Publication Date: 12th September 2017
Publisher: Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (BYR)
Is it a series?: No
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Source: I received an eARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Rating:
Synopsis
This elegant young adult novel captures the immigrant experience for one Indian-American family with humor and heart.
Told in alternating teen voices across three generations, You Bring the Distant Near explores sisterhood, first loves, friendship, and the inheritance of culture - for better or worse.
From a grandmother worried that her children are losing their Indian identity to a daughter wrapped up in a forbidden biracial love affair to a granddaughter social-activist fighting to preserve Bengali tigers, award-winning author Mitali Perkins weaves together the threads of a family growing into an American identity.
Here is a sweeping story of five women at once intimately relatable and yet entirely new.
My Thoughts
You Bring the Distant Near is followed with a 3-generations of Bengali family who has been living away from their home country for many many years. The girls' father has been working around the globe - Ghana, Singapore, Cameroon, the Philippines, Malaysia (OMG! Feels so amazing seeing my country is in this book being mention here!), London and finally, the United States. While their father working almost half part of the world, the girls (Sonia and Tara) with the mother resides in London and after that, their father brings them to the United States and settles down there. In this book, it is so full of insightful things from the customs to their cultures also their experiences immigrating to the United States.
I am glad that I got the chance to read a wonderful family story and learning about their customs and cultures. I live in a multi-race country and this book has it all. Mitali Perkins has written such a beautiful book that I cannot say I don't like it because I love it!
The story follows with Sonia and Tara (the daughter from the second generation) and Grandmother Ranee (the first generation) and Chantal and Anna (the third generation). They all have a different experience in their life, how they manage themselves to fit in with the society, how they work together to maintain their relationship to be strong no matter what happened and the love they show to each other is so beautiful.
Of all the characters, I love Anna the most. Anna has been living in India since she was a kid and has been schooling for most of her life there but her parents want her to complete her high school senior in the United States with her cousin, Chantal. Here, I see how Anna struggles to fit herself in the new school and blend in with the people, she opens the eyes of her teacher and other girls about women needs to have their own private place. All the characters in the book have different personality and perspectives.
Overall, I enjoy reading the book and it really unfolds things that we do not realize before. I think if you are looking for something that has a different culture and about family, You Bring the Distant Near is for you, then.
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