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A Bit of Earth by Karina Riazi

Sep11

The Secret Garden, with a bit of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, some neurodiversity, and Middle Eastern/Bengali culture thrown in—for middle grade readers. If that sounds like a strange mix, it is, but it works pretty well. The author is a “diversity advocate and an educator” with an “MFA in writing for children and young adults from Hamline University.” That resume doesn’t exactly appeal to my instincts for choosing a good story, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the book.

There is one basic problem: the main character, Maria (pronounced MAH-ria, not ma-RI-a) is distinctly unsympathetic. Like Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden, Maria is an orphan with a bad attitude. Unlike Mary Lennox, Maria seems to have been born with, or at least believes she was born with, her grumpy, oppositional defiant personality, and she doesn’t so much change over the course of the story. Instead, Maria just persuades everyone else to accommodate her difficult and rude demeanor. She’s described as “grumpy”, “prickly”, “unpleasant” and many more such adjectives, and her words and actions certainly bear that description out.

And yet . . . I grew to rather like Maria. Maybe I’m a sucker. I’m not sure I could be as loving and forgiving and patient as the adults in the story are if I had a Maria to deal with in real life. But I wanted to be patient with this child who had lost her parents and been wounded by life in many ways. I wanted the secret garden in the story to redeem and renew first Maria, then Colin who is the second grumpy, unlikeable character in the story. And it does . . . to a certain extent.

All that to say, I had mixed feelings about A Bit of Earth. It’s an intriguing retelling of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic story, and Maria did worm her way into my heart despite her angry and sullen appearance (which is not reflected in the cover picture of a beautiful and pleasant-looking Maria). Nevertheless, I did want her to see that she could be more than just a grumpy old Oscar the Grouch, that she could let her guard down and be vulnerable and still survive and even thrive.

If you read A Bit of Earth, let me know what you think about the story and the characters. One mark of a good story is that it gives you ideas to think about. And this middle grade fiction story did indeed make me think.

You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins

Jan18

A multigenerational story of a family that combines and stands out with so many common traits and differences that it’s hard to keep up with who resembles whom and who’s going to defy cultural and family expectations and strike in a new direction.

The Das family is Bengali to begin with, immigrants from India/Bangladesh to the United States, via England and Ghana for brief stays in both of the latter places. Over the years in the U.S. the Das girls, Sunny and Starry, find their own connections to their Bengali heritage while forging a new connection to the United States and to its many peoples and varied cultures. And their children, the third generation, also have to negotiate the sometimes delightful and sometimes treacherous decisions that come with upholding tradition and opening oneself up to change at the same time.

I found this book to be both insightful and challenging. I am plain bread white Texan (with maybe a little bit of Native American heritage that’s been mostly lost in the annals of time). I have no cultural heritage except for the culture of white Southern/West Texas country folks. My family never expected me to square dance or two-step or enjoy certain books or music or dress is a certain way. And yet. I understand the pull of family expectations, both the ones I felt from my parents and the ones I have for my own children. I get the difficulties of combining very different families and learning to accept each other’s differences while appreciating the commonalities. Families are a great joy and a great challenge, and this book speaks that truth in a Bengali/American context.

It’s also a great book about growing up, about appreciating your family and their strengths and weaknesses while at the same time working to differentiate yourself from them. Sunny and Starry grow up to be just like their parents, except for the many ways that they are not at all like their parents. And the book also takes socioeconomic differences and challenges and decisions into account as yet another set of intricate cultural influencers that make the characters in the book look at themselves and and others in disparate, sometimes conflicting, ways.

Don’t get the idea that Sunny and Starry and their parents and their children are simply flat, stand-in characters representing Every Immigrant or the “immigrant experience” or AnyTeen who has a journey to make to “find herself”. The people in You Bring the Distant Near are memorable, well-rounded people who make choices that are sometimes surprising and sometimes predictable, always thought-provoking and endearing. Not all of the people in the book make the best decisions, but they are all trying, and as a reader I was rooting for them to succeed in building strong families and strong connections, the same things I want for my own family.