Parents in the library: Books 2013/2014

REVIEW: FAR FROM THE TREE

It is the start of another year at the PAEast Book Club. Far from the tree by Andrew Solomon was the first book that we read and we met in the school library on Wednesday, June 28 to share our reading experiences. 

At 900 pages, this book about families, love and acceptance is a book that took its author 10 years to research. Based on the premise that we are all united in our shared diversity, Andrew Solomon presents very objective yet sensitive portrayals of families with children that are not like their parents - disabled, gifted, autistic, schizophrenic and criminals, to name a few. The journeys of these families and their stories make for a informative yet touching book about finding meaning in the face of profound adversity.

The book clubbers passionately discussed the book, its premise, as well as the people interviewed in the book. We agreed on the challenges of parenting, and disagreed on some of the choices that parents make. 

And for a few hours that afternoon, we tried to inhabit the world of extra-ordinary individuals who are not like us, and yet they are.


NEETU AGGARWAL 

REVIEW: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother And / Or Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West


The PA East book-clubbers were a larger than our usual group to meet and discuss the two books for our session on Cultural Parenting. Are we truly the products of our culture? Do we teach, and learn, in vastly different ways, depending on our roots and culture? The two books that we chose to read were very different in their style and approach. Apart from the regular members at this book club meeting, we were delighted to welcome Jenny, who brought so much to this book discussion from her Chinese-American roots; Maya, who as an educator, researcher and an Indian parent, gave us her experiences and insights; and the very brave Alpa, who hadn’t read the books, and yet wanted to be a part of the discussion.

Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn.... has probably become the book that mothers love to hate. A deeply personal account of raising her two daughters according to her exacting standards, Amy has written a witty and honest memoir about her journey as a parent.

Jin Li has taken a more scholarly approach to the issue. By delving into her own personal learning history as a student during the Cultural Revolution in China, as well as conducting original research during her university days in the US, Li’s book attempts to examine teaching and learning from the ancient Greco-Roman times to the modern.

Amy tries not to be the face of the Asian Mother. Jin Li, on the other hand has marked “east” from Japan till Vietnam, while her “west” is dominated by American culture. Both books open talking points about our own cultures and how do we learn and teach.

It was interesting to hear everyone talk of their own experiences of going to school in different countries. The discussion inevitably lead to the teaching approaches of the school where our kids are currently studying.

And we agreed that, while Amy Chua’s book is the one receiving a lot of attention, it is Jin Li’s book that should be mandatory reading with educators.

- Neetu Aggarwal. 
 

REVIEW: The Rainbow Troops: A Novel

It was a very unique meeting of the PA East book clubbers, when we met to talk about Andrea Hirata’s Indonesian bestseller, Rainbow Troops. We were privileged to have three members of the schools’ Indonesian community to come and join us for this session. Any, Dede and Dian provided personal insights into the book and the society described within. They completed our experience with the delicious Indonesian foods that they generously contributed to our potluck finger-food lunch.

Originally written in Bahasa, and titled Laskar Pelangi, Andrea Hirata’s book has become the most popular Indonesian book. It was also adapted into a screenplay and the movie has been shown at major international film festivals.

Rainbow Troops is the autobiographical tale of the author and his nine classmates and their fight to be educated. It is set in the tin-rich island of Belitong, against the backdrop of an exploitative mining conglomerate. Andrea and his classmates are amongst the marginalised and poor families on the island, with no access to the riches that were being mined on their soil. Their only access to education is a small school, with two teachers, and a blackboard. 

With the school under a constant threat of closure for lack of resources, the ten students lovingly labelled the Rainbow Troops by their teacher, are constantly battling the weather, the education board, and their destiny, to be able to go to the only school they have. Cycling through crocodile-infested waters, walking with barely any footwear, wearing shirts with more buttons missing than closed, Hirata’s book is filled with gutsy, determined and yet, fun-loving students. They write poetry, teach trignometry to each other, dream of John Lennon, cycle to the village shop to buy chalk for their blackboard, and fall in love. 

An inspiring and uplifting story, simply written, filled with memorable characters and a bittersweet ending, Rainbow Troops is a book that every student should read. It is a little book about a small school, that teaches life’s big lessons.

The book clubbers were amazed and humbled by this book, we laughed and cried as we read it. We marvelled at the spirit to strive and succeed in people so young. We hope to encourage more students in our school to read this incredible story.

The Laskar Pelangi experience would have been incomplete without Any, Dede and Dian. Our many thanks to them for joining us in this book club meeting. 
- Neetu Aggarwal. 

