DISPOSSESSION AND DISLOCATION

A Good Country by Sofia Ali-Khan, Random House, $38.99. It’s hard to categorize this book. Is it a memoir about growing up in a culture that a young woman finds claustrophobic, only to find her way back to her roots? Is it about finding the strength to see the truth about being married to a deeply disturbed, misogynistic man? Or is it about life in a country that claims to be the bastion of freedom but air-brushes details of a past that is anything but?

For A Good Country is all of these. There’s stuff about growing up in the US, not knowing where one belonged, fully.

“I used to imagine myself enormous, stretched into the sky, one foot planted in suburban Pennsylvania and another planted in the low cityscape of Hyderabad, Pakistan, somewhere between my grandmothers’ houses...I could belong in both places without being constrained by either one.”

To have one’s name easily pronounced wherever one went, to have one’s faith broadly recognized...

There’s stuff about family. About a loving mother who didn’t understand the need for her daughter to shave her legs. And a father who couldn’t comprehend her interest in a faraway college without a pre-med program.

There’s stuff about being married to a man who stalked schoolgirls and followed a terrified woman through a subway station.

And so much about the repercussions of being Muslim in post 9-11 America. The most we could hope for was to reduce the inevitable collective punishment, to minimize the retaliation against Muslims and every person who might be mistaken for Muslim in our communities.

Sofia Ali-Khan set out to “situate herself within” what she knew of American history and the civil rights movement by reconstructing her path through America, in every city she had “lived, studied, worked or worshipped” and uncovered startling details that lead her to conclude that “American history is one chapter upon another of dispossession, destruction, and dislocation”.

My parents had, unwittingly, chosen a path on which their children would benefit from the colonization of one country while their own parents had been among the colonized in another.

William Penn and his treatment of the Lenape, who occupied lands he would claim. The residential schools in the US that provided cheap child labour. Princeton University’s connection to the forced migration and exploitation of Black people. A personal experience of being terrified at a bus depot in Jackson County, Missouri, while travelling alone, because she had been raced as “Indian”.

Mark Antony’s speech, “I come to bury Caesar not to praise him....” becomes I come to praise America, not to criticize it when she describes America as a good country.

“It is exceptionally good at so radically misrepresenting its own story that it can avoid making amends.”

“It is exceptionally good at segregating its people.”

People – even my own parents – wondered how we could leave America. After my daughter was asked to hide that she was Muslim at Kindergarten, how could we stay?

Sofia Ali-Khan now lives in Ontario, Canada. And though she is clear-eyed about the fact that Canada has its own history of “destroying and displacing its Indigenous peoples,” she writes that Canadians are, actually, as nice as everyone makes them out to be.

A STORIED LAND

In The Upper Country by Kai Thomas, Viking, USD27. The debut novel explores freedom, family, and the interconnections between white, Black, and Indigenous communities in 1859 Ontario, “And all the more when one man ain’t master over the other”.

And the stories that lie therein.

Lensinda Marten, a young woman who lives and works in Dunmore, a small town at the southern tip of Ontario that serves as a terminus of the Underground Railroad, asks, “Is life itself not enough without stories?”. But in the exchange of a tale-for-a-tale (and a ripe pear) with a very old woman – a refugee from slavery who sits in the county jail awaiting trial for the murder of a slave-catcher – the history of two people is revealed. Their stories intertwine in startling ways, revealing a connection the younger woman cannot have imagined.

Thomas uses historical fiction, presenting facts that we now know to be true but which remained hidden or unacknowledged for long.

Yes, before they were tempered, the British were mean slave drivers who whipped hard as anyone.

Lensinda starts by sharing old tales of this land, of stories and fables the Black community passed down through generations.

The howl of the lake continued with a vengeance that struck fear into the hearts of the British, in that they could hear the echo of their own evil. This fear haunted them until it changed them so that they abolished slavery.

The wisdom in this tale of two unforgettable, vibrant, strong, complex, resilient women who share an extraordinary hidden connection will resonate with those who came to this land many generations later.

