Please select the author's last initial:
SEJAL RAMANI is an award-winning writer whose works have been finalists in the ABC/Walt Disney Writing Fellowship, and the Beverly Hills Film Festival, amongst illustrious others. Her stories have been recognized by various literary journals and she was a finalist at the San Francisco Writer’s Conference
|
THE JOURNEY HOME
Putnam – 2010 Based upon her own grandmother’s story, first time novelist Sejal Ramani’s tentatively titled The Journey Home, is a sweeping drama that spans three generations of Eastern Indian women from early 20th century India to present day America, and back again. From the moment Serena arrived in India, taking in the sights, smells, sounds, and cultures of her beloved mother’s homeland, and a nation upon whose soil she’d never before set foot, the upwardly mobile American knew she’d come to the right place. Distraught after the loss of her child, and consumed with grief, she felt empty, and detached from her loving husband and all that she’d worked so hard to achieve. Greeted by the frail and aged Raju, her Grandmother Mani’s trusted servant, friend, and confidante, and an untouchable whose unthinkable hire she insisted upon, Serena becomes a hungry student. As Raju chronicles Mani’s struggles as a powerless woman in World War II era India, Serena devours her family’s history, and comes to understand the legacy bequeathed through the struggles, failures, and tragic fall of the grandmother she never knew. Despite the short-sightedness and institutional misogyny of the male-dominated society in which she lived, Mani forged ahead, drinking in the wonders of knowledge and passion, and refusing to embrace the impossibilities threatening to crush her. While performing the traditional role expected of her, Mani forged her own quiet but pioneering crusade for modest opportunities, while fighting to ensure that her daughter after her would have access to greater empowerment and the freedom of choice. At turns arrestingly romantic and distressingly heart-wrenching, this remarkably lush and finely textured novel signals the arrival of a fresh and exciting new ethnic voice in fiction. This haunting and shocking, but ultimately life-affirming and beautifully rendered storytelling introduces a stunningly courageous but ultimately tragic heroine, and celebrates the potency of healing, the spiritual power of even disenfranchised women, the exquisitely unrelenting force of maternal love, and the invincible human need to dream. |
|
