Burnt Bread and Chutney
Growing Up Between Cultures - A Memoir of an Indian Jewish Childhood
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- ¥1,500
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- ¥1,500
発行者による作品情報
“From the outside, no matter what the gradations of my mixed heritage, the shadow of Indian brown in my skin caused others to automatically perceive me as Hindu or Muslim. . . . Still, I trekked through life with the spirit of a Jew, fleshed out by the unique challenges and wonders of a combined brown and white tradition.”
In the politics of skin color, Carmit Delman is an ambassador from a world of which few are even aware. Her mother is a direct descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny, ancient community of Jews thriving amidst the rich cultural tableau of Western India. Her father is American, a Jewish man of Eastern European descent. They met while working the land of a nascent Israeli state. Bound by love for each other and that newborn country, they hardly took notice of the interracial aspect of their union. But their daughter, Carmit, growing up in America, was well aware of her uncommon heritage.
Burnt Bread and Chutney is a remarkable synthesis of the universal and the exotic. Carmit Delman’s memories of the sometimes painful, sometimes pleasurable, often awkward moments of her adolescence juxtapose strikingly with mythic tales of her female ancestors living in the Indian-Jewish community. As rites and traditions, smells and textures intertwine, Carmit’s unique cultural identity evolves. It is a youth spent dancing on the roofs of bomb shelters on a kibbutz in Israel—and the knowledge of a heritage marked by arranged marriages and archaic rules and roles. It is coming of age in Jewish summer camps and at KISS concerts—and the inevitable combination of old and new: ancient customs and modern attitudes, Jewish, Indian, and American.
Carmit Delman’s journey through religious traditions, family tensions, and social tribulations to a healthy sense of wholeness and self is rendered with grace and an acute sense of depth. Burnt Bread and Chutney is a rich and innovative book that opens wide a previously unseen world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This elegant memoir provides readers with glimpses of an unusual cross-cultural childhood. Delman was raised, in Cleveland, Ohio, New York and Israel, in a cacophonous culture clash: her father was a Jewish American of Eastern European descent; her mother was descended from India's ancient Bene Israel community and had spent her youth in Israel. The combination of bagels and lox and chutney doesn't offer an easily digested sense of identity. The outside world, too, is confused about Delman: she is viewed with suspicion by both American Jews and Indians. Most jarring to the author's coming of age is her mother's strictly patriarchal heritage. Her Indian relatives expect Delman to support all decisions made by the men. Girls are to be quiet and dainty and keep apart from the opposite sex until they are ready to wed. Even enrolled in a Jewish day school, Delman feels alienated from the mainstream culture. Nor does participation in synagogue life provide solace the Delmans find too much concern for conformity and materialism. Moving to Israel will be the answer, Delman thinks. But there she sees many Indian Jews, along with Israel's other Asian and African immigrants, largely confined to isolated development towns with subpar housing and education. Woven into Delman's often painful musings and reflections on her identity is the poignant story of the aged Nana-bai, her closest Indian relative, who has survived poverty, bigamy and abuse with resilience and grace. Writing in a lively style with rich details, Delman's debut brims with intelligence and insight and should appeal not only to Jews and Indians but to anyone compelled by the mingling of cultural identities.
