One family’s trans-global journey is told by an energetic author in Leaving India: My Family’s Journey from Five Villages to Five Continents by Minal Hajratwala.
While I haven’t read the whole book, Minal—one of my former editors at the San Jose Mercury News—spins a lively and exhaustive tale of mixing East and West with interesting, sometimes confusing, and often entertaining results.
Born in San Francisco and raised in New Zealand and in Midwestern suburbs, she’s an avowed multiculturalist who felt like a misfit in America, discovered feminism at Stanford and rejected Indian traditionalism by coming out as a lesbian. One need not agree with her conclusions (and I do not) to appreciate the fresh humor and breathless passion in her writing.
I am pleased to announce that I have posted an exclusive, new interview with my former boss, former Rep. John Porter (R, IL), about his ideas on funding for scientific research. I found him to be as sharp as he was when I first heard him on the stump during a back porch meeting in Glenview, Illinois over 30 years ago. Elsewhere, I have updated my 2006 review of an outstanding and, alarmingly, timely foreign film about an intelligent girl who dares to resist the grip of economic and political dictatorship, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.
