Here are 100 books that A Kitchen in the Corner of the House fans have personally recommended if you like
A Kitchen in the Corner of the House.
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I am an Indian-American writer who moved to the U.S. for graduate school over thirty years ago. Growing up in a conservative Indian family, I witnessed women bound by unspoken rules, for example, expectations of modesty enforced not by law but by societal norms. And, of course, I encountered daily indignities, euphemistically referred to as “eve-teasing.” Only in adulthood, as my world expanded beyond those confines, did I begin to question and resent them. While I live in the U.S., where women’s circumstances are better, though not perfect, I remain deeply interested in how life for Indian women has changed and avidly seek out books set in India.
I was deeply struck by the honest depiction of domestic violence and manipulation in this novel, which is based on the author’s own experience of marriage. The novel builds up slowly, with facts of the marriage interspersed with the retrospective analysis of the author.
The writing is lovely—stark, poetic, and, given the subject, improbably funny. Even with the humor, this is not at all an easy novel to read, but the reward is a haunting, visceral understanding of how even a well-educated woman can turn unlikely victim.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2018
Guardian's Best Books of 2017 Daily Telegraph's Best Books of 2017 Observer Best Books of 2017 Financial Times Best Books of 2017
"Meena Kandasamy's vivid, sharp and precise writing makes a triumph of When I Hit You: Or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife(Atlantic)"- Guardian
Seduced by politics, poetry and an enduring dream of building a better world together, the unnamed narrator falls in love with a university professor. Moving with him to a rain-washed coastal…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I am an Indian-American writer who moved to the U.S. for graduate school over thirty years ago. Growing up in a conservative Indian family, I witnessed women bound by unspoken rules, for example, expectations of modesty enforced not by law but by societal norms. And, of course, I encountered daily indignities, euphemistically referred to as “eve-teasing.” Only in adulthood, as my world expanded beyond those confines, did I begin to question and resent them. While I live in the U.S., where women’s circumstances are better, though not perfect, I remain deeply interested in how life for Indian women has changed and avidly seek out books set in India.
I loved this bold, beautiful novel because of its poetic writing and its unflinching depiction of the strain on a loving couple’s marriage due to the weight of expectations: they are unable to conceive a child while their family expects them to have one.
The rural setting is stunning, and the story is unique and unforgettable. It is both a love story and an investigation of a society that prizes other things over love. A thought-provoking read. I read the English translation. Even in translation, the book was lyrical—I can only imagine how beautiful it must be in Tamil. Again, a refreshing change from Western authors!
A vibrant fable of marriage, caste and social convention from one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Indian fiction
'Unexpected and moving' Amitava Kumar, author of Immigrant, Montana
'A major Indian writer' New York Times
'A captivating story of love and desire' Vivek Shanbhag, author of Ghachar, Ghochar
Kali and Ponna are perfectly content in their marriage, apart from one thing. They are unable to conceive. With local gossip and family disapproval mounting, the increasingly desperate couple consider a more drastic plan. They will attend the annual chariot festival, a celebration of the half-male, half-female god Maadhorubaagan.
I am an Indian-American writer who moved to the U.S. for graduate school over thirty years ago. Growing up in a conservative Indian family, I witnessed women bound by unspoken rules, for example, expectations of modesty enforced not by law but by societal norms. And, of course, I encountered daily indignities, euphemistically referred to as “eve-teasing.” Only in adulthood, as my world expanded beyond those confines, did I begin to question and resent them. While I live in the U.S., where women’s circumstances are better, though not perfect, I remain deeply interested in how life for Indian women has changed and avidly seek out books set in India.
This novel made me think in new ways about the lives of contemporary women in India. I left India decades ago, only returning for brief visits, and I often wonder how things have changed, especially for women. In the novel, Mrs. Sharma is a married woman with a teenage son living in Delhi who meets a young man while her husband is away. Her struggle to reconcile her traditional values with her desires is portrayed beautifully by the author, making her internal conflict both unsettling and illuminating.
The deceptively simple—and often funny—writing enhances its impact. While this novel is more “plotty” than the others on this list, it is deeply layered and illuminating simply by its topic. I was so glad to find books by Indian authors that frankly discuss women’s desires.
Renuka Sharma is a dutiful wife, mother, and daughter-in-law holding the fort in a modest rental in Delhi while her husband tries to rack up savings in Dubai. Working as a receptionist and committed to finding a place for her family in the New Indian Dream of air-conditioned malls and high paid jobs at multi-nationals, life is going as planned until the day she strikes up a conversation with an uncommonly self-possessed stranger at a Metro station. Because while Mrs Sharma may espouse traditional values, India is changing all around her, and it wouldn't be the end of the world…
AcClaim is a dark, high-society romance about Beatrix Winslow-Hale, a successful romance author who believes desire can be negotiated and controlled—until enigmatic billionaire Dorian Wolker crosses the line between consensual surrender and violation. Publicly humiliated and emotionally shattered, Beatrix turns to Manon de Rochemaure, her fiercely loyal best friend and…
I am an Indian-American writer who moved to the U.S. for graduate school over thirty years ago. Growing up in a conservative Indian family, I witnessed women bound by unspoken rules, for example, expectations of modesty enforced not by law but by societal norms. And, of course, I encountered daily indignities, euphemistically referred to as “eve-teasing.” Only in adulthood, as my world expanded beyond those confines, did I begin to question and resent them. While I live in the U.S., where women’s circumstances are better, though not perfect, I remain deeply interested in how life for Indian women has changed and avidly seek out books set in India.