REVIEW: Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar 

When the PAEast Bookclubbers met on the Wednesday afternoon, we were delighted to have a couple of members-at-large join us after a very long time. It was a pleasant start to talk about a book in which people are endearingly called 'sweet pea' or 'honey bun' as we shared our feelings and our potluck lunch. 

Tiny Beautiful Things grabs the reader from its opening pages. A book about a collection of Agony-Aunty advise columns collated together, is not an obvious subject matter for a book. Nor is it an obvious choice for a reading material before going to bed at night, which is when most of us Bookclubbers read it. Writing under her adopted name Dear Sugar, Cheryl Strayed wrote an online column in response to readers who wrote to her, seeking advise about their life and living matters. This book is a collection of some of those letters. 

Dear Sugar is not a psychologist. She isn't formally trained to advise you on the "WTF stuff" that happens in your life (her choice of words, not mine, little peaches). What she is, is a non-judgemental comforting voice who offers you her virtual shoulder to cry on and guides you to seek your own answers, with a little nudge and hug from her. A parent grieving his dead child, a friend stealing her best friend's man, a struggling writer, they are all treated with the same gentle love and understanding. 

What truly makes her a voice that you want to believe and accept, is that she is unafraid to offer you glimpses into her own personal struggles. Her ability to connect the little dots of her life experiences with the dilemmas faced by the people, while not putting herself at the centre of the issue, but instead, adding a dash of perspective to the troubled hearts who seek her out. 

We debated about what stories we would want our teenage kids to read, if any. Her loving ‘foody’ endearments to all those who write to her, interspersed with a generous dash of motherf∗∗∗∗ and other such profanities, keep her liberal advise very real and close to the ground. Would a man writing as Dear Sugar, and addressing his readers as ‘peaches’ and ‘sweet peas’ be as comforting, we wondered.

We came away touched and awed by the acceptance that she extends to all those who write to her, without being condescending, or judgemental, but always seeking to guide her readers to re-examine their inner selves and their own motives, to seek out the ‘roots’ of the issue, and to be brutally honest in the process. Which is what she truly is.
- Neetu Aggarwal 

REVIEW - MAUS & SUITE FRANCAISE:

When the PAEast Bookclubbers met to talk about two books connected to the holocaust, it was a passionate, personal and a wide-ranging discussion indeed.

Irene Nemirovsky was planning to write a five book series, two of which are published in Suite Francaise. She was sent to Auschwitz where she died, leaving behind her notebooks which were posthumously published by her daughter. Born in Russia, Irene Nemirovsky was a Jewish French writer, although she was never granted french citizenship. Set during France’s surrender to the advancing Germans during World War 2, Suite Francaise casts a critical eye on the fleeing Parisians as well as the idyllic going-ons of the french coutryside. Her characters struggle to adapt to their new reality; some with grace, and others less so. 

Art Speigelman’s Maus is truly a ‘graphic’ book, on his father’s saga to survive the holocaust. A detailed book, 11 years in the making, Maus alternates between the artists’s present day-to-day life with his now-aging father, and his parents’ life as Jewish Poles during the holocaust. Since his parents were also deported to Auschwitz and Birkenau, a major part of this book is based around living and surviving in the concentration camps. Representing human races as different animal species, the Jews depicted as mice to the Nazi cats, every frame of this graphic autobiography is rich with stories of human ingenuity and re-invention, where the struggle to survive pushed people - cat, mouse and pig, to wear masks that defined them and sometimes helped them to survive.

What started as a book club chat about the holocaust, meandered on to a discussion on identity, on being ‘different’ from a majority in a community, on what makes inclusive communities. We shared stories about ourselves, our experiences to ‘fit-in’ during our nomadic globalised lives. We heard stories about Sabine and Mery’s families during the second World War. We, inevitably, talked about the Jewish identity, and Zionism. And Palestine. And the trouble with wearing a sari in a multinational workplace.

These books brought to life a conflict that shaped the modern world. They also made us introspect on conflict in our lives as we try to fit our ethnic identities into a globalised monochromatic identity. Who we are and what we believe in, defines us, and more importantly, defines how we are perceived by others around us.

Colonialisation often drew arbitrary lines on paper and created national boundaries. Politics aside, are we working to be a truly globalised one world, or, do we let lines on maps draw fences in our hearts. Should human diversity be celebrated or merely tolerated?

Irene Nemisrovsky chronicled life as it was unfolding in front of her eyes; her characters continued to adapt, to live, to hope, and to love. Art Spiegelman’s animals in Maus did the same. Do we learn from our collective human histories, or are we destined to make the same mistakes again. And again. And again.
- Neetu Aggarwal.