Secrets We Kept

December 15, 2017
A freelance journalist (New York Times Magazine, Salon, etc.) debuts with a wrenching, deeply personal memoir about the lives of three generations of women in Trinidad and Tobago.Any romantic, sunny notions about Caribbean island life vanish quickly in this stark account of a place where cultures clash, men dominate, and women often suffer. The author's own story is generally in the background; instead, she focuses on the wretched early lives of her grandmother and mother, both of whom, especially the grandmother, had to deal with husbands so physically abusive that the descriptions, which seem almost surreal at times, become like blows themselves. Miscarriages ensued in some cases. In a few instances, the women lashed back--there's a beating of a man with a board and a choking--but mostly it's men punching and women bleeding. Sital also provides horrendously eye-opening stories about class and cultural discrimination and abuse, in daily life and especially in the schools the women attended. What they had to endure is almost beyond belief, and the author captures it all. The women eventually escaped to the United States, where they forged new, more hopeful futures and also served caretaking roles for the head abuser himself, the grandfather, whose several brain surgeries put him at the mercy of the very women he'd dominated. Tears were rare as he sank toward his death. The author moves us back and forth--one woman's story to another, one time period to another--and she records the dialogue in dialect, so readers should slow down to take it all in. At times, it is astonishing to read the volume of specific detail from these women's lives: it appears that punches and kicks carry with them the details of awful words and deeds, all of which are recorded in bruises visible and invisible.A powerful, disturbing narrative in which pain flows out from the page, drenching readers.

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February 1, 2018
Sital's evocative first book focuses on the lives of her mother, Arya, and her maternal grandmother, Rebecca. Both expansive and distilled, it is also transporting in its depiction of Sital's ancestral island home in its vibrancy, beauty, and blight. With her grandfather nearing death in a hospital in New Jersey, where most of the family now lives, Sital observes a disconnection between Rebecca's seeming indifference and Arya's and her siblings' buzzing worries for his fate. Sital, then a student, implored Arya for the full story; after long days of work and hospital visits, Arya talked, and Sital wrote. Recreating her foremothers' lives in episodes ranging from ordinary to painfully intense, with dialogue in patois, Sital's tribute is staggering. Most piercingly, she relays with a detachment that reads like love the ways these women were fiercely determined to escape the formidable hardships of their past, foremost for the sake of their children, yet were all but doomed to repeat them. Sital's bracing, loving blend of memoir and family history is not to be missed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2018

Sital, a New Jersey-based writer originally from Trinidad, tells the story of her family from the perspective of three women: her mother, her grandmother, and herself. In 2006, Sital's grandfather Shiva--a successful Trinidadian landowner and a man with whom she has always shared a special connection--falls into a coma. Her grandmother Rebecca's nonchalant reaction prompts Sital to start a conversation with her mother, Arya, and later, Rebecca. As she listens to Arya and Rebecca tell their stories, Sital learns that the grandfather she adores has a history of perpetrating unspeakable violence against his wife and children. In this captivating memoir, the author gracefully, honestly, and empathetically begins to reconcile her mother and grandmother's accounts of Shiva with her own pleasant memories of him, while weaving in a thoughtful analysis of how patriarchal culture limited her mother's and grandmother's choices in life. VERDICT An absorbing, beautifully crafted memoir for all readers.--Molly Hone, Pequannock Twp. P.L., NJ

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