false 46844725 2046952 5979374 0618251294 9780618251292 17 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1256116412m/5979374.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5979374.Leaving_India_My_Family_s_Journey_from_Five_Villages_to_Five_Continents 4.03 31 What did we give up and gain in the process?
Beginning with her great-grandfather Motiram’s original flight from British-occupied India to Fiji, where he rose from tailor to department store mogul,Hajratwala follows her ancestors across the twentieth century to explain how they came to be spread across five continents and nine countries.
As she delves into the relationship between personal choice and the great historical forces—British colonialism, apartheid,Gandhi’s Salt March, and American immigration policy—that helped to shape her family’s experiences, Hajratwala brings to light for the very first time the story of the Indian diaspora.
This luminous narrative by a child of immigrants offers a deeply intimate look at what it means to call more than one part of the world home. Leaving India should find its place alongside Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family and Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million.</DIV>]]> 2739997 4.03 31 17 0 1 false Thu Feb 19 04:55:13 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 25 08:02:49 -0800 2009
So far, even though I normally find history dull and hard to read, am enjoying this. In part because I know Minal, of course -- it's impossible not to be aware of her as the person writing this memoir. But it's also smoothly-written and just plain interesting. Going to have my colonial/post-colonial students read Chapter 2, "Cloth", I think -- should give them a good sense both of what was happening with the cloth industry in England/India in early colonial days, and of why so many Indians chose to emigrate to the Caribbean.

Also (SPOILER ALERT), the end of the chapter made me cry.

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