Shilpi Somaya Gowda's latest novel examines cross-cultural divides within immigrant families
CBC Radio | Posted: March 28, 2024 8:54 PM | Last Updated: October 11
The Toronto-born author latest novel A Great Country explores generational class and racial conflict
Originally aired Mar. 28, 2024.
When Shilpi Somaya Gowda's parents first arrived in Canada, they had not intended to stay forever. As their lives and the upbringing of their daughter became more firmly rooted in Toronto, their plans began to change.
In Gowda's latest novel, A Great Country, she writes of the Shah family's journey and where cultural and generational differences divide them.
A Great Country is a novel which follows the Shah family as they struggle to move up the social ladder in America and belong to the gated community of Pacific Hills. Ashok and Priya have lived in the states for the past twenty years and are beginning to feel a great separation from the values of their adolescent children.
When their preteen son is arrested, the repercussions seep into each family member and the greater community as they come to realize the systems of prejudice still at work around them.
Shilpi Somaya Gowda is a Toronto-born writer currently based in California. Her other novels include Secret Daughter and Golden Son.
Gowda spoke with The Next Chapter's Ali Hassan about embarking on the writing journey of her fourth novel.
You have many points of view being exposed [in the novel]. Why was it important to you to write the book in this way?
One of my desires in writing the book was really born out of the time in which I was writing it. I was starting to write in 2021, and the environment that we all found ourselves in one year into the pandemic was that there was a lot of civil strife going on everywhere.
There were a lot of combative and polarized discussions; it felt like everywhere I looked civil discourse was on the decline. It was very hard for people who didn't agree with one another to even have a conversation.
I thought that it would be really important to represent multiple points of view on the same issue. - Shilpi Somaya Gowda
So there's three different perspectives represented within the police and then five different perspectives within the Shah family. They have cultural differences, the parents having come from India and the children having been born in America, have different points of view.
They have generational differences and then even the children amongst themselves…I thought that it would be really important to represent multiple points of view on the same issue. My hope is that when people read it, they'll see a perspective that they can agree with — and they might see a couple perspectives that they don't readily agree with but are willing to listen to.
Deepa, the eldest daughter, is a social activist. She loves to point out what she feels is her parents' hypocrisy and she also points out that despite all their success, they were not protected from racism when it came to their son's arrest. How does she see her parents and their role as this "model minority"?
Well she doesn't really come with the set of cultural values that her parents come with from India. I think she's grown up with a different set of more homegrown American-bred values. She compares her parents' opinions and values with a different time and place; she doesn't really understand the context in which they grew up — and how that shaped their hopes and ambitions in coming to America.
She takes two different things contextually, her very American upbringing in the aughts and her parents upbringing, the values that have been instilled in them from a different time and place.
This breakdown of civil discourse you're talking about, what were the conversations that you were hearing around you that informed the Shah family dynamic?
I think any set of immigrant parents has felt distance from their Western-born children. I think that's just part of the deal of raising your children in a country that's different from the one that you grew up in.
Often I think those parents are also not only mentally stuck in the place that they came from, but the time in which they left that country. I noticed this with my own parents sometimes, when they left India in the 1960s that is the India that they left with in their mind.
Often when I would go back and visit my family, I would notice that my cousins were being raised in ways that were much less strict than I was because their parents had continued to evolve with the culture in India.
I think any set of immigrant parents has felt distance from their Western born children. - Shilpi Somaya Gowda
It was interesting to read about the parents and their reasons for leaving India and how class played a role. Ashok, the father, is of a lower caste. What did that mean for his future in India and what does that mean for his life in America?
Ashok has grown up in a lower caste family; he's seen how that has limited his father's career prospects.
The one person in his family that was really able to achieve and surpass those caste expectations with his brother, who's this brilliant neurodivergent mathematician. While Ashok is bright and hardworking, he doesn't have that level of brilliance. He knows in order for him to achieve the kind of success he'd like for himself and his family, he's probably going to have to leave India.
When he comes to America bought into the American dream that so many people do he sort of assumes that caste is something he's left behind. He's steadily climbing this ladder of success in the U.S. — based on his hard work and his diligence — until he learns that there is an underpinning of caste discrimination going on in his community that he was not attuned to.
It's just sort of a reminder, a little bit of a haunting from the past, that maybe he couldn't entirely outrun that aspect of himself.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.