Naming Maya
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this compelling first novel, a young Indian American girl finally learns that she can choose which memories to keep and which to let go.
Although Maya has done her best to avoid it, she is spending part of her summer in Chennai, India, with her mother, who is trying to sell her grandfather's old house. Soon Maya is drawn into a complicated friendship with eccentric Kamala Mami, who has been a housekeeper and cook for years in Maya's extended family.
At the same time, Maya is thrust into an ocean of memories, all coming at her too quickly for her to understand. In particular, she is forced to examine the history of her parents' divorce -- all the more painful because she believes the trouble began with the choosing of her name.
For years the tension has simmered in a cauldron of anxiety, secrets, and misunderstandings. It is only with the help of Kamala Mami and Maya's cousin Sumati that Maya is able to see what happened to her parents.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sensitively wrought novel, Maya, the daughter of divorced Indian parents, leaves her home in New Jersey to accompany her mother to Chennai, where they must sell Maya's late grandfather's house. After their arrival in India, Maya's mother stays busy making arrangements with a realtor, and Maya mulls over the upheavals in her life. She misses her best friend and she longs for her father, who has moved to Texas. On the other hand, she enjoys the company of her sympathetic cousin Sumati and "Mami," the old family cook and housekeeper. However, when Mami's memory starts to fail and she begins acting strangely, Maya feels another sharp pang of loss. Out shopping one day, Maya witnesses how "pandemonium erupts" when the hem of a woman's sari gets caught in an escalator. The image of the panicked woman becomes a metaphor for Maya, who also feels pulled in different directions. Maya is torn between two cultures, two parents who have drifted apart and even two names (her mother's side of the family chose the name Maya, but her father's relatives always called her Preeta). While vivifying the sights of India and offering a glimpse of the country's history, Krishnaswami (Monsoon) creates a heartfelt story. Maya's release of the past is convincingly reluctant; her tentative steps toward the future movingly portrayed. Ages 10-up.
