Literary Safari

It has now been six months since the birth of my daughter and I’m a bit behind on my posts. It actually took me a while to be able to get through an entire book for quite a few months. My attention span was diverted to my adorable little girl, her million and one facial expressions, her many pitches of cries, and her daily discoveries of the world.

Then, during one of my daughter’s first long afternoon naps at 14 weeks, the planets conspired to make reading possible again. I surprised myself by curling up on the couch with a cup of ginger-peach tea and Sheba Karim’s first young adult novel Skunk Girl, which I’ve been wanting to read ever since I first heard about it as a work in progress.

A few months ago, I reviewed Rakesh Satyal’s Blue Boy, a sensitive coming of age novel about a 12 year-old Indian-American boy struggling with his sexuality. One of the qualities I most appreciated about the book was its impeccable portrait of the suburban Indian-American family and the ways in which adolescent growing pains tie into it and its complex social webs.

Sheba Karim’s Skunk Girl is another novel that does a fine job of painting such a portrait and of capturing the intricacies of growing up South Asian in this country, this time from the point of view of girl. [Read an excerpt.]

Nina Khan is a  Pakistani-American junior in high school with an impossibly intelligent older sister Sonia and strict immigrant parents. About to turn 16, she is painfully aware of the “no dating, no pork, no co-ed parties” rules in her life which make her feel like “a wounded bird who longs to fly with the others but can’t.” Matters take a turn for the worse when Nina falls hard for Asher, a new boy in school. The two share math class together and, could it be?, Asher actually seems interested in her? Will she or won’t she break the rules and date him?

As Nina gets to know Asher better, she becomes even more aware of how different she is from her classmates. As if matters weren’t bad enough and she’s not allowed to date, Nina also becomes even more self-conscious about her body hair, which has always been an issue of embarrassment (as it is for many young South Asian women). On a class trip to Albany, she finds herself sitting next to Asher on the bus. When she leans over to look out the window, he gets a view down her back.

When I sit up, he turns to me one eyebrow raised in curious amusement. “You have a stripe of hair going down your back,” he says. …

As soon as I make it home I run upstairs to my room and tear my clothes off. I stand naked in front of my full-length mirror and twist my head to get a good view of my back. And that’s when I see it. A wide line of soft, dark hair running from the nape of my neck down to the base of my spine–the stripe Asher was talking about. A stripe right down the center of my back, like a skunk. This brings me to a whole other level. I’m not just a hair Pakistani Muslim girl anymore.

I am a skunk girl.

Lest you think that Nina sinks into the depths of despair after this revelation, let me assure you that she does not. Of course, she indulges in an afternoon of crying, of cursing, and of making wishes for all sorts of ways to never to set foot in school again. But then she steps right back up to the plate and returns to school and realizes that “nothing happens. No one pauses their conversations. No one even notices me.”

Though Nina the character is often frustrated by her circumstances, Nina, the narrator, has a wry sense of humor and a graceful ability to poke fun at herself. As this entertaining novel progresses, we watch as her streak of rebellion surfaces and watch as she struggles with her conscience as she experiments with aspects of “American culture” (yes, alcohol, and yes, dating) that are off-limits to her and that define her very Pakistani Muslim-ness. What you’ll see her conclude will be surprising and yet, so very Nina-esque; a teenage girl who is simultaneously self-confident and unsure of herself.

While exploring the challenges of high school life, author Sheba Karim also sheds light on the extended social life of Nina Khan’s family – the Pakistani family dinners,  the community weddings, the visits from family friends who measure her adherence to cultural norms, etc. Karim’s eye for these little details and her ability to convey universal aspects of South Asian immigrant immigrant life give this novel an added measure of value.

In an interview at Cayenne Lit, Karim says:

I was raised in a small town with very few other desis, a setting similar to the one in Skunk Girl. Being Pakistani made me separate, different, and often annoyed, because of the restrictions placed on me as a teenager. I think your culture is often something you grow into. I also think as wonderful as being a “hyphen” is, it can also be very difficult, particularly for women from Muslim backgrounds. … Skunk Girl was inspired by a monologue I wrote for Yoni ki Baat, a South Asian version of The Vagina Monologues. I realized there were very few books out there about what it’s like to grow up Pakistani in this country, and that I really wanted to write one.

