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Chocolate Cherry Chai
Young, free-spirited Maya Mubeen leaves behind the pressures of family, marriage and tradition for a life of experience and adventure ― proving to herself, and her mother, that she is anything but a typical Indian girl. After diving with sharks in the Philippines and a sordid breakup amidst the bustling nightlife of Tokyo, Maya’s sense of who she is ― and where home is ― starts to falter.
An ancient chai-making ritual holds the key to Maya’s past and present, unlocking the secret lives of her mother, Nina, who lived through Idi Amin’s rule in Uganda, her grandmother, Nargis, forced into marriage at thirteen, her great-grandmother, Sukaina, an underground radical socialist who fled an abusive husband, and lastly, her great-great grandmother, Zainab, who left behind a luxurious life in India.
Traversing the globe and historical eras, Taslim Burkowicz’s debut Chocolate Cherry Chai binds together themes of familial pressures, the immigrant experience, motherhood, love and loss into a poetic narrative.
An ancient chai-making ritual holds the key to Maya’s past and present, unlocking the secret lives of her mother, Nina, who lived through Idi Amin’s rule in Uganda, her grandmother, Nargis, forced into marriage at thirteen, her great-grandmother, Sukaina, an underground radical socialist who fled an abusive husband, and lastly, her great-great grandmother, Zainab, who left behind a luxurious life in India.
Traversing the globe and historical eras, Taslim Burkowicz’s debut Chocolate Cherry Chai binds together themes of familial pressures, the immigrant experience, motherhood, love and loss into a poetic narrative.
- GenresFiction
294 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2017
1 person is currently reading
519 people want to read
About the author
Taslim Burkowicz
4 books15 followersTaslim Burkowicz’s work is inspired both by her Indo-Canadian heritage, as well as her global travels and experiences. Her first novel, Chocolate Cherry Chai, was listed on CBC Books’ 2017 Fall Preview list. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science and education from Simon Fraser University. Taslim resides with her husband and three boys in Surrey, B.C., where she focuses on writing, running and dancing.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 9, 2017
**Disclaimer*** the following comments are based on an Advance Reading Copy (ARC) of the book, which is slated to be released in September 2017.
About 80% into this book and I just lost interest. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why I lost interest, but two things stand out: 1) I was not interested in Maya's character. Yes, she was trying to 'discover' herself, but how did she pay for all that globetrotting she did and designer clothes she wore? Now, her grandmother Nargis is far more interesting and had the story been told exclusively by her, it may have worked for me. 2) The story board is all over the place and it's difficult to follow at times. Sometimes the narrator and the time period changes within the same chapter. It would have been easier for the reader to have more chapters (with dates, locales, etc.) to help orient the reader.
The stories of Nargis' three other senior's centre friends are well done, but they detract from the storyline as well. Chocolate Cherry Chai does not suffer from poor writing, I want to make that much clear. It's not a poor story either; in fact, I was quite enjoying it at first. It is the "flow" of the novel that is off-putting and while I don't like to give two stars or less to any book, I feel that two stars here, saying it was "OK" is more than sufficient, even if I had finished it.
About 80% into this book and I just lost interest. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why I lost interest, but two things stand out: 1) I was not interested in Maya's character. Yes, she was trying to 'discover' herself, but how did she pay for all that globetrotting she did and designer clothes she wore? Now, her grandmother Nargis is far more interesting and had the story been told exclusively by her, it may have worked for me. 2) The story board is all over the place and it's difficult to follow at times. Sometimes the narrator and the time period changes within the same chapter. It would have been easier for the reader to have more chapters (with dates, locales, etc.) to help orient the reader.
The stories of Nargis' three other senior's centre friends are well done, but they detract from the storyline as well. Chocolate Cherry Chai does not suffer from poor writing, I want to make that much clear. It's not a poor story either; in fact, I was quite enjoying it at first. It is the "flow" of the novel that is off-putting and while I don't like to give two stars or less to any book, I feel that two stars here, saying it was "OK" is more than sufficient, even if I had finished it.
February 1, 2019
Do yourself a favour: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.
It is confusing, unsatisfying, and I am so annoyed right now that I need to vent before I can finish the last pages.
Ms. Burkowicz can write, but I'm not sure that this mess can be called a novel. It's like she had a whole pile of ideas for characters in her head, and didn't know how to fit them into one cohesive story. So she created a multiple character, multiple timeline monstrosity, and someone let her publish it. Word.