This book provided me with an authentic and immersive reading experience, as the author—a journalist—chronicles the lives of three very different couples in Mumbai over years against the backdrop of an India that is undergoing vast economic and cultural changes.
The author expertly blends reportage with novelistic storytelling so that the book provides intimate portraits of its subjects and gloriously captures both the everyday rhythms and the larger challenges of marriage in contemporary India, where even couples entering so-called love marriages must overcome many obstacles.
Winner of the Silver Nautilus Award for Journalism & Investigative Reporting
"A book that truly is impossible to put down.”—Washington Post
"This remarkable debut is so deeply reported, elegantly written, and profoundly transporting that it reads like a novel you can’t put down. It’s both a nuanced and intimate evocation of Indian culture, and a provocative and exciting meditation on marriage itself."—Katie Roiphe, author of The Violet Hour
In the vein of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, an intimate, deeply reported and revelatory examination of love, marriage, and the state of modern India—as witnessed through the lives of three very different…
I’ve spent my life as an avid reader, but I hadn’t seen my culture represented in many books, so I began writing the stories that I wished had existed on the shelves when I was younger. It took until my forties for my books to be published, and for me to start finding stories by other Indian authors like me, but better late than never! As someone who has lived in multiple countries and traveled to more than 70 others, I’m no stranger to writing about and searching for places that feel like home, and each of these books helped bring a piece of home to me.
I was in my forties, the first time I ever read a novel about a Gujarati American family, and this was the one. I was on a beach in Mexico, experiencing for the first time what it felt like to see my comfort foods, my family’s mannerisms, and my culture’s ideologies represented in a book. The story is told from the perspective of three generations of women in a family and it made me think about my own relationships with my mother and grandmother, and what secrets each of them may be carrying because nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
“A sparkling debut.”—Emily Giffin, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
From a compelling new voice in women's fiction comes a mother-daughter story about three generations of women who struggle to define themselves as they pursue their dreams.
Simran Mehta has always felt harshly judged by her mother, Nandini, especially when it comes to her little "writing hobby." But when a charismatic and highly respected journalist careens into Simran's life, she begins to question not only her future as a psychologist, but her engagement to her high school sweetheart.
Nandini Mehta has strived to create an easy life for her children…
Growing up in Salt Lake City in the 1950s I was very soon aware that I was living in a world of borders, some permeable and negotiable, and some almost impossible to cross. It was a city of Mormons and a city of those who weren’t; a city of immigrants like my grandparents, and about whom my mother wrote (and wrote well); and a Jim Crow town where Black men and women couldn’t get into the ballroom to hear Duke Ellington play. Finally, it was a city haunted by its Indian past in a state keeping living Indians in its many bleak government reservations. What to make of those borders has been a life-long effort.
Sallyis the moving account of the true story of a captive Indian girl who lived in the house of Brigham Young as a servant and cook, a “wild” woman who had been “tamed” by her civilized captors. When she had almost forgotten her own language Sally was sent off to a Mormon village as the wife of a Pahvant Ute chief in order to “civilize” the local surrounding Indians. Sally’s story asks us what these seemingly simple words “wild” and “tame” really mean, and to think about what they can hide.
In this remarkable and deeply felt book, Virginia Kerns uncovers the singular and forgotten life of a young Indian woman who was captured in 1847 in what was then Mexican territory. Sold to a settler, a son-in-law of Brigham Young, the woman spent the next thirty years as a servant to Young's family. Sally, as they called her, lived in the shadows, largely unseen. She was later remembered as a 'wild' woman made 'tame' who happily shed her past to enter a new and better life in civilization.
Drawing from a broad range of primary sources, Kerns retrieves Sally from…
"A profound and often affecting story of resilience." —Kirkus Reviews
The Silent Women, an extraordinary novel inspired by the real women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee—the Manhattan Project’s “Secret City," where thousands kept the deadliest secret of World War II—is a sweeping, absorbing, and deeply human story about chosen…
Reproductive justice – reproductive rights – reproductive self-determination – this has been my passion for decades. I’m a historian. The most important thing I’ve learned is how reproductive bodies have always been racialized in the United States, from 1619 to the present day. Circumstances and tactics have changed over time, but lawmakers and others have always valued the reproduction of some people while degrading the reproduction of people defined as less valuable – or valueless – to the nation. Throughout our history, reproductive politics has been at the center of public life. As we see today. I keep writing because I want more and more of us to understand where we are – and why.
