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As we’ve been talking about our next Virtual Book Club pick, I’ve been thinking about all the things I do overthink, and some of the things I don’t. One thing I don’t usually overthink is what my children read. They’re reading high level, low content titles, so I do have to be mindful of that on occasion, but in general, they read their assigned books and whatever interests them from the library or home shelves. Yes, this does mean my then eight year old started A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and it lived in his bedside stack for about a week before he gave it up. However, when I was reading with (as in next to) my (now) nine year old before bed last week, he saw me open my kindle book and said “mom, can I read er-o-tic stories?” “Ah, no, no you may not dear. It’s for adults, not nine year olds.” Y’all! The struggle is real! And then I said a quick prayer for him not to ask what erotic means. So far so good, but you never know when it’ll pop up again! If you’d like an update of if my child has asked me to define erotic, please join us on Friday, March 26th at 7:30 p.m. CST when we’ll discuss Don’t Overthink It: Make Easier Decisions, Stop Second-Guessing, and Bring More Joy To Your Life by Anne Bogel and maybe the perils of living your best reading life around little people (and maybe I’ll tell you the story of my Adam’s reaction to glancing at this post over my shoulder as I was drafting it…he just saw the title). Just don’t forget to sign up here to get the details on joining the conversation.
My memory tells me Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal was everywhere when it first came out in 2017, or maybe it was when it was selected to be a part of Reese’s Book Club in March 2018. Either way, when I saw it was a part of Prime Reading in September, I borrowed it superfast and shoulded on Ashley to do the same! Yes, we’re slow to get around to reading books with no deadline, we know, but we get there eventually! The only thing I regret about this book is that I waited so long to read it!
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows is the story of an older woman who is trying to be of service to the women of her community by having English classes for them at the temple, and the younger woman she hires who is trying to find herself as a “British and Punjabi and Sikh” woman. This story is about immigration, how families react to it, and how communities of people gather to support each other. It’s about generations as cultures evolve, and it’s about gender roles, and people, young, old, and in between, finding their way, and charting new territory.
At the heart of Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, it’s the tale of two sisters, one is traditional in the way of her parents, and one is not, and seeks to find her own way, following a winding path to do so, which includes some input from our titular widows. And it’s also very much about the widows, and their erotic stories. While the titular stories are included, and as described, why the widows are drawn to create and share these stories is really what makes the book so powerful. Our group of widows includes some who had amazing marriages before their husbands passed away, and others who had fine marriages, and even others who suffered through horrible marriages. Some women write stories of what they miss while others write of what they never got to experience. There is no shame, no guilt, and only a little shyness once in a while. This amazing group of women are the true stars of the book as they gather together and create their stories to share with each other of their private experiences or fantasies.
It doesn’t hurt that I (accidentally) read this title in flyte with Winter’s Widow (The Wicked Winters Book 12) by Scarlett Scott. In this open door, regency romance, widow Mirabel asks Demon Winter for his help in acquiring a lover. He obliges, personally, and she learns all about what she was missing in her loveless marriage that made her a duchess and gave her three children, but zero passion. This type of relationship is what all our Punjabi widows, and everyone really, deserve to find!
I want to say more about Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, but also I want you to experience it (and if open door isn’t for you, it would be super simple to skip the widow’s stories). Goodreads classifies this title as contemporary fiction, but it could also be feminist fiction or multigenerational, and there are elements of romance and thriller too. I give this genre bending title an emphatic 4 stars and may reread it, but will definitely recommend it!
~Nikki
Balli Kaur Jaswal is the author of 4 novels: 2013’s Inheritance, 2016’s Sugarbread, 2017’s Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, and 2019’s The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergil Sisters. I am here for her entire backlist and any future releases. Inheritance won her the Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Novelist award in 2014. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows has been optioned for film by Ridley Scott’s production company Scott Free Productions and Film Four in the UK. Happily, it has also been translated into 15 other languages! Jaswal’s short fiction and non-fiction works have been featured in multiple publications and periodicals. She was a writing fellow at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and taught creative writing at Yale-NUS College and Nanyang Technological University, both in Singapore, where she is currently working on a PhD.
This is one of those books, as Nikki stated above, that had been on my radar for years. A friend of the blog, and former roommate extraordinaire – you know who you are, read this book in 2018 and had recommended it to me way back then. It was just my getting around to reading it that was problematic. (Don’t @ me because I have read ACOTAR more than 5 times in the same years I could have read Erotic Stories, OK?!) This book was everything I wanted and expected and then some. Was I frustrated at the older generation of women, absolutely. Was I oftentimes just as frustrated with the younger women who were trying to balance their needs and desires for modernity and their needs to be able to fit in with their community? Also, yes. But, this is the balancing act many/most/all women of younger generations have to handle with their elders. I have experienced similar things in my own life. These are seemingly universal issues and it’s great to be able to experience them from another’s point of view. What, you mean by reading diverse books?! Yuppers I do.
My favorite part of Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows though, was the way Jaswal brought Southall, London, to life on the page. Nikki and I are middling-ly-well traveled, but neither of us have spent time in the UK. But, we’re familiar with public signage not only in different languages, but in multiple languages. Nikki specifically in multiple types of scripts. We’ve been honored to experience cultures and religions that are different from our own in their birthplaces. But, I love a good immigration story. It might be because I have a Canadian Adam that lives in my house, but it’s also because these stories are about how two peoples who are so different can learn to not just tolerate but celebrate each other’s cultures and traditions, then create new ones. I am American enough to admit that I truly enjoy the stories of immigrant peoples, and how those immigrant peoples congregate together in their new home to form a culture like and yet unlike the one they left [see also Re Jane]. I don’t think that these widows would have had the bravery to tell their erotic stories in such an open way in India, there would have been other expectations of them as widows. I think they needed to have the confidence of an immigrant experience to understand their ability and even need to express themselves in such a new way. And that’s a strength that’s rarely talked about.
How are you celebrating the diversity of women in your reading life this month?
~Ashley
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