Her writing certainly took me into the inner world of a teenage misfit with grace and reminded me of the parallels of my own once-upon-a-time adolescent angst. Thank goodness it’s past me!

For those interested in using this in the classroom or a book circle, a helpful discussion guide is available here.

Do you ever find yourself reading one book about a particular topic and then, immediately moving on to another in a similar vein? That has been my experience lately as I find myself on a parenthood books kick. In the case of Michael Lewis’s Home Game: Accidental Lessons in Fatherhood, I have my husband K. to thank for turning me on to it. He sent me an email a few weeks ago with a link, and wrote, “I want to read this book.”

As first-time parents, it starts to get overwhelming to keep reading books such as What to Expect When You’re Expecting, or The Happiest Baby on the Block, or  Secrets of the Baby Whisperer throughout the nine months of pregnancy — books that however well-intentioned can’t help but make you wonder whether you will do the right thing, make the right decisions, be a “good parent.” So much pressure …

Perhaps that is one of the reasons why I so appreciated the frank and comic tone assumed by Michael Lewis in his memoir of fatherhood. A non-fiction author and New York Times journalist best known for his books about baseball, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley innovation, this book is based on his “Dad Again” column in Slate magazine which ran from 2002 to 2008, beginning with the birth of his first daughter and ending with his visit to an operating room for a vasectomy after the birth of his third child, his son Walker.

Lewis makes no pretense to be the model father; one who greets his new role in the world with utter joy and dedication. The book would be a boring tome were he to do so. Rather, through journal style chapters in a book divided into three sections (one for each child), he takes readers through his (sometimes knee jerk) reactions to the arrival of his babies, allowing us to peek into his state of mind (harried, confused, frustrated) and his attempts to figure out the role that no manual can ever fully explain.

One amazon.com review of the book warns that Home Game is a better read for men than women: “Women, or at least my wife, should avoid this book because it does delve into the male mindset enough to make me hide my copy for fear that my she might begin to see some of the absurdities of fatherhood.”

Err, this was not the case with me. My husband read the book on a flight across the pond a few weeks ago and immediately came home and handed it to me. “You have to read this,” he said. He wouldn’t tell me why or what he liked about it, but dropped hints that he saw bits and pieces of me throughout the book and wanted to discuss it when I was done.  Uh-oh, I thought … was this a good thing or a bad thing? 

In this book, Lewis describes the comic turns and twists of family and married life that parenthood brings. He writes about juggling his writing career with childcare responsibilities (so different than his father’s generation – “Obviously, we’re in the midst of some long unhappy transition between the model of fatherhood as practiced by my father and some ideal model,” he writes), going along with his wife’s desire to enroll their infant in swimming classes in Paris, taking his daughter on a camping trip with this toddler daughter in California, his drunken passing out in the delivery room, the responses of teachers to the way he dresses his preschool-aged daughter, or where he decides not to share cake with his daughters [read an excerpt] in a real, human, and humorous way.

There’s this one scene where Lewis’s wife wakes him up in the middle of the night with tears in her eyes. He asks her why she is crying and she has no explanation, which only confounds him more as he attempts to console her. Sound familiar? There have been numerous occasions over the years where I’ve found myself in tears and K. asks “what’s wrong? what is it?”, well, I have no answer. Then, I can’t understand why he is perplexed!  This is just one of the scenes that made me laugh out loud and scare the squirrels in Riverside Park away!

Another one of my favorite chapters was where Lewis tries to slip back into the work routine after the birth of his second child and quickly learns that he is quickly earning the reputation with his wife as a “neglectful father.” How does he remedy it? He agrees to take his wife and infant to a Baby Brigade movie night where he quickly learns rule # 1 of fatherhood: “If you don’t see what the problem is, you are the problem.” Yes, this may be construed as a fingerpointing exercise at his nagging wife by some readers, but to me, it was also a comical, almost caricaturist depiction of married life that permits parties on each side of the table to better see where the other is coming from.

There are threads of insight and introspection sprinkled throughout the book as Lewis discovers the rules of fatherhood:

If you want to feel the way you’re meant to feel about the new baby, you need to do the grunt work. It’s only in caring for a thing that you become attached to it.