This book is a first. Theobald gives us a really interesting and comprehensive history of pregnancy, birthing, motherhood -- and activism -- on the Crow Reservation in Montana. She explains the interventions of the federal government, for example, via coercive sterilization and child removal, and provides rich accounts of family, tribal, and inter-tribal resistance -- and claims of self-determination -- in the face of these interventions.
This pathbreaking book documents the transformation of reproductive practices and politics on Indian reservations from the late nineteenth century to the present, integrating a localized history of childbearing, motherhood, and activism on the Crow Reservation in Montana with an analysis of trends affecting Indigenous women more broadly. As Brianna Theobald illustrates, the federal government and local authorities have long sought to control Indigenous families and women's reproduction, using tactics such as coercive sterilization and removal of Indigenous children into the white foster care system. But Theobald examines women's resistance, showing how they have worked within families, tribal networks, and activist…
Growing up in a sheltered environment on Long Island, NY, I had little sense of a larger world, except for seeing images of the Vietnam War. Going to college in the early 70s and becoming an anthropology major, the world began to open up, yet I hadn't experienced life outside the U.S. until my mid-20s as a graduate student living in Mexico to do dissertation research. That experience and travels to Guatemala, Peru, Cuba, and Costa Rica helped me to see how diverse Latin America is, and how real poverty and suffering are as well. Coming into my own as a historian, teacher, and writer, my fascination with women’s voices, experiences, and activism only grew.
This superb book is a culturally and indigenous-language-focused study of women in four central Mesoamerican native societies—Aztecs (Nahuas), Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe.
In addition to a deep dive into texts dealing with all facets of women’s lives, Sousa uses visual evidence to great effect, showing how images contain much information about women’s and gender history, a history in which women struggled over centuries to maintain agency and authority despite efforts by a newly imposed colonial state to erode their power and status and exploit their labor.
This book is an ambitious and wide-ranging social and cultural history of gender relations among indigenous peoples of New Spain, from the Spanish conquest through the first half of the eighteenth century. In this expansive account, Lisa Sousa focuses on four native groups in highland Mexico-the Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe-and traces cross-cultural similarities and differences in the roles and status attributed to women in prehispanic and colonial Mesoamerica.
Sousa intricately renders the full complexity of women's life experiences in the household and community, from the significance of their names, age, and social standing, to their identities, ethnicities, family,…
I have published seven books, all set in the West, including an anthology,West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West, that features writers from every state west of the Mississippi. For four years now, I have been doing a podcast called Breakfast in Montana, where my partner Aaron Parrett and I discuss Montana books. I also published a book in 2016 called56 Counties, where I traveled to every county in Montana and interviewed people about what it means to live in this state. So I have a good feel for the people of this region and for the books they love.
And another Montana writer, Debra Magpie Earling grew up in Spokane, and is a member of the Salish tribe. Her 2002 debut novel, Perma Red, became an immediate classic. It’s the story of Louise White Elk, a young woman living on the reservation in the 1940s who is determined to avoid the trap of becoming the possession of a man. A challenge for any woman during that time period, but especially for a native woman living in a place with few options. Earling’s prose is elegant but tough, and that would be a pretty apt description of her main character as well as Louise makes a valiant effort to fight off the powerful men trying to take control of her life.
Bold, passionate, and more urgent than ever, Debra Magpie Earling's powerful classic novel is reborn in this new edition.
On the Flathead Indian Reservation, summer is ending, and Louise White Elk is determined to forge her own path. Raised by her Grandmother Magpie after the death of her mother, Louise and her younger sister have grown up into the harsh social and physical landscape of western Montana in the 1940s, where Native people endure boarding schools and life far from home. As she approaches adulthood, Louise hopes to create an independent life for herself and an improved future for her…
Broken Boots, Redeemed Soul: A Veteran’s War with Sin and Salvation
by
Brian Lofton,
Broken Boots, Redeemed Soul: A Veteran’s War with Sin and Salvation, is a raw and faith-centered memoir about life after military service—and the internal battles many never see. Brian Lofton shares his journey through addiction, shame, identity loss, and spiritual distance, revealing how the hardest struggles often begin after…
I’m just a guy, a normal guy who enjoys thinking and writing about things that can nudge humanity along towards peace. If everybody thought just a little bit about it, we’d have it.
Hatter Fox is one of those rare stories which causes me to lose my sense of self.
There is no who am I, how am I, or why am I, none of that matters, all that matters is the story. This story is so real, and shows so accurately what can happen to young minds when they are raised in an oppressive, prejudiced environment.
Hatter Fox also exemplifies the true power of fiction, in that it allows us to shed a tear. We steel ourselves against the harsh realities of life, and do not weep for the downtrodden, but for fictional characters, we are free to feel our sorrows.
