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Illustration collage by Rich Clabaugh–STAFF |
She longs for India as much as he yearns to become an American
'The Konkans' tells the story of a cross-cultural misalliance.
from the February 19, 2008 edition
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But even freewheeling Sam can't escape D'Sai family expectations. He falls in love with Jacqueline, an African-American woman, but while their skin is pretty much the same shade, Lawrence and the D'Sais erupt.
Francisco explains his dad's prejudices as follows: "While my father didn't truly hate anyone but himself, he didn't like Mexicans because he was taken for one by white people, and this shocked him every time, because my father thought of himself as white.... As far as black people went, my father couldn't care less. He'd never had to deal with them. Until my uncle brought over Jacqueline. And even then, it wasn't about the girl."
The fallout from Sam's inability to face family disapproval – even from 7,000 miles away – lands like a downed elephant on Sam and Asha, the poor Konkan girl who gets stamped with the D'Sai family seal of approval and ends up as Sam's arranged bride. Asha, who is ignored by Sam, explores America on her own and shows real promise as a character, but is sadly limited to a couple of chapters.
A storyteller with confidence
The tales don't necessarily follow in chronological order, and occasionally a vignette appears more than once. Periodically, a character just vanishes or moves to Arizona.
But D'Souza is a relaxed storyteller, confident of both his abilities and a reader's perceptiveness. Things that start out cute – lyrics to a popular song, the family's taste for pork barbecue – take on an awful resonance by the time he's done. D'Souza has also got a smoothly readable style and he works with rich material. "The Konkans" opens with the episode when his uncles try to buy a pig for a feast day and wind up with an angry, 150-pound razorback in their trunk.
Then there's the time Denise and Sam sneak a cousin into the US via the wintry Canadian woods (in a sport coat and loafers, no less). Sam loves to tell his beloved nephew D'Sai family stories, many of which star family patriarch Santan, a police commissioner who faced down poachers (then stole the sandalwood himself), and an angry mob of Hindus.
The book does have some structural weaknesses. The main one is that the narrative doesn't end; it just stops. But when your only real complaint is that you're reluctant to leave the characters, you know a novel has done its job.
• Yvonne Zipp regularly reviews fiction for the Monitor.
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