So there's this current time character who is anxious that she's not ever going to find the love of her life, and (big surprise) she's feeling pressure from the family blah blah blah to get married. And she has this annoying habit of pointing out brand names. Like so this chihuahua was wearing Armani or whatever (insert eye roll here).
THEN there's this other timeline of people from the old countries and their miserable marriages. And another group of older women in current times who hang out at the senior centre (but then they disappear. Readers are left to muddle over many, many loose ends. What was the point of having these ladies in the book at all?). I WAS 20 PAGES FROM THE END OF THE BOOK WHEN I FINALLY REALIZED THAT THE CHARACTERS IN THIS TIMELINE WERE THE MATRILINEAL LINE GOING BACKWARDS IN TIME AND WE ONLY GOT ENOUGH OF THEIR STORY TO LEARN THAT THEIR MARRIAGES WERE MISERABLE.
Like other reviewers have said, dates and names at the start of each section would have helped so much. I'm not going to read the book again so I maybe I can make sense of it all. Don't get me wrong: I usually love multi character, multi timeline stories, but Burkowicz does not know how to write one. The best part of this book was its title. It's why I chose to read it.
The funny thing is that in the last ten pages I realized this book was just about a bunch of women and their miserable marriages, and then A PAGE LATER the current time character says to the guy she's probably going to happily marry (and thus break the miserable cycle) that perhaps our ancestors had failed love stories, and somehow we remember them.
(And then there's this one chapter that is some bizarre version of what the author imagines is the experience of someone with dementia.)
The sad part is that I really appreciated the parts where the story took place in India and Uganda. I know so little about those places and their cultures. The book is filled with beautiful descriptions - and that's why I'm giving 2 stars. Beautiful writing, but the story's execution is terrible.
It is confusing, unsatisfying, and I am so annoyed right now that I need to vent before I can finish the last pages.
Ms. Burkowicz can write, but I'm not sure that this mess can be called a novel. It's like she had a whole pile of ideas for characters in her head, and didn't know how to fit them into one cohesive story. So she created a multiple character, multiple timeline monstrosity, and someone let her publish it. Word.
So there's this current time character who is anxious that she's not ever going to find the love of her life, and (big surprise) she's feeling pressure from the family blah blah blah to get married. And she has this annoying habit of pointing out brand names. Like so this chihuahua was wearing Armani or whatever (insert eye roll here).
THEN there's this other timeline of people from the old countries and their miserable marriages. And another group of older women in current times who hang out at the senior centre (but then they disappear. Readers are left to muddle over many, many loose ends. What was the point of having these ladies in the book at all?). I WAS 20 PAGES FROM THE END OF THE BOOK WHEN I FINALLY REALIZED THAT THE CHARACTERS IN THIS TIMELINE WERE THE MATRILINEAL LINE GOING BACKWARDS IN TIME AND WE ONLY GOT ENOUGH OF THEIR STORY TO LEARN THAT THEIR MARRIAGES WERE MISERABLE.
Like other reviewers have said, dates and names at the start of each section would have helped so much. I'm not going to read the book again so I maybe I can make sense of it all. Don't get me wrong: I usually love multi character, multi timeline stories, but Burkowicz does not know how to write one. The best part of this book was its title. It's why I chose to read it.
The funny thing is that in the last ten pages I realized this book was just about a bunch of women and their miserable marriages, and then A PAGE LATER the current time character says to the guy she's probably going to happily marry (and thus break the miserable cycle) that perhaps our ancestors had failed love stories, and somehow we remember them.
(And then there's this one chapter that is some bizarre version of what the author imagines is the experience of someone with dementia.)
The sad part is that I really appreciated the parts where the story took place in India and Uganda. I know so little about those places and their cultures. The book is filled with beautiful descriptions - and that's why I'm giving 2 stars. Beautiful writing, but the story's execution is terrible.
August 1, 2017
I absolutely loved this booked! It is not often that I come across a book that I cannot put down, but this story that spans generations and continents, definitely fits that category. The author is very good at drawing the reader in and keeping them engaged from beginning to end. The layout of the story lets the reader jump back and forth between different time periods to highlight the challenges women faced during those times. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in culture and travel.
November 7, 2020
This debut novel is a collection of women’s stories across eras and continents loosely strung together by the search of an Indian Canadian twenty something protagonist looking for Mr. Right. With wanderlust perhaps generated by a family that hopped continents before settling in Vancouver, she is sticking around at home to help care for her grandmother. In a senior women’s group at the community center, we hear several moving tales. Sometimes it’s difficult to know whose story we are reading for the voices are similar even if the generations and cultures vary. Descriptions of food and clothes frequently bog down the narrative flow, but over tea, we learn that dreams for love and happy homes link the women and their stories.
