Amma – Saraid de Silva

READ FOR NZ BOOK AWARDS

The migrant story of three generations of women in a Sri Lankan family. Josephina, who grew up in 1950s Singapore and her daughter Sithara who move from Colombo to Invercargill, and granddaughter Annie who moves between many cities looking for a place to call home. Not only do the women have their travels in common but also their struggles as victims of violence and racism.

She grinds her teeth, chews them to dust, opens her mouth and lets ash fall out. In the grit she tastes the horrified looks of the priest and the schoolchildren and her sour-lipped teachers. She summons demons from her stomach and vomits lava over everyone stupid enough to look at her.

●  This is a brutal look at the diasporic experience in New Zealand’s diverse multi-cultural society and shows how difficult it can be for marginalised communities to find a sense of belonging and to be accepted in a place with an evolving national identity. It certainly has a place in our literary landscape especially representing Asian New Zealanders and the queer community. It does include a lot of trauma though and is sometimes hard to read. Trigger warnings are required for sexual assault, domestic violence, racism, rejection and psychological abuse. Reading Amma is like being filled to the brim with emotion, whether that’s a good thing or not is up to the individual reader. – Rachel

●  The way Amma jolted the reader between settings was like going from a hot sauna to a cold plunge pool (although the cold plunge pool was Invercargill so I imagine it being quite grimy and kind of gross). There was a strong sense of displacement in this novel, and even those characters who should have ‘belonged’ in their settings were often still wildly unsettled. Aspects of Amma felt perhaps more forced than they should have, and the depictions of violence were at times unnecessarily visceral. – Suzy

Published 2024
Moa Press
282 pages