So many of my friends and family have raved about Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s book, Secret Daughter, that she has been an author I have wanted to pick up for a long time. I still haven’t made time for Secret Daughter but thought I would start with Shilpi’s latest release, A Great Country. I loved it! Here is what it is about:
Shilpi Somaya Gowda | Goodreads
From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel in the tradition of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, exploring the ties and fractures of a close-knit Indian-American family in the aftermath of a violent encounter with the police.
Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple.
For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member’s perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?
For readers of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream.
A Great Country – Review
A Great Country is the story of an Indian family living in Southern California. The parents arrived in the USA twenty years ago and have finally moved into a bigger, richer neighborhood, hoping to give better opportunities to their kids. When their youngest twelve year old son is arrested by the police, the family is thrown into a time of uncertainty.
The pace of the storytelling is fantastic. The first part masterfully builds tension as the Shahs are informed of their son’s arrest and go to meet him at the County Jail, all happening in the span of a few hours. The next two parts of the story cover the two weeks leading up to his arraignment hearing. The family faces a challenging time, not knowing what will come of the hearing. The last part shows the family in a week and then month’s time from the hearing.
The Many Perspectives in A Great Country
The Shah family is composed of the parents, Priya and Ashok, and their kids, Deepa, Maya and Ajay (in order of birth). Over the course of the book, I got to know the characters so well, the desperation and helplessness, their histories, motivations and beliefs, the alliances they create and the strength they look for in their neighborhood, community and friendship. As an immigrant to Canada from India, I related to the many aspects of Priya and Ashok’s early years in the USA. Priya and Ashok made a love marriage out of an arranged match. A Great Country is a poignant exploration of their choices as a couple and the intricacies of balancing individual personalities and wants with what would be good for them as a family. Marriage is portrayed in all its glory and trials including the challenges of having children in a country where they do not have any relatives while navigating unemployment and personal hopes and dreams. Ajay’s arrest exposes the times when Priya has felt that she has let Ashok have his way and not pushed hard enough for her children’s wellbeing.
Apart from the family, the book covers a wide range of other characters. I got insight into one of the police officers who arrested Ajay, and the conversation with the judge when the inspector wanted to get an arrest warrant for the Shah house was particularly heart wrenching. These characters are not the focus of the book but these incidents add so much to the situation of a juvenile being arrested and his family scrutinized. It was also very interesting to see the Shahs reaction to media and newspaper coverage and through that, getting to know the people who were standing by them, without knowing them at all.
Commentary
The incident with Ajay challenges the Shah parents’ perspective on what they want their life to be. They have worked hard to move into a safe and rich neighborhood but that does not stop the injustice from happening. They left behind their community in the old neighborhood, thinking moving up would be better but is safety with friends or strangers? A Great Country does an amazing job of questioning the dreams that the Shahs have been pursuing for so long and taking a step to evaluate if those are still what they want.
They start to notice the difference between the lifelong friends they have and the new people they have met. They also come to understand how they are swayed by what they hear. When news spreads about one of their entrepreneur friends, they notice how their perceptions towards him change and they wonder if he was favoring one caste over another for his employees. They thought they had left behind discrimination by caste when they left India but has that made its way here?
Another aspect I have always wondered about but never read before is how do people feel when they are clubbed together with other people who outsiders think are similar. Labels of ethnicity, skin color, socio-economic status, sexual and gender identity, etc. tend to group people together, presenting a unification where a person themself might not feel anything. Anti-Muslim sentiments are high in USA in the course of this book and when someone from a Mosque speaks up in support of the Shahs before Ajay’s hearing, their gut reaction is dismissal. Their lawyer recommends them to create distance. They are Hindus, even if they are not practicing Hindus, and they do this whole show of visiting the temple in traditional clothing to portray to reporters that they are not the same, with the hopes that whoever is watching is not swayed by the support from the Muslim community.
This is such a complex issue. The tug of war of taking the support that is given lies in understanding that racial profiling can happen to anyone, American born citizens or not. This is an eye-opening and uncomfortable experience for Priya and Ashok in particular who have assumed doing everything right, being meek in front of authorities, watching their words, will save them from misunderstandings. These are not considerations in reality when split second judgements happen. I loved that Deepa has a deeper understanding of this and her efforts to support her friend and knowledge about US-Mexican border issues gets Priya involved and a step closer to accepting the reality.
I read A Great Country over a weekend and I loved all that it highlighted. I loved the portrait of the family that it creates in times of political unrest and unexpected mishap. I wondered at every step if this was the right one to take and part of the reason I read this book so fast is because I was uncomfortable. I cannot imagine the reality of facing this but I love that I got a chance to ponder it so closely. I can’t wait to read more by Shilpi Somaya Gowda.
Have you read books by this author? Do you plan to read this one? Add it to your Goodreads shelf.
If you already read this one, check out Well-Behaved Indian Women and Brighter Than the Sun.
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