Asian Indian Text Set

For my text set, I reviewed two chapter books for young adults and two picture books for children. The books are titled: Blue Jasmine, A Group of One, Here Comes Diwali! The Festival of Lights, and Sacred River: The Ganges of India.

The two chapter books I read were very different and each main character had a unique experience and story to tell. The young girl, Tara in A Group of One, lived in Canada and struggled to learn more about where she fit in between two cultures. She had been perfectly happy with the way that she had been living until her grandmother came to visit and was angry that she wasn't Indian enough. The young girl, Seema in Blue Jasmine, told a story about the experiences of coming to the U.S. from India. Both books explored both cultures equally and I felt that the authors portrayed the Indian culture in a positive light. Both of these stories were written by Indian authors, which helped to bring in an accurate representation of the Indian culture to the story. These books had the common theme of fitting in and being trapped between two cultural identities and figuring out where their place in between was. I was able to relate to both of these stories because my mom is from the U.S. and my dad is from India. I would have loved to have seen books like this while growing up to have some sort of comfort knowing that other people struggle with identity and culture as well.

The two pictures books that I read both described some of the traditions and customs from the Indian culture. Sacred River has been one of the best representations of the Indian culture that I have seen yet because the illustrations are so accurate and real-looking. The author went and studied the customs in India in order to get his text and illustrations as accurate as possible. Here Comes Diwali was a well written story that gave the basics behind the Indian holiday, Diwali. This book would not be one that I would choose to put in my classroom text set because I feel that there are better representations in children's literature that portray this holiday better.

Each book seemed to tie in both the American culture with the Indian culture so readers from diverse backgrounds could enjoy reading these texts. It was great to see how many books about Asian Indian literature were at the library because this was not the case when I was younger. Because I have a lot of experience and background knowledge about the Indian culture, I felt that these books seemed to accurately portray the culture without using stereotypical writing.