no one can pronounce my name
rakesh satyal
adult literary fiction | contemporary
picador, 2017
currently on sale at $2.99 on amazon kindle
Overall, my adaptation to this new blog and (hopefully) carefree style has been pretty smooth. I was expecting a little more turbulence, particularly in the form of tag systems - as in, I always try to make one, I hold steadfastly to it for a week, and then realize that I heavily abuse a select few and to heck with the others.
When will my organized Tumblr return from the war...
In any case, even though I've done pretty good with abandoning habits of old and neuroses that are not at all dearly missed, I expected one old standby to shake itself off and rear its head more sooner than later...and that was book reviews.
So you might be surprised to hear me say: I'm so tired of book reviews.
I know, at one point, it was my whole thing. It was my world. Maybe it's because I'm an author myself now and a few choice words still stick in my craw and slide over my eyes like the unpleasant twin sister of rose-tinted glasses whenever I look at my bound and gilded book baby, and maybe it's the fact that I've actually grown up and realized that every book deserves to be loved and had its flaws treated with affection and the thought that perhaps we are not the right match.
(Maybe this is also a reflection of my identity as a twenty-something single and body insecurities and EVERYTHING insecurities and arghhh I quit being a psych major for more than the mandatory class requirements and continuous mentions of Freud.)
Anyway, no book reviews. Talk about books, sure. That's inescapable when it comes to me. Gush over the ones I love and treat the ones I do not with the frosty smile I extend to aunties who are nosy about both love life and grad school applications, that's a given.
After all this rambling, you will probably be relieved to hear that today's book is one that I actually liked, in spite of myself and my own misgivings. This will probably make me sound like a Very Bad Desi (which, arguably, I already am as I am only half and still cannot make a perfect cup of chai at my very advanced age, shame, shame, eternal shame) but I am not a big reader of South Asian literature on the whole.
Or perhaps, I've only been reading the wrong titles, which could be very likely and runs less of a risk of my being considered an Entirely Awful and Self-Hating Desi, which I promise to you I'm not. Let me rephrase: I cannot tolerate the South Asian literature that has usually been pressed on me outside of my brief and joyous venture into Post-Colonial Literature during my very recent stint as an English major.
Many of them that are preferred or recommended (mostly by not Desi people) feel as though it has been brewed weakly, diluted with tears and doubt and a hefty scoop of colonialism. Even the classics that shine with pride in identity and defiance against historical wrongs often are so painfully tragic that I have to be in the right mood to not take every suffering of my ancestors on my shoulders for the rest of the afternoon (shout out to all the neurotypical people who can read a book without their depression kneading their palms and whispering, "This world is so awful to people like you and that's why you'll never be happy" for all of eternity).
Anyway, before we go too far down that particular, personal path: No One Can Pronounce My Name is not the type of book you have to save for an afternoon where you've braced yourself, prepared a cup of tea with no sugar, and are prepared to be flushed with rage for all the atrocities visited upon those who have deserved more and received little. It is vibrant. It is rich. It feels like putting on one of those shalawar kameez an auntie sent from overseas that you KNOW is going to stain the barrel of the washing machine, but is just so joyous that you must forgive it all its sins.
It has traditional sweets and tongues wagging and pushbacks against anti-Blackness and aunties realizing what it means to live their life and rekindled romance.
It has a ROAD TRIP. To a writers' convention.
I just had to put that out there.
It's not 100% perfect, but oh, is it a book that I needed today as I spent most of my hours cooped up in my already stifling, God let it be Friday classroom with six of my students and their fidgeting and fiery arguments and their PS4 and Fortnite. I snuck little tastes of it during lunch, when a substitute offered a brief reprieve, and heading down the hall finally, blissfully homeward bound.
And I just finished it.
Since I'm determined not to write an exhaustive review, I'll share one of the (several) quotes I bookmarked that really spoke to me. It might not speak to you. But that's the beautiful thing about books. Every book has its moment like a dog has its day.
Each night, he would think of his body as an assemblage of conditions, things gone wrong...how could this be desirable to someone, and if it happened to be desirable to someone, how could that person be expected to move past purely physical concerns into the much more dangerous world of emotion and friendship, and, hardest of all, love? He felt detached not just from himself but from anyone who could attach value to him. For, clearly, anyone who found him attractive - emotionally, physically, romantically - had to be a complete disaster.
Can I just say
G
P
O
Y.
And that's the thing about this book: there is angst. There is that diasporic "who am I" and the cultural pains and torments and the people who will never understand. But that is meted out with a level hand and combated with self-discovery, and hope, and love, and friendship.
Here is another quote, which speaks to me as I grapple with my own social anxiety and irrational fears about my first foray into the workforce and my age old enemy, people pleasing:)
It was self-consciousness that aged you, worrying about chance social encounters and your place in them that brought wrinkles as if they had been called to prayer.
(Help me, I've fallen and I cannot get up.)
He had to remind himself not forge too much of a kinship with Ranjana. It was so easy to find a sisterhood in her, to share their culture as they did dessert, in similar bites of sugary crisp. But though the food was the same, the mouths it entered were not twins.
T-t-that's all for now, folks!
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