“or Indians abroad in Africa, it has been said that it was poverty at home that pushed them across the ocean. But because Vikram is also close with a Kikuyu boy (who is a full, round character in ways that the Kikuyu in Out of Africa never quite achieve), I felt like I was getting a much fuller picture. Nor is it anti-colonist, as the girl Vikram longs after for all of his life (a childhood friend) is British. One of the great pleasures, then of reading The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is that while it starts out in British Kenya, it is not from the point of view of a colonist. In fact, as I prepared the great India reading list, I did everything I could to balance out the British take on India like Far Pavilions and A Passage to India that I’ve read so much of before. But there’s something about the colonial spirit that I can never get inside of or fully enjoy. Isak Dinesen was certainly stateless as she farmed in Kenya. You’d think that a book like Out of Africa might really do it for me then. It also explains why I’m making notes for a memoir about how living abroad changed my life-research that’s much easier to do when I’m once again on foreign soil. I don’t know what any of this means, really, to me or to you, but it does help explain why I keep reading about people who are shaped by more than one culture-in some ways it is inside those stories that I feel most at home. But then, I have to convince myself, perhaps a greater and conscious discipline and the practice of writing mitigate that danger.” – MG Vassanji “It has occurred to me-how can it not?-that my picture of the past could well have, like the stories of my grandfather, acquired the patina of nostalgia, become idealized. And anyway, the Chile and Poland I knew are quite different I’m sure than what they are now even without accounting for the ways the act of remembering those places has shaped them in my mind. As a result, I often feel like I don’t quite fit in Seattle (or in Chile or Poland or anywhere). ![]() But my experiences living abroad have stretched and changed who I am in ways I cannot explain. My ethnicity means that physically I blend in just fine with my home town in Idaho and my adopted home of Seattle. “Even now, here in this Canadian wilderness, I cannot help but say my namaskars, or salaams, to the icons I carry faithfully with me, not quite understanding what they mean to me.” – MG Vassanji To add to that feeling of statelessness, the story is told from later in Vikram’s life when he is hiding out in Canada. And because the Indian town his ancestors come from is ceded to Pakistan, there is no going “home” again. ![]() This protagonist is a third generation Kenyan, but as the grandson of a man who came over from Punjab to help build the railroad, his ethnicity means he will never blend with his homeland. It wouldn’t be fair to say that Vikram Lall’s life is actually like mine. “y fantasy has partly to do with desperate need to belong to the land I was born in.” – MG Vassanji Instead, I found a story much more similar to my own life, a story of a man living away from his ancestral home and trying to figure out who that makes him. So when I picked up The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji as part of the great India book grab, thinking that because the author’s name sounded Indian, it must be about India, I was making an assumption that shows how much I want life to fit into identifiable little boxes. Finally, Michael David Anderson's "Flux" continues the adventures of Teddy Dormer, taking him once again to strange new places and showing him new nightmares.How many book reviews can I write about diaspora? Maybe a lot because the feeling of not knowing where or what home is is something I struggle with. In "Chaos Candy," by Amie Gibbons, supernatural bounty hunter Zee tries to uncover a dark secret and learns much more than she ever wanted to know. ![]() "Gideon Wallace and the Sapphire Woman" is the first story in a new series by Thomas A Farmer, and shows what happens when a mortal man finds himself drawn into a fight between gods. Contained in these pages are three stories that all share one important point: Their events would not have been possible without The Inn. Or they might say it's dangerous and to be avoided at all costs because Reality Does Not Work Right inside its infinite walls. Residents might say it's a place for travelers, or a place to rest, a place to find excitement. Sitting outside of time and space is the Inn Between Worlds.
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