From her entry:
One book I recently finished reading is The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (2025) At 670 pages this novel is a major undertaking but thankfully is mostly a pleasure to read. Will Sonia and Sunny ever find each other, and then, will they ever find each other again after they stupidly part ways — this is the burning plotline of the novel. But the plot is hardly important – what is important is the web of their respective families and how they have a hold on their two children who, having left India to lead searingly lonely lives in America, seem unable to settle into any comfortable notions of identity. There are many passages in which Desai captures beautifully the dilemma of...[read on]About Sutra Americana, from the publisher:
In 1960 S. K. Sharma, a brilliant young astrophysicist at the beginning of his academic career, has finally succeeded in bringing his wife, Sushila, from India to America. Intensely drawn to one another as star university students, the coupleVisit Monona Wali's website.pursue an unlikely affair and marriage that crosses caste lines. Their sweeping, decades-long story of love, forgiveness, and coming of age takes place in a country that is both fascinated by and shuns them. The United States, with its exaltation of individualism, offers immense opportunities, but its looser sexual mores threaten to undermine the family’s happiness and devotion to one another.
As their three daughters become young women, they must navigate the tumultuous decades of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the women’s liberation movement. In their journeys of self-discovery, they upend their parents’ hold on them to craft radically new identities for themselves. As they discover their parents’ faults they grow increasingly puzzled by their devotion to one another, eventually learning how love and forgiveness have the power to overcome the most uncomfortable truths.
Q&A with Monona Wali.
The Page 69 Test: Sutra Americana.
Writers Read: Monona Wali.
--Marshal Zeringue
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