Home is a changing thing, and no place will be so forever.

Thomas also shows how some aspects of life remain unchanged for many people even in a land “where persecution ends” with a personal anecdote in his author’s note.

LOST AND FOUND

The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan, Hodder & Stoughton, $26.99. Murder, mystery, lost treasure, and love interest that may or may not go anywhere...  The Da Vinci Code meets folklore (and folks) in Bombay!

When the body of a white man is found frozen in the Himalayan foothills, he is christened the Ice Man by the national media.

Who is he? How long has he been there? Why was he killed?

As Inspector Persis Wadia and Metropolitan Police criminalist Archie Blackfinch investigate the case, two more white men are murdered brutally in Bombay.

Is there a connection?

“Motives are like submerged bodies, Persis. They tend to float to the surface sooner or later.”

An enigmatic code holds the key.

In-depth research (and/or knowledge!) is evident in the history, mythology and the politics of post-colonial India that Vaseem Khan packs into the book. Khan uses the old (prevalent in the 50s when the book is set) names for city landmarks. The Victoria and Albert Museum for what is now known as the Bhau Daji Lad Museum, for one.

I learn that while Mount Everest was named after a Surveyor General, Colonel Sir George Everest, he wasn’t actually the one who determined that is was the world’s highest peak. That calculation was carried out by an Indian named Radhanath Sikdar.

 Vaseem Khan also host a podcast with another bestselling author Abir Mukherjee. Check it out at www.redhotchilliwriters.com.

LAW AND ORDER

 Sparring Partners by John Grisham, Doubleday, $39.95. A lawyer steals money from his clients, divorces his wife, files for bankruptcy and vanishes without trace. And then he resurfaces. He’s in Latin America and wants his old friend Jack Brigance (yes, he’s back!) to help him. That’s Homecoming, the first of three stories. But this homecoming does not go as planned.

In Strawberry Moon, we meet a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. A last-minute appeal for clemency has been turned down, and the clock is ticking.

In Sparring Partners, two brothers, both successful lawyers, inherit their father’s law firm. They loathe each other and speak only when necessary. The third, a sweat-equity partner in the firm, is the only person the brothers trust. Can she save the firm and the brothers and herself – she has reasons to clear herself, too.

Three taut and suspenseful stories as only Grisham can tell.

AN INDIAN FAIRY TALE

 The Story of Laila and Ajeet, Ladybird Readers, $10.95. Prince Ajeet falls in love with the beautiful and kind princess Laila. But her father, the Rajah, sets him impossible tasks that he must finish to win her hand or be killed. With the help of a host of creatures he has been kind to, Prince Ajeet succeeds in this Indian fairy tale!

ENTER THE PORTAL

Minecraft The End by Catherine M Valente, Del Ray, 14.99. This official Minecraft novel, an epic battle for survival, will thrill all young readers who enter the portal.

TEEN REVIEW

By HARSH PATEL

The Lost Causes by Jessica Koosed Etting, Alyssa Embree Schwartz, Kids Can Press, $12.99. Gabby, Z, Andrew, Justin and Sabrina have dealt with mental illnesses as long as they can remember.

Everyone, along with their parents, appeared to have given up on them since there was no progress with their separate issues. One day, the five of them get invited to a group therapy session with two therapists who we later discover are FBI agents. They dose the group with a serum that grants them extraordinary abilities like telekinesis and mind reading, and cures their symptoms. The teenagers are asked to solve the murder of  Lily Carpenter who was involved with the creation of the serum.

A friend recommended the book and I was hooked as I love mystery! The story is told in third-person, switching between  characters who are all really interesting with their own flaws and quirks. As the book went on, they gain confidence and discover the purpose of friendship that they had previously lacked which I loved. The story gets a little stale for a couple chapters in the middle, but brought me right back with even more build- up and suspense. The authors did a great job in this mystery sci-fi story! Its unique, well paced plot, character development and subtle thriller elements make it a must-read for mystery lovers like me. 

• Harsh Patel is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.