Description

Hardcover

Priyanka Mattoo was born into a wooden house in the Himalayas, as were most of her ancestors. In 1989, however, mounting violence in the region forced Mattoos community to flee. The home into which her family poured their dreams was reduced to a pile of rubble.

Mattoo never moved back to her beloved Kashmirbecause it no longer existed. She and her family just kept packing and unpacking and moving on. In forty years, Mattoo accumulated thirty-two different addresses, and she chronicles her nomadic existence with wit, wisdom, and an inimitable eye for light within the darkest moments. She takes us from her grandparents sprawling home in Srinagar, where her boisterous aunties raced through the halls, to Saudi Arabia, where friendships were gained and lost behind the sandstone walls of a foreigners compound. We witness her courtship with a nice Jewish boy, now her husband, and her efforts to replicate her mothers rogan josh recipe via Zoom. And we are with her as she settles into her unlikely new homeland, Los Angeles, where she sets off on what is perhaps her most meaningful journey: that of becoming a writer.

Through these astonishingly poignant and often laugh-out loud essays, Mattoo has given us an openhearted, frank, revealing glimpse into a journey of almost constant motion, as well as a journey of self-discovery.