The outside world has a lot to tell you about how to be a father and how to raise your children, and its advice no doubt serves some purpose. It fails, however, to get across with sufficient clarity the final rule of fatherhood: If you’re not bothered by it, or disturbed by it, or messed up from it, you’re probably doing something wrong that will mess up your kids. You’re probably doing something wrong anyway but that’s okay … [you'll have to pick up the book to read the rest of this rule!]   

Read more excerpts from Home Game here and here.

Ben Okri, the award-winning Nigerian author has said, “The fact of storytelling hints at fundamental human unease, hints and human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” So true this is when it comes to Home Game, which though written from the father’s point of view also creates caricatures of motherhood and women (as seen by husbands) that definitely make us examine our reactions and better understand why men sometimes shake their heads in confusion and wonder. I have a feeling that his experiences will surely stick in my mind in the coming months as we enter the world of first-time parenting, helping us to find the humor in seemingly tragic or overwhelming circumstances. They have also given K. and I many scenarios to consider and discuss and … laugh about as we wait for our new arrival.

In the Washington Post, Amy Joyce compares Home Game to Anne Lamott’s Operating Instructions, which I have yet to read. Maybe that’s the next book that should go on my list–and that I should pass on to K. to read. I’m thinking it will make a good companion read since it comes from a woman’s perspective. I wonder if I will find that to be true.

This picture in today’s New York Times magazine (“The Way We Live Now”) made me smile. These uppity lunching ladies really need to make an investment in the purse hook I picked up in Spain earlier this month.

The purse hook is a little hanger that you can latch onto the edge of any table at a restaurant and from which you can hang your purse (no long straps please, but heavy purses are fine as some of these hooks supposedly hold up to 200 lbs! I haven’t tested this claim yet!) . No more slinging purses on the shoulder of your chair or putting them on the floor.

Here, in the US, this is a burgeoning online business, especially since  recent studies reporting on the variety of germs that can be carried around via our purses have made many of us wary of where we put our bags down:

A study conducted in the US tested the purses of 50 women in your average shopping mall. Swabs were taken from the bottom of the purses and then taken back to a lab to test what was living on them and the results are quite disturbing. One out of four purses were carrying the e-coli bacteria. A host of other bacteria were also found on the purses, the most notable being hepatitis. The researchers recommend that woman wipe the bottom of their purse once a day and to be very cautious of where they place it.

What a clever little invention. I’ve been on the look out for one for quite some time, but they aren’t easy to find in retail stores here as they are in Spain (where I picked up my Miro-designed version up in a souvenir shop for a mere 3 euros) or in Brazil, where girls grow up with the superstition that you’ll lose all of your money if you put your purse on the floor. According to this article, the hooks have actually been around since the 1920s, when handbags emerged as a symbol of the emancipated women. “Even Queen Elizabeth is said to employ an S-shaped one to hang her handbags, the contents of which remain a mystery.”

This is definitely one of those handy inventions that belongs in Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things.

A few places where you can get one of your own (no, I don’t make a cut off this endorsement!):
Flo’s Accessories: Personalized and engraved ($15.95 plus shipping)
Bed Bath and Beyond: The As Seen on TV version ($9.99 for a set of two, plus carrying case)
Purse Jewelry: Lots of pretty designs ($8.95 each plus shipping)

Irritating words. Clichés. Trite expressions. We hear them all the time and sometimes, we are also guilty of using them in our own writing and conversations.

Here, from Oxford University is a list of top 10 “most irritating phrases.” [see full story]

1 – At the end of the day
2 – Fairly unique
3 – I personally
4 – At this moment in time
5 – With all due respect
6 – Absolutely
7 – It’s a nightmare
8 – Shouldn’t of
9 – 24/7
10 – It’s not rocket science

And, here at Paper Cuts, the NYT literary blog is a list of the “seven deadly words of book reviewing”:

1 – poignant
2 – compelling
3 – intriguing
4 – eschew
5 – craft (used as a verb)
6 – muse (used as a verb)
7 – lyrical

And, so, off I go in search of a better substitute for “compelling” which is often a word that is part of my first draft reviews because I think it’s better than “fascinating” … which, somehow, just does not cut the mustard either!!

Your most irritating phrases?