A Language in Common

Hiphip, Amazon things have arrived and with it this book by Marion Molteno. It's a set of short stories based on her experiences as an ESL worker with women from the Indian subcontinent living in South London. Interesting for me, because I was always the stranger living with women in India and B'desh - so it's a different viewpoint where they're the fish out of water.

I really enjoy her quiet, friendly style. She notices details without ever distancing the reader. While these stories are fiction, she is in it herself as a character, which again makes it closer to the reader.

There's stories about racism, domestic violence, raising children, changing, having to change despite oneself. And she makes such a clever choice by opening the collection with a section about a guy, an old Indian man, and then moving on from there to women, like opening a wider world.

One of the most interesting stories deals with the writer's trip to India and her visit to a persecuted minority group there, to which one of her London friend belongs. Again there's this sense of limited understanding opening up in the face of experience. Which is perfect, because that's what cross-cultural experience is all about.