Naming Maya

Publishers Weekly

In this sensitively wrought novel, Maya, the daughter of divorced Indian parents, leaves her home in New Jersey to accompany her mother to Chennai, where they must sell Maya's late grandfather's house. After their arrival in India, Maya's mother stays busy making arrangements with a realtor, and Maya mulls over the upheavals in her life. She misses her best friend and she longs for her father, who has moved to Texas. On the other hand, she enjoys the company of her sympathetic cousin Sumati and "Mami," the old family cook and housekeeper. However, when Mami's memory starts to fail and she begins acting strangely, Maya feels another sharp pang of loss. Out shopping one day, Maya witnesses how "pandemonium erupts" when the hem of a woman's sari gets caught in an escalator. The image of the panicked woman becomes a metaphor for Maya, who also feels pulled in different directions. Maya is torn between two cultures, two parents who have drifted apart and even two names (her mother's side of the family chose the name Maya, but her father's relatives always called her Preeta). While vivifying the sights of India and offering a glimpse of the country's history, Krishnaswami (Monsoon) creates a heartfelt story. Maya's release of the past is convincingly reluctant; her tentative steps toward the future movingly portrayed. Ages 10-up. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

From The Critics

Maya is an adventurous young girl, who by unusual circumstances leaves New Jersey for India. Her parents have just undergone a divorce. Her father has left for Texas, and her mother decides to go to India, where her closest relatives are. When Maya first arrives in India, she feels out of place and awkward. She realizes some things are going to change, including the way she dresses and acts around people. Maya and her mom are living with Mami, Maya's grandma. Mami is about 80 years old and is a very wise and intelligent woman. Maya is faced with many challenges throughout the book, and each challenge she overcomes with ease. She is always the heroine who comes up with solutions. Naming Maya will be enjoyed by many young adults. It is a great opportunity for a young adult to get a greater perspective on the world and its different customs. Since it is set in India, many Tamil words are used throughout the story, which can encourage young adults to want to learn a different language. The book also encourages independence with responsibility. 2004, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 192 pp. Ages young adult. Reviewer: Jennifer Greenband

Children's Literature

The newest generation of children is being raised with one foot in America and one foot in a home country far away. Once again, two cultures mix and blend and collide. Maya has been growing up in New Jersey but has come to India for the summer while her mother sells the old family home. Any American child who has traveled to an ancestral home overseas, especially one where extended family members are still living, will identify with Maya's emotional journey, right from the opening conversation between Maya's mother and Mami, the longtime family housekeeper, "a blend of honey and chili powder fighting for room on the tongue." Maya is protected by Mami but finally becomes her protector, "my soul connected to hers with an invisible ribbon woven of stories and fragments of memory." Mami is the chili powder, but also the honey that ultimately brings Maya closer to her mother. Their relationship is a strained thread throughout the book because of her mother's divorce and their lack of communication about either the divorce or Maya's Indian heritage. Maya's beautifully written, heartwarming story will surely become a "two-gift" for young readers—you keep some, you give some away—whether they share Maya's experiences or simply empathize with them. A short glossary of Tamil and Hindi words is included. 2004, Farrar Straus Giroux, Ages 10 to 15.
—Karen Leggett

VOYA

Krishnaswami's entry into young adult literature is welcome for its lyrically sparse prose exploring rich matters of culture, family, and loss. Twelve-year-old Maya returns to India with her mother to sell the ancestral home. They are greeted at the doorstep by Kamala Mami, a housekeeper and nanny who inexplicably insists on staying with them. Maya is soon swept up in familial reunions and female bonding with a girl cousin, but tension between Maya and her mother concerning her father's desertion slowly builds throughout the novel. As Maya grows estranged from her mother, she rekindles a friendship with Mami, only to find that Mami holds secrets of her own. Maya's resolution lies in finding a way to let go of her anger, hurt, and preconceived ideas of others. Slowly simmering like a good masala, Krishnaswami's novel combines elements of American and Indian life through Maya's eyes. She carefully sprinkles Tamil words throughout the text and includes a glossary. Nevertheless she does not portray India as "exotic" for Maya, and global similarity is typified in an encounter with Maya, her cousin, and the cool girls—wearing tight jeans and black lipstick, naturally—down the block. Neither does she gloss over the difficulties of straddling dual cultures, equally depicting American-borne racism and India's economic and safety issues. This book is a welcome addition to an ever-growing collection of global young adult literature by diverse authors and is a recommended buy for public, middle school, and high school libraries. VOYA Codes 4Q 3P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Will appeal with pushing; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined asgrades 10 to 12). 2004, Farrar Straus Giroux, 192p.; Glossary., Ages 12 to 18.
—Lora Morgaine Shinn

School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-New Jersey-born Maya goes to India with her mother, who must sell the family home in Chennai after her father's death. Like many children of divorce, Maya feels responsible for her parents' separation. The title refers to her belief that Mom and Dad's dispute over naming her was somehow her fault. By the end of the book, she knows that her parents' unhappiness had nothing to do with her. The other life lesson she learns comes from an old and loving housekeeper, Kamala Mami, who returns to take care of Maya and her mother during their stay. Mami, who is in the early stages of dementia, shows her that memories remain even while everything else changes. Other supporting characters include a helpful aunt, a kind cousin, and a weather-obsessed neighbor. These elements should make for an interesting and compelling story, but somehow it doesn't quite get off the ground. Where readers might hope for an evocation of the Indian setting, the novel disappoints.-Laurie von Mehren, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Brecksville, OH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In a narrative redolent of spices, an American-born Indian girl sorts out memory and identity in the house of her grandfather. The day after they arrive in India from New Jersey, the family's ancient cook arrives to take care of them; a character in the truest sense of the word, Mami nevertheless begins to exhibit behavior that makes Maya think there may be something more going on than simple eccentricity. Maya's concerns are complicated by her own grief at her parents' divorce; she cannot trust her busy mother with Mami's secrets. Maya's first-person, present-tense narrative brings her grandfather's southern India town vividly to hot, dusty, crowded, vibrant life. Her heritage swirls around her as she strengthens her relationship with her extended Indian family, worries about Mami, and puzzles through her reactions to the dissolution of her family. Krishnaswami has a little too much going on here-a subplot involving Maya's father's family never develops as thoroughly as it should-but her language is lush and Maya's observations are piercingly honest. Both setting and protagonist are entirely memorable, and difficult to leave behind. (Fiction. 10-14)