Balli Kaur Jaswal

Well, then!

I hadn't heard of this book until Reese Witherspoon named it as her book club choice for the month. Intrigued, I decided to give it a try.

There are a few overlapping storylines, but the primary premise involves Nikki a 22-year old first-generation Punjabi woman living in London who has dropped out of law school and doesn't quite know what she wants to do with her life. One day at her Shik temple, she sees an advertisement for a creative writing teaching position. She's hired for the job, but her students end up being older, mostly illiterate Punjabi widows who think that they're taking a class to learn basic literacy skills. Through a bit of a twist (which I won't spoil) the widows decide that they'll forego the literacy lessons and verbally exchange creative stories of a certain (ahem) mature genre.

While there are several premises in the book that just don't make sense, there's a lot to like in this book. It's funny, heartfelt, and a very fast read. I enjoyed the celebration of female friendship, feminist themes, and positive portrayal of older women.

Readers should know that the widows' erotic stories are, well, quite erotic! I wasn't expecting that as it isn't my usual fare. Text (and audio) are definitely not suitable for work, children, or the easily offended.

4.5 stars… (altro)

Balli Kaur Jaswal is an author with Singaporean roots, now living in Australia. This book won the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist Award in 2014. It traces the evolution of a family, originally from India, living in Singapore from the 1970s to the 1990s. Jaswal writes particularly about the Sikh diaspora, their religious and social cultures, and the struggle to adapt to modernity, particularly outside India and the Punjab region.

Inheritance is about two generations of a family, living with Singapore and struggling with reconciling their identities amidst a rapidly changing social and economic environment. Harbeer Singh moves to Singapore with his young wife, Dalveer. While he embraces Singapore’s competitive, rigid social environment, she struggles to adapt. They have three children, and she dies in childbirth, never knowing her youngest. The book is divided into three sections, each with a chapter focusing one of the four remaining members of the family. Each family member faces their own, specific peculiar challenges. While Harbeer assimilates into Singapore’s tight, conformist society, he finds that his children do not, and he is trailed constantly by the ghost of his dead wife. The oldest, Gurdev, is most like him but cannot understand his own three daughters, who have different ideas of success and freedom, nor his wife, who hates how society gossips about the rest of his family. Narain, his second son, is gay: homosexuality is illegal in Singapore and Harbeer cannot comprehend nor comes to terms with this: Narain, in turn, can't fit in and struggles to maintain covert relationships. The youngest, Amrit, has mental health issues, struggles to keep a job, has problems with alcohol, and is not diagnosed until late in adulthood: all anathema to the conservative Sikh diaspora, which is quick to condemn them.

The title, ‘Inheritance’ refers not only to the property and money that Harbeer thinks his younger children ought not to inherit, for their many ‘sins’ but also to the genetic links: a family history of mental health issues, so visible in his daughter, possibly emerging in his grand-daughter, and in himself. It refers as well, to their culture and upbringing, and how they carry it from country to country, struggling to adapt and evolve. This was a very well-written, but sad book. It did end on a note of hope, but as a South Asian living in a diaspora, it was painfully familiar in the story it told.… (altro)

What a fantastic, original book.

What is in a name? In the case of Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, everything and more.

Balli Kaur Jaswal has spun an incredible, eye-opening story into the lives of Punjabi widows, how honor is their highest desired attribute, and how women are to be quiet, meek, and chaste. Men lead the houses, the society, and the bedroom, yet women, especially the widows in Jaswal's book, have thoughts of their own.

When Nikki, a modern Punjabi 22-year-old, answers an ad for a teaching position at the local temple to help illiterate women learn to write and read, she is met with opposition as to her way of life, thinking, and curriculum. These women don't want to learn to write their A, B, Cs, they want to tell and transcribe their fantasies.

I must say, this book is steamy. Not in a Colleen Hoover way, but more in a clean, sensual, and romantic way. Think courgette in place of penis and peach instead of vagina.

Fantastical names of body parts and PG language to describe hot, sensual scenes aside, this book gives a fascinating insight into the tight-lipped, buttoned-up community of Punjabi women. I was amazed at what I didn't know and somewhat surprised by all I learned.… (altro)