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Seeing Themselves: On Diversity in Children’s Books
“That is not cha-na, its chhan-na.” My 11-year-old daughter born and raised in America corrects the white traveler on television sampling street food somewhere in northern India. Our family is of Indian origin. We speak Tamil and English at home sprinkled liberally with words from Hindi that have made themselves part of our lexicon. “Chhan-na”…
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My Motherhood, Explained
I notice the family at the table we cross to get to ours. I notice them because they turn in unison looking us up and down, right to left and back. I notice them as they try to reconcile the story of us, the story of me. I hold her eyes, just a smidge before…
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Hands of Fate
I stepped off the plane into the chill, dry air of New Mexico, eight hours after we left that morning. Even as my husband and I made our way to baggage claim, my eyes scanned through the unread text messages and email messages from Amy. “Call me.” The message was cryptic and I felt a…
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Life Is Unfair. Deal With It.
“Fuck,” murmured Laia as she threw the phone to her side where it skittered and settled by the trim on the carpeted floor. The room was silent, lit only by the occasional headlight visible through the thin blinds of their room. Regretting the impulsive action, Laia forced herself out of bed to reach her phone.…
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Maya’s Dream
She fell with a thud. At least that is how it felt. She had been reading a book she had checked out from the library on Indian History and fallen asleep reading and dreaming about villages and rice crops. Maya opened her eyes fully expecting to have fallen off her bed. The one with the…
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Twenty-Five
Twenty-five years after I landed in Pennsylvania from Madras, the body that slept light has finally stopped bracing. On arrival, race, motherhood, and the home that turned out to be nowhere.
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My Shadow
She follows me from the first walk to the last, watching, learning, absorbing. On my youngest, the child I did not write down, and what it means to be seen by her.
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Feeling Seen
I see the photo on my Pattu’s Instagram story first. It catches me by surprise. I am at the window holding Felix our puppy, watching the birds and the bees flitting about. Felix had been cranky. I was holding him the way I would a fussy baby. Rocking imperceptibly, every part of me focused on…
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I Ran Nineteen Years of Myself Through the Matrix
I ran nineteen years of my own essays through a script that measures sentence length, reading grade, and how often I interrupt myself. What the numbers caught, and what they could not.
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The Mute Button
The night my caste essay went viral, the rage came from a familiar quarter. On naming, the backlash that proved the point, and who decides what comes into the house.