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You are here: Home / Archives for heroine

Front Desk by Kelly Yang ill. Maike Plenzke

March 24, 2021 By achuka Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 25 Mar 2021

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“Yang’s book has two main strengths. Its first strength is its characterisation. Mia and her family leap off the page. Very quickly the reader comes to care deeply about the family and their aspiration. Equally significant is the way Yang manages to describe the hardships endured by the family – ill treatment, racial prejudice, financial exploitation, educational difficulty as Mia struggles with an unfamiliar language – all of this while still maintaining the family as three-dimensional, strong and sympathetic characters rather than as mere victims. The story of such strife, all too commonplace in the real world, is rarely narrated for middle grade readers. More people endure such suffering than read about it.” BfK 5 STAR review
“Debut author Yang weaves in autobiographical content while creating a feisty and empowered heroine. The supporting characters are rich in voice and context, with multiple villains and friends that achingly reveal life in America in the 1990s for persons of color and those living in poverty. Heavy themes, including extortion, fraud, and racism, are balanced with the naïve dreams and determination of a 10-year-old.” KIRKUS

Mia Tang has a lot of secrets: 1. She lives in a motel, not a big house. 2. Her parents hide immigrants. 3. She wants to be a writer. It will take all of Mia’s courage, kindness, and hard work to get through this year. Will she be able to hold on to her job, help the immigrants and guests, and go for her dreams?

f.p. US in 2018

Filed Under: Blog, BookOfTheDay, Books, Fiction Tagged With: 1990s, heroine, immigrants, motel

Why the hero of my YA dystopian novel had to be an angry young Indian girl

April 9, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

guardiansmall

Some enlightening background from the author of The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer by Laxmi Hariharan, reviewed by ACHUKA here…

[W]hen 17 months ago a young photojournalist was raped in the heart of Mumbai in broad daylight, it made me furious. Technology had birthed Facebook and Twitter in the time I had been away from Mumbai, but meanwhile the city seemed to have only become more unsafe for girls.

I had this vision of a larger than life, magnificent, vigilante figure. A teenage girl who would simply follow her instincts, someone who would hit out first and think later. Who would teach those leering men a lesson.

Thus Ruby Iyer was born. I was helpless as a teenager coming of age in that metropolis. Ruby Iyer is not. She is not constrained by the every day reality of Indian society, where walking down the street in a pair of jeans will invite unwanted attention. And where if you did stand up to your tormentors, you would probably pay the price.

I am subconsciously influenced by that most towering of personas who has ruled Bollywood over most of my adult life – the Angry Young Man avatar of Amitabh Bachchan, one of the most influential actors of Indian cinema and popular culture. But this is 2015 and a 24-year-old Jennifer Lawrence has just closed the last year as the highest-grossing actor in Hollywood, thanks in part to playing Katniss Everdeen. The time is now for the Angry Young (Indian) Girl to claim centre-stage.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/apr/03/ya-dystopian-novel-india-south-asia-laxmi-hariharan

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: Bombay, dystopian, hero, heroine, India, Mumbai, YA

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