi, the Gujarati motel and service industry, immigration and a lot more. Hajratwala mined and organized her family's history in the context of history and politics of several countries, gradually narrowing her focus to her personal coming-out story, which while minor to the overall work, took courage for her to include. Her use of the term diaspora for Indian immigrants makes perfect sense. Her writing style is highly accessible and poetic, while at the same time, a significant academic contribution to South Asian, women's and queer studies. I expect to read this book again and to encourage my children-diaspora by international adoption--to read it when they are old enough.
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| Excellent book |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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I really wanted to read this book to relate to what Minals family went through.
As most of us in the the USA are Immigrants of different generations settled down here.
I enjoyed reading how they went from villages to continents with how the family settled down in the USA and how the author like myself has been intrigued by the roots and ancestors.
I must say I found it a little boring at times with too much information..but typically the book really weaves around the experiences author and her familys migration.
Good read.. Long Read.
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