Category: Shamita Tripathy

“Home Fire” by Kamila Shamsie

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Home Fire

I found it to be a solid plot, beautifully drawn characters, and as timely for us in America as it is for the UK and Muslims everywhere — with global terrorism, religion and radicalism. It shows insight into the minds and hearts of a group of a sometimes alienated community, looking at the problems of terrorism from the perspective of the Muslim immigrant and, finally, the government programs that are inadequate to deal with home grown radicals.

You may find the ending a bit strange — but not if you are Indian — typical Bollywood! (the movie ‘Dil Se’ comes to mind!). I got to know that this book is based loosely on Sophocles’ Antigone.

This novel has some great insights — why people become religious extremists, the difficulties of being a hyphenated Britisher (or, for that matter, American), and the many complexities of trying to be Muslim in a modern society. The moral conundrum of what and how to condemn the actions of those that may have chosen this path is really interesting.

Home Fire
Author: Kamila Shamsie
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication Date: August 2017

Contributor: Shamita Tripathy is a book enthusiast and works as a finance professional in the Bay area.

“An American Marriage” by Tayari Jones

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An American Marriage

Celestial and Roy are a young African-American couple — he’s a savvy salesman and she is on her way to establishing herself as a successful artist, making life-like, hand-sewn baby dolls or “poupées.”

Celestial and Roy have many common marriage challenges — in-laws, plans to start a family, their careers. After about a year and a half of marriage, Roy is falsely accused of attacking a woman. Celestial knows he’s innocent because she was there with him the whole time. But he’s still wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Roy’s incarceration is the central axis around which the story revolves — a story of all the people who are affected by it. The story is told from three separate points of view: from that of Celestial, the wife; Roy, the husband; and Andre, Celestial’s childhood friend.

Jones uses the three voices to pace her story, to pull back from the relationship and demonstrate the ravages of distance and time. They’re each fighting their individual battles — Roy with the injustice of what has been done to him and all that he’s lost when he has tried so hard to do everything right; Celestial, who is dealing with a battle between responsibility and desire, finding it hard to hold on to a marriage that hadn’t yet had time to “take”; and Andre, who was also Roy’s friend in college as well as the witness at their wedding. It is a story about a black couple in America ripped apart by a flawed justice system.

This is a powerful story with many layers of emotion, and every detail and character are woven together to form a phenomenal story of love, loss and reconciliation.

An American Marriage
Author: Tayari Jones
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Publication Date: February 2016

Contributor: Shamita Tripathy is a book enthusiast and works as a finance professional in the Bay area.

“Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” by J. D. Vance

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Hillbilly Elegy1

J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy was my first real insight into white working-class America – what he describes as ‘hillbillies’ from a poor Rust Belt town. The author gives a compelling explanation of why it’s so hard for someone who grew up the way he did to ‘make it.’ I picked up this book after the 2016 election to get an idea of the Republican base.

I just loved the glimpse into Vance’s chaotic family history – his grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother dealing with demands of their new middle-class life while struggling with the legacy of addiction, alcoholism and poverty that is so characteristic of their part of America.

Vance’s grandparents moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them and to raise a middle-class family. When J.D. graduates from Yale Law School, he succeeds in achieving generational upward mobility – a story interspersed with its fair share of humor and colorful characters. He was mostly raised by his grandparents along with his half-sister because his mother was an addict who went from husband to husband and Vance barely knew his father. He did poorly in school and was lucky to get out of the cyclical poverty when a cousin pushed him into joining the Marines, which was an American melting pot. From there he went to Ohio State and then to Yale Law School.

At Yale, his mentor was Amy Chua – the famous ‘tiger mom.’ But he feels the disdain from his fellow-mates who come from a different socio-economic class and cannot relate to his ‘white poverty’ or his marine background. He meets his future wife, Usha, at Yale and finds much more

Vance doesn’t pretend to be a policy expert or offer solutions – he merely opens our eyes to them. But after reading the book, it did make me think about what can be done to create opportunity in poor communities, especially in ‘middle America.’

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
Author: J. D. Vance
Publisher: Harper
Publication Date: June 2016

Contributor: Shamita Tripathy is a book enthusiast and works as a finance professional in the Bay area.