What a Woman Wants

Translated from the German by Alta L. Value, “Identitti” is a bracing story, one wherein Sanyal refuses to offer us the straightforward method out. Don’t anticipate a facile demonization of those that shed their whiteness in favor of melanin. A extra nervous author, one who lacked Sanyal’s confidence, would possibly solid Saraswati as an inarguable villain. As an alternative, she has crafted a personality so eloquent in her argument that the reader has no selection however to agree with Nivedita when she says, “All the things you say is true … however what you probably did continues to be flawed.”

What Saraswati did, her so-called “racial drag,” is flawed. However why, precisely? The query could seem preposterous — many would instinctively cry out, “It simply is!” — however for Sanyal it’s one which begets different questions, ones about immigration, gender, concept, love. She has no intention of answering these questions for us, selecting somewhat to depart her readers with that collegiate thrill of getting to determine it out for ourselves.

The narrator of Sarah Thankam Mathews’s Nationwide E-book Award-longlisted ALL THIS COULD BE DIFFERENT (312 pp., Viking, $27) has nothing discovered. Alone in america since her dad and mom returned to her native India when she was a youngster, Sneha has simply graduated from faculty into the Obama-era recession economic system, moved to Milwaukee to work a dead-end job and is on their own. This mixture of circumstances leads her to 1 conclusion: She is going to now “be a slut.”

For Sneha, this implies courting ladies for the primary time (hating her identify, she goes by “S” on courting apps). As all best-laid plans are wont to do, this one doesn’t go precisely as anticipated. Quickly an outdated faculty pal strikes to city, she meets one other pal on a courting app, and as an alternative of bedding each girl within the larger Milwaukee space, she falls onerous for only one. It’s the stuff all good bildungsromans are manufactured from.

However S shouldn’t be the standard coming-of-age protagonist. She’s a queer immigrant holding her sexuality a secret from her dad and mom, “two oceans away.” Her pals in America know as little about her household as they know of her life within the States. Preserving everybody you take care of at arm’s size is grueling work, however it’s the one method S is aware of tips on how to be.

Lastly, the folks in S’s life knock some sense into her — over and over. What begins as a narrative about romantic love rapidly turns into one in regards to the energy of group, how the folks we encompass ourselves with can collectively be the nice love of our life.