ANITA AND ME by Meera Syal (hier online bestellen)
The story:
Like every nine-year old girl, Meena can't wait to grow up and break away from her "embarrassing" family. But as the daughter
of the only Punjabi family in a small English village, her fight for independence is not for the typical reasons.
Meena wants to eat fish and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants to celebrate Christmas like her schoolmates,
not interminable Punjabi festivals with her dreadful aunties and weird cousins. But more than anything, Meena
wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with her feisty friend Anita Rutter and her gang. In
this memorable debut, Syal takes a fresh, sassy look at a childhood caught between two cultures.
Extract from book:
Mama rarely raised her voice but when she did get angry, she looked like one of the ornamental statues
I had seen on my Auntie ShailaÕs shrine. The goddess she resembled most when in a strop, the
one that both terrified and fascinated me, was Kali, a black-faced snarling woman with alarming
canines and six waving arms. Every hand contained a bloody weapon and she wore a bracelet of skulls
around her powerful naked thighs. And her eyes, sooty O's of disbelief and also amusement that
someone insignificant had dared to step on her shadow.
Mama could look at me like that sometimes, when she had caught me tearing carefully sewn ribbons
off my dresses, cutting up earthworms in our back yard with her favourite vegetable knife and most
usually, when I was lying ... She was always furious at the pointlessness of it all; stealing was
understandable if distressing, violence anti-social yet sometimes unavoidable, but lying? 'Why do you
do this, Meena?' she would wail, wringing her hands unconvincingly, a parody of a Hindi movie mama.
'You are only four/seven/nine ... Isn't your life exciting enough without all these stories?'
Well naturally the answer was no, but I did not want to make mama feel this was her fault. Besides, I
enjoyed her anger, the snapping eyes, the shrieking voice, the glimpse of monster beneath the mother;
it was one of the times I felt we understood each other perfectly.
Of course, no one else outside our small family ever saw this dark side of mama; to everyone else, she
was the epitome of grace, dignity and unthreatening charm. She attracted admirers effortlessly, maybe
because her soft round face, large limpid eyes and fragile, feminine frame brought out their protective
instincts. Tragedy, amusement and bewilderment would wash across her face like sea changes, flowing
to suit the story of whoever she was listening to, giving them the illusion that they could control the
tides. She was as constant as the moon and just as remote, so the admiration of the villagers was
always tempered with a deferential respect, as if in the company of minor royalty.
About the author:
Meera Syal was brought up in the Midlands mining village of Essington, close to Wolverhampton. She studied
English and Drama at Manchester University, working as an actress at the Royal Court Theatre after
graduation. She was commissioned by the BBC to write a three part series, My Sister Wife, and went on to
write the screenplay for the critically acclaimed film, Bhaji on the Beach. She has regularly written for
radio including Masala FM and two series of Goodness Gracious Me. Her comedy, It's Not Unusual, in which
she played a Tom Jones-obsessed cabbie, won a BAFTA for best short film. Anita and Me, Syal's first novel
won the Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize when it was published in 1996.
Buchdaten:
ANITA AND ME by Meera Syal
Sprache: Englisch
Broschiert - 328 Seiten - Flamingo
Erscheinungsdatum: 7. April 1997
ISBN: 0006548768
Preis: € 11,63
More works from the same author:
zurück zur Übersicht
|
