08/31/2020
Audhya’s tearjerker second novel (after In Pursuit of Love, Spirituality, and Happiness) explores the relationship between a contemporary Bengali immigrant and her American-born daughter. Shimonti Bose, raised in a middle-class Bengali family in India, got married and started life over in America in pursuit of the American dream. But Shimonti—now going by Samantha—feels torn between cultures, a divide that only deepens when she raises a daughter, Monica, who feels purely American and eventually starts dating Brandon, a white American man. Then Monica shocks and surprises her mother by accepting a journalist assignment in India. As she and Samantha travel separately through India, Monica begins to understand where her mother came from, while Samantha experiences being a stranger in a changed India.
Monica and Samantha both undergo transformations throughout the novel, illuminating the familial challenges of bridging cultures. Audhya has a gift for description and insight. However, her long asides grow repetitive after a time, and some of the dialogue sounds stilted. Her portrayals of Indian cities are rich and vivid, but readers may be jarred by equally vivid scenes of violence. Some Bengali cultural elements are described in detail for outsiders, but others go unexplained, leaving the book’s intended audience unclear. Indian and American racial politics play significant, sometimes contrasting roles in Samantha’s life. While she is conscious of being treated as an outsider in the U.S., she shrugs off anti-Black racism among Indians. She agonizes over Monica getting engaged to Brandon, threatening to bar Monica from her house and concluding, “I can never think of him as my own son.” Monica and Brandon’s romance is less than compelling; the key relationship is between Samantha and Monica, and the conclusion of their story will have readers weeping.
Audhya connects the past and the present through highlighting both cultural comfort and dissonance in relatable terms. The strongest part of the story is the complexity of the relationship between a mother and daughter who love each other very deeply but struggle to understand each other. This endearing, sometimes tragic story will resonate with anyone who has ever had a difficult relationship with family, and particularly with members of immigrant families who are working to unite generations.
Takeaway: This powerful and insightful drama will appeal to members of immigrant families that are grappling with cultural divides across generations.
Great for fans of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake.
Production grades Cover: B Design and typography: A Illustrations: - Editing: C Marketing copy: B
Reviewed by K.C. Finn for Readers' Favorite
Author Gita Audhya has crafted a truly beautiful story of different cultures and different viewpoints coming together, and within it, there is a fantastic ideology of India's history as the heart of the world, and the conflict of traditions versus modernization. The author handles some very difficult topics with grace and emotional realism, whilst also portraying a fragile but very important relationship between a mother and daughter who have a true love for one another, but also some very polarized opinions
IR Approved
Literary Fiction
- Posted by C.S. Holmes
- September 7, 2020
This story is ripe with authentic conversations that reflect palpable heat, especially within the mother-daughter bond. The characters, who deeply care for one another, desperately alternate between trying to understand each other and pushing their own beliefs regarding what is unquestionably, unassailably right. The novel ALL THOSE TEARS WE CAN'T SEE by Gita Audhya takes a brave look at a range of true-to-life multi-cultural injuries from the physical to the psychic to the little deaths sometimes initiated against those we say we love the most.
Reviews By Booklife.com, The Title All Those Tears We Can't See (2nd Edition)
Audhya connects the past and the present through highlighting both cultural comfort and dissonance in relatable terms. The strongest part of the story is the complexity of the relationship between a mother and daughter who love each other very deeply but struggle to understand each other. This endearing, sometimes tragic story will resonate with anyone who has ever had a difficult relationship with family, and particularly with members of immigrant families who are working to unite generations.