July 25, 2021
Indo-Canadian Tasleem Burkowicz writes about an Indo- Canadian character Maya Mubeen and her East African heritage. We learn about Maya, her mother Nina, her grandmother Nargis, her great grandmother Sukaina and her great great grandmother. This learning takes place around the making of chai and traditional Indian cuisine. Maya accompanies her grandmother to a senior's centre in Burnaby and here we learn even more about women their heritage and their past lives. A well told book which kept me engrossed.
August 30, 2024
This book is a real roller coaster, let me tell you.
There’s a lot that I really enjoyed about this book. I found it informational and it opened up my world just a bit more.
Indian culture isn’t a culture that I’m super familiar with, I’ve never been to India and I don’t really have very many Indian friends. This book helped me learn a lot, what life is like for people coming to Canada with a different culture, and the struggles and the hardships that they face. The author writes of so many women that I’m not quite convinced are just words on a page. It all seems so real, it’s definitely inspired by true events and the stories of others. These stories are heartbreaking, the women who tell them get mistreated, shunned by their families forced to do things they don’t want to, forced to live lives that they have no say in.
I loved that Chocolate Cherry Chai dealt with these topics, and I also loved that this book branched out to more global setting. This book features so many different places, Tokyo, Philippines, India, Uganda, Pakistan, China, and of course, Canada. As a world traveller myself, I really loved how much I could tie my own experiences to what I read in this book! That was the best part of this for me, being able to relate to Maya’s experiences traveling abroad. That part I really found interesting.
As a teenage girl, I love that this book talks about becoming a woman in a way that’s so familiar. The girls in these stories, they live and become mothers, get married, they deal with the complex emotions that come with it, they reflect on their lives and how they made mistakes. It was really interesting to read about that.
I will say that this book was really sad at times. Sometimes I like the angst when I’m prepared to read with it, but there’s also that part of me that doesn’t want to be sad sometimes. Other than that, I would say that this is a good book. The only reason why I didn’t give it that extra 1 star just comes down to personal preference.
I really hope you enjoyed this book review for Chocolate Cherry Chai by Taslim Burkowicz, and I hope you check it out!
There’s a lot that I really enjoyed about this book. I found it informational and it opened up my world just a bit more.
Indian culture isn’t a culture that I’m super familiar with, I’ve never been to India and I don’t really have very many Indian friends. This book helped me learn a lot, what life is like for people coming to Canada with a different culture, and the struggles and the hardships that they face. The author writes of so many women that I’m not quite convinced are just words on a page. It all seems so real, it’s definitely inspired by true events and the stories of others. These stories are heartbreaking, the women who tell them get mistreated, shunned by their families forced to do things they don’t want to, forced to live lives that they have no say in.
I loved that Chocolate Cherry Chai dealt with these topics, and I also loved that this book branched out to more global setting. This book features so many different places, Tokyo, Philippines, India, Uganda, Pakistan, China, and of course, Canada. As a world traveller myself, I really loved how much I could tie my own experiences to what I read in this book! That was the best part of this for me, being able to relate to Maya’s experiences traveling abroad. That part I really found interesting.
As a teenage girl, I love that this book talks about becoming a woman in a way that’s so familiar. The girls in these stories, they live and become mothers, get married, they deal with the complex emotions that come with it, they reflect on their lives and how they made mistakes. It was really interesting to read about that.
I will say that this book was really sad at times. Sometimes I like the angst when I’m prepared to read with it, but there’s also that part of me that doesn’t want to be sad sometimes. Other than that, I would say that this is a good book. The only reason why I didn’t give it that extra 1 star just comes down to personal preference.
I really hope you enjoyed this book review for Chocolate Cherry Chai by Taslim Burkowicz, and I hope you check it out!
April 22, 2025
This spans several generations of one family in the Gujarati diaspora, from the late 1800s India, to East Africa in the early to mid 1900s, Pakistan, and then to Canada. The book skips around to places and times, but it still feels connected. There are three extra characters' stories as well, not about the main family, but about some of the people they meet at the seniors' home (one Canadian, one Cantonese, one Punjabi).
The main character, Maya, is the present-day character. She's on a journey of self-discovery and along the way, learns more about her past. I believe cultural heritage is so important, something Maya comes to realise as well.
The book is well-written, descriptive, and I didn't want to put it down. I also really wanted some chai.
Recommended for anyone, especially Canadians. Even though I knew almost nothing about the various cultures before reading this book, it still felt relevant and timeless, especially as the author actually lives nearby in Surrey, BC.
