Peacocks of Instagram
Stories
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Engrossing, witty yet devastating stories about diasporic Indians that deftly question what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home.
An underappreciated coffee shop server haunted by her past attracts thousands of followers on social media with her peacock jewellery. A hotel housekeeper up against a world of gender and class inequity quietly gets revenge on her chauvinist boss. And a foster child, orphaned in an accident directly attributable to climate change, brings down her foster father, an oil lobbyist, in spectacular fashion.
With an intense awareness of privilege and the lack of it, the fourteen stunning stories in Peacocks of Instagram explore what it means to be safe, to survive, and to call a place home.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Debut author Deepa Rajagopalan slices through our ideas about immigrant experiences to reveal dark and sometimes beautiful truths in this collection of 14 short stories. Each tale yanks you directly into the life and perspective of a new, impeccably rendered character as they struggle against their hardships and frustrations using whatever leverage they can grasp—whether that’s determination or just blind luck. A hotel housekeeper navigates a labyrinth of discrimination and sexual harassment in pursuit of the promotion she deserves. An eight-year-old Indian-Canadian girl experiences an odd sense of otherness when she travels to her parents’ home country to help her mother’s search for a kidney donor. Each protagonist conveys a wealth of specifics about their individual experience of race and class through the sheer power of their voice—without the need for exposition or backstory. Rajagopalan communicates so much with so few words; she’s one of the most gifted short-story authors we’ve encountered in quite a while.