A History of Burning, by Janika Oza

[mrissa]

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is a gorgeous family saga, the kind of book that gives you a hundred years of one family, following from one generation to another including in-laws (but not friends/peripheral characters as POV). It's about an Indian family that immigrates to Uganda while both are still under British rule, and...the twentieth century plays out from there, the Partition, independence for both regions, the rise of Idi Amin, another round of immigration (hello, Toronto!), all of it. It is harrowing but not only harrowing; it is heartbreaking but not only heartbreaking. There's joy, there's hope, there's camaraderie, there's all the emotions of family and community life.

I don't want to say "one doesn't often see" because perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps there are loads of books about this and my white American self has just not found them. But. I don't often see books that are about the fraught ground that comes of being a colonized people that is then part of colonization for another people. And that complexity is beautifully handled here--the characters have a wide range of reactions to each other, and being someone we care about does not mean that you're necessarily right about any one thing--or that rightness is achievable in your circumstances. These characters are all doing the best they can, but their bests vary wildly--as people do.

This is a warm and rich and compelling book, and I'm so glad that it's coming soon so the rest of you can read it too. Read it when you're in a place to deal with difficult things, but absolutely read it.

Comments

[sovay]

the fraught ground that comes of being a colonized people that is then part of colonization for another people.

Have you seen Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala (1991)? I love it and have never managed to write about it, even a thumbnail sketch is difficult, but it is a love story in a matrix of different kinds of diaspora, one of which is Ugandan Indian and the other Black American; everyone now lives in Greenwood, Mississippi, and some people feel like strangers there and some people feel like home and for some people it isn't that clear-cut and neither family/community handles the interracial romance well and it's not a tragedy. It was the first place I saw Sarita Choudhury, cemented how much I like Roshan Seth, and should have launched Denzel Washington as a romantic hero. Criterion thoughtfully put it out on DVD last year and I keep wanting to write about it and keep running into a wall.

[mrissa]

I have not, and it sounds like I should.

[davidgillon]

I had a boss years ago who was caught up in the expulsion as a small child.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Asians_from_Uganda lists another handful of books dealing with it, but only a handful.