THE RAW TRUTHS OF THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE

Breaking the Ocean by Annahid Dashtgard, Anansi, $22.95. A girl born into a supportive, privileged, mixed-race family in Iran. Who is then transplanted to a small town in England when her family is forced to flee revolution and then to a small town in Alberta. 

A story we’ve heard many times in many ways. But none as powerful and moving, perhaps, as in Breaking the Ocean. Annahid Dashtgard doesn’t just peel the layers off the immigrant experience, she rips them off, revealing the raw, hurting truths that hide beneath.

In sharing her story of being bullied, shunned, shamed and ostracized; of the struggles at home as her parents were driven apart; of her desperate search for an identity she feels comfortable and welcomed in and how all these impact her own marriage, she tells countless others that not only were they not alone in experiencing what they did, that a woman who appears to have it all went through the exact same experiences. That it is not only possible to live to tell the tale, but to emerge stronger. It’s easy to espouse the optimism of cross-cultural relationships, but the actual work of bridging difference is extremely difficult, even with strong self-awareness and communication skills.

She’s describing the relationship between her British mother and Persian father. But if it’s hard to understand each other in a marriage between two people who love each other, how much more so in a multicultural society where one is eager to belong and the other swings between welcoming, tolerant, or outright rejection?

In the Alberta of her childhood, “People could be friendly, but still look at you suspiciously or put on a polite face while holding closed the door to the club”.

Little Annahid would approach each new term with a smile-and-you’ll-win-them-over mentality only to have that optimism crushed as teachers sat by while she was excluded from groups with open calls of “Ewww, gross, get away!” She, herself, was distancing herself from the only other brown student in her class, believing that by doing so, “we could each individually hold on to the pretence of fitting in, or at least protect ourselves from the reminder of how much we didn’t.” The real cost of immigration is safety. I no longer felt safe. Even inside my own skin.

As her grades fall, she faces the wrath of her over-achieving father, anxious to equip his children with knowledge, the currency of belonging in a new land. His daughter, at the same time, hated seeing him being diminished but wished he didn’t have quite so thick an accent or that he wasn’t so loud in public spaces.

She develops health issues triggered by stress and seeks comfort in food, followed by that dreaded cycle of throwing up. But managing, somehow, to keep it under wraps, she creates a new identity for herself as a leader in the anti-corporate globalization movement of the 1990s. However, hobnobbing with high-profile public figures also “proved to be a lesson in the dynamics of rank and power”.

When she begins working in anti-racism and diversity with her husband Shakil, she writes that they realized that statistics aren’t enough.

They had to be able to clear the resistance to relationships on an emotional level where the ghosts of personal and collective history sit – guilt, grief, anger, blame, shame and more.

Because, as she says, belonging is worlds apart form acceptance.

Brutal in its honesty, it evokes a visceral response like few books do – one that comes to mind is Angela’s Ashes.

Homepage image credit: JUSTICE AMOH on Unsplash.

 COMPELLING THREADS

Azadi by Arundhati Roy, Haymarket Books, $22.95. The cover had me fooled as I selectively read the descriptive text there – Freedom, Fascism, Fiction. Ah, a work of fiction from Arundhati Roy after many years, I thought.

But no. It’s a collection of Roy’s essays and speeches over time, much like her last book, My Seditious Heart.

Roy is at her best on the topics that one expects her to write about. Creeping authoritarianism in India. Modi and the RSS and the BJP. Maoists and Naxalites. Adivasis and Dalits. Jailed activists. In India, those who have been jailed are the lucky ones. The less fortunate are dead. Unbridled fascism and racism. And, of course, mob lynching. Reporters Without Borders say that India is the fifth most dangerous place for journalists in the world, ranked just below Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Mexico.

India of 2020 offers Roy many compelling threads to weave a rich, if ugly, tapestry to present.

But stressed as one is with the unabated spread of coronavirus and the way our world is going with tin-pot despots of all stripes in charge, Azadi, meaning freedom, remains an elusive fiction.

 LOOKING TO NATURE FOR ANSWERS

The Nature Cure by Andreas Michalsen, Viking, $37. Dr Andreas Michalsen extols the virtues of sunlight, water, nourishing foods and medicinal plants.

Before you dismiss him as another new-age quack, he is certified in internal and emergency medicine, among a host of other specializations. And yet, after seeing the benefits of elements found in nature, he has published cutting-edge scientific research on the efficacy of natural medicine and successfully treated thousands of patients using these elements. In The Nature Cure, he breaks down the science behind natural ways of healing and shows how we can incorporate these methods into our everyday lives to trigger our body’s self-healing mechanisms.

Cold or warm therapy and yoga or tai-chi for fibromyalgia. Water therapy. How fasting strengthens immune defence. Also Ayurvedic treatments in Kerala. You’ll find all these and so much more in this book packed with fascinating case studies.

If a physician motivates someone to give up an unhealthy lifestyle, eat healthy, and get enough physical activity, they should be paid more than someone who performs a bypass surgery ten years later. It’s high time for prevention to stop leading a life in the shadows.

THE TIES THAT BIND

The Screening Room by Alan Lightman, Vintage, $21. Back home for an uncle’s funeral, and together with extended family after decades, Alan Lightman revisits his family’s history.

As cousins, nephews, aunts and uncles, members of a large, once closely-knit clan gather and share memories, he finds his long-held beliefs shifting, his perspective changing.

A poignant family saga from the physicist known for books like Einstein’s Dreams and The Accidental Universe.

AN AFFIRMATIVE WORK

Yes to Life by Viktor E Frankl, Beacon Press, $25.95. After his liberation from a concentration camp, Viktor Frankl held a series of public lectures on how he found the will to go on, in spite of having lost his parents, brother and pregnant wife to the horrors of the camps.

A psychologist, he explained his thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity.

Published for the first time in English, his thoughts resonate as strongly today as they did in 1946. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning has inspired and moved generations of readers. Yes To Life is certain to inspire the generations to come.

IT’S A LONG STORY

The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon, Liveright Publishing, $21.95. Hendrik Willem van Loon’s The Story of Mankind has charmed generations since it was first published in 1921.

Beginning with the origins of human life and sweeping forward to illuminate all of history, van Loon’s prose presents a lively rendering of people and events that have shaped world history.

This new edition, updated by historian Robert Sullivan, takes up the narrative from where the original book left the reader and includes the war on terrorism, global warming, and the explosion of social media.

LET’S READ TOGETHER!

How to Read to a Grandma Or Grandpa by Jean Reagan, illustrated by Lee Wildish, Knopf. Everything you need to know about how to read to doting grandparents including those who live far away– from which books to pick to practising different voices to read!

TEEN REVIEW

By KHUSHI JAMNADAS

 Wonder by R. J. Palacio, Random House Children’s Books, $21.06. Wonder by R.J Palacio is an empowering story about a boy named August Pullman who was born with a facial difference.

Surgeries prevent him from attending school and he’s home-schooled until he’s 10. The story begins when August’s parents send him to school.

As a fifth grader at Beecher Prep, he’s made fun of and left out by other students because of his physical appearance. August learns that he was born to stand out and begins to love himself, as well as make some great friends. Wonder exposes us to a variety of different characters, each with their own story. I found some parts of the book a little boring; but it did not take away from the main message that kindness and being accepting of others, regardless of their appearance, race or  colour can make a big difference in one’s life.

On his first day of school students avoid him and talk behind his back, making him feel like an outsider. However, when one of the other students simply asked to sit beside August in class, he felt so happy.

When the students got to know one another, they actually got along very well, proving that being kind can make everyone’s day.

• Khushi Jamnadas is a youth volunteer at Brampton Library.