Book Review: A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan

August 29, 2022 Stephanie1 Comment

I learned about A Place at the Table by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan (Clarion Books/HMH, 2020) a while ago, but while the premise interested me, I learned about it at a time when I wasn’t reading much middle grade, so it never ended up on my TBR. But a trip to the library last week had me walking past a display of books about food from the children’s section, and this book was on there. ‘Wait, I know that book!’ I said to myself as I passed it. ‘Guess it’s time to finally read it!’ And into my bag it went. Dual narrative middle grade. So fun!

It’s the first year of middle school for sixth graders Sara (that’s SAH-rah, not Sarah as in Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Elizabeth, and neither is having the best of times. Sara’s new to the school, having transferred from her small private Muslim school after her parents could no longer afford it; Elizabeth is struggling with friend issues after her best friend has taken up with a more popular girl. It’s Elizabeth who’s enthusiastic about joining the after-school South Asian cooking class club; Sara is only there because her mom is teaching it. Their first interactions are hostile at best, and neither walks away feeling great.

But as their time together in the club increases, Sara and Elizabeth realize they have a lot in common. Both are daughters of immigrant mothers; both are having trouble making the transition to middle school; both are desperately in need of friends. But in order to forge a new friendship, both will have to learn to listen to each other, to form a bridge over what divides them and learn to appreciate what makes each of them unique. A cultural festival and a cooking competition will force them to work together, and what they create at the end will be far more than just a new recipe.

What an enjoyable novel. I love dual narratives, and I can’t remember ever having read one from the middle grade section. Sara is downright prickly at the beginning, and this is completely understandable. She’s a Muslim student at a new school, and it’s not like this country is super understanding about non-Christian religions, especially Islam. Her mother’s accent and unfamiliar-to-everyone-else dishes make her feel like she stands out even more, and her defensiveness, even to the most basic of inquiries, is a learned skill. She’s also carrying the financial stress of her family with her, knowing her mother’s catering business is struggling and costing the family money they can’t afford. She lashes out a few times at Elizabeth, and I wanted to hug her. We don’t make life for immigrants or second gen kids easy at all here.

Elizabeth is struggling with problems of her own. Her grandmother died over the summer and her mother is grieving. Her father travels for work most of the week, leaving Elizabeth and her brothers on their own while Mom knits, listens to podcasts, and cries. Elizabeth is deeply worried her mom is going to return to England and leave the family behind, and to top it all off, her best friend is following in her racist father’s footsteps and making hideous comments about Muslims and immigrants. Cooking club and learning to make delicious food for her family helps with the stress, but she’s not having the greatest year either.

The friendship the two girls forge is fascinating. It’s not an easy one; it takes work for Sara to let down her guard and accept that Elizabeth is well-intentioned; Elizabeth has to learn that Islamophobia is a constant part of Sara’s life, and that it’s also her responsibility to speak out and defend her friend from it. (I really loved the role Sara’s friend from her private school played in this; she’s a super chill character and the voice of reason in their interactions, whereas Sara is more impulsive and fiery.)

Both girls are carrying an enormous amount of stress for their ages, an unfortunately not-uncommon experience these days, and while readers may not be personally familiar with their exact problems, I feel like most middle graders will understand what it’s like to worry about family matters you can’t control.

The authors really worked well together to create two middle school girls who are challenged in a variety of ways, and who begin not quite as adversaries, but as two distinct characters who aren’t necessarily on the same page…but who, with a little hard work and understanding, make it there, and the results are great.

What a fun, meaningful book, from an excellent writing team!

Visit Saadia Faruqi’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

Visit Laura Shovan’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

Book Review: Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words (Chai Masala Club #1) by Annika Sharma

November 8, 2021 Stephanie1 Comment

When someone mentioned Love, Chai, and Other Four-Letter Words (Chai Masala Club #1) by Annika Sharma (Sourcebooks Casablanca, 2021) on Twitter a few weeks ago, I immediately added it to my TBR (this is why I can’t get my TBR down any further, y’all!). I love books with characters who come from different cultures or sub-cultures than I do, and the premise of a series centered around a friend group whose members are all different versions of Indian (two are Indian American, one is British Indian, and another was born and raised in India but lives in America now) intrigued me. Seriously great Indian rep right there. There was a lot to enjoy here, but the story itself fell a little flat for me.

Kiran grew up in a small village in India, the daughter of parents who sacrificed her whole life so that she could be educated and successful. Her older sister Kirti was disowned after her wedding to a man from a lower caste; her village didn’t approve, and thus to avoid the shame it would bring on the family and the lessening of Kiran’s chances in life, the family banished her. Kiran has since become a successful engineer in New York City, but she’s weighted down by her responsibilities and her parents’ expectations.

Enter Nash, a blond psychologist who just moved to the city from- of course- Nashville. He’s Kiran’s new neighbor with family drama of his own, and as they strike up a friendship, Kiran feels like she might be falling in love for the first time. Which is big time not good, since Nash is white and American- definitely not on her parents’ approval list. Her friends are there for her when she struggles with her options, and there for her when her parents cast her away as well. It’s only when an emergency happens thousands of miles away that everyone learns the power of family, forgiveness, and love.

I loved the premise of this, the closeness of the friend group, and their diversity of experience (both in terms of work experience and life experience; so many different and beautiful connections to India); their support for Kiran and each other; their constant text messages; and the fact that there’s a GUY in this friend group! (I’m super curious as to what Akash’s love story will look like.) Kiran’s sense of duty to her parents, especially in the light of what happened with her older sister, is admirable; her struggle with that sense of duty is realistic and relatable. I did want her and Nash to work out as a couple, since she obviously loved him, and I was pulling for them.

Nash is…a little on the bland side, to be honest. For having a doctorate in psychology, he seemed deeply unaware of how to handle cultural differences and unable to fully grasp most situations from Kiran’s point of view. For someone so highly educated, I would have expected him to start delving deeply into some cultural studies and making an effort to understand what made Kiran the woman she is, where she came from and what life was and is like there, but nope, nothing. He just…fumbled here and there. Not exactly my ideal hero. And really, he has no excuse. Nashville, for its being a blue dot in a red (RED RED RED) sea, is a deeply multicultural city. I lived on the outskirts for five years and was constantly in Nashville proper, where my husband worked. There are multiple synagogues; a large Muslim population; a Somali community; and among many, many others, an Indian community. There are many excellent Indian restaurants in Nashville (two of my favorites were within walking distance of Vanderbilt, where Nash graduated from (and where my husband worked, so I’m intimately familiar with the area. He 100% would have known about them; they’re both really popular. I often say those two restaurants are the only thing I miss about living there). If Nash was as oblivious as he seemed, it wasn’t because he lived in Nashville and attended Vanderbilt University; he would’ve had to work pretty hard to avoid the cultural mosaic around him.

It felt to me as though the story went from cutesy-first-butterflies scene to Nash and Kiran admitting their feelings and ending up immediately in bed (all fade-to-black; zero open door scenes) very quickly; I never got a good sense of why they liked each other and had a hard time feeling much chemistry at all between the two. This may be because I didn’t feel like I connected with the writing style well, but I also felt that the writing itself lacked sparkle. Too much telling and not enough showing for me.

This was just okay; I had hoped for a little bit more, to be honest.

Visit Annika Sharma’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.