I'm interested in reading more by this author.
The main character, Maya, is the present-day character. She's on a journey of self-discovery and along the way, learns more about her past. I believe cultural heritage is so important, something Maya comes to realise as well.
The book is well-written, descriptive, and I didn't want to put it down. I also really wanted some chai.
Recommended for anyone, especially Canadians. Even though I knew almost nothing about the various cultures before reading this book, it still felt relevant and timeless, especially as the author actually lives nearby in Surrey, BC.
I'm interested in reading more by this author.
February 24, 2021
Chocolate Cherry Chai by Taslim Burkowicz.
I was so happy to see my library has this good. This story weaves so many lives into one book. The main character is Maya, a young, adventurous girl trying to sort out herself and her life (but aren’t we all?!). We learn about her mom, her grandma, her great grandma, her great-great grandma and a few of the ladies at the Center where Maya takes her grandma for an outing. This book travelled all over the place - Japan, Uganda, Vancouver. There are so many awesome local Vancouver references. And so multiple mention of delicious food dishes.
This was a very enjoyable book!
I will warn about the ending, it speaks quite graphically of a miscarriage. I don’t really know if it needs to be that descriptive but it’s there and don’t read the last chapter is this is something that would be upsetting for you.
I was so happy to see my library has this good. This story weaves so many lives into one book. The main character is Maya, a young, adventurous girl trying to sort out herself and her life (but aren’t we all?!). We learn about her mom, her grandma, her great grandma, her great-great grandma and a few of the ladies at the Center where Maya takes her grandma for an outing. This book travelled all over the place - Japan, Uganda, Vancouver. There are so many awesome local Vancouver references. And so multiple mention of delicious food dishes.
This was a very enjoyable book!
I will warn about the ending, it speaks quite graphically of a miscarriage. I don’t really know if it needs to be that descriptive but it’s there and don’t read the last chapter is this is something that would be upsetting for you.
October 28, 2017
I don't even know what to say. It's clear that the author has the ability to write, but this book was a hot mess. The story jumps all over the place...both in narrators and time periods. A lot of times this happened in the same chapter with no warning. Proper headings with names/dates/places would have gone a long way. It also seemed like there were too many styles trying to compete. There was the main character, all of her female relatives and the ladies at the senior home with their stories. It was all jumbled up and convoluted. I wish her editor had been stronger.
July 21, 2022
at first i was somewhat skeptical about the content of the book (or lack thereof) due to the casual writing. however. once i got into knowing the characters i was in love. it was so heartwarming and beautiful and felt like a brutally honest ode to solitude and finding yourself through what made you you and not else where, and it was just. gorgeous. when the connections within the stories started building up i was enthralled by it and could not stop reading. i saw myself in the characters and jt was so reassuring i loved it so so much ugh
August 18, 2022
I really enjoyed many of the stories, but the structure wasn't right.
It almost felt like a group of short stories interwoven.
Also the abrupt end of the tea ladies exchange of thier life stories was odd...that was the structure for the entire first half, then just gone.
I had a hard time keeping characters and who was related to who straight in my head. But that is on me.
Overall, I like the stories this author has to tell, I'll try another one of her books at some stage.
It almost felt like a group of short stories interwoven.
Also the abrupt end of the tea ladies exchange of thier life stories was odd...that was the structure for the entire first half, then just gone.
I had a hard time keeping characters and who was related to who straight in my head. But that is on me.
Overall, I like the stories this author has to tell, I'll try another one of her books at some stage.
January 10, 2018
Loved the book, Taslim excels at weaving beautiful imagery into her stories and I enjoyed all of the different generations of women and their story lines. Thank you for sharing this lovely story with us.
August 9, 2018
A wonderful piece of storytelling. The book is as delicious as its title promises it will be. Spanning generations and continents, the author weaves a glorious web with her characters' life stories in this debut novel. Definitely in my top 10 favourites.
March 14, 2019
Lovely writing and lots of potential. but several fatal flaws. Story is incoherent. One moment here; next moment somewhere else but where? How did we arrive? Does it matter? Flawed geography: even in dreams, the Serengeti is not in Uganda. Protagonist not very likeable.
December 2, 2018
I didn’t know at first if I’d like this book that much. The goodreads reviews were a bit hit or miss, and at the start the introduction of Maya didn’t make her overwhelmingly likeable and I was more interested in the stories of her relatives. As it progressed, I grew more and more invested in every character and I ended up loving the book! Some parts are a bit clunky but overall I found it very relatable and enjoyable. I plan on buying a copy!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews