Karma & Other Stories

Set mostly in suburban Boston, this debut collection of seven short stories revolves around familiar themes of cross-cultural integration. Reddi writes what she knows about, the struggle of Indians (specifically, the Telugu-speaking diaspora from Hyderabad) to reconcile their heritage and culture with life in the United States. These challenges, which are reflected quite differently among the three generations of characters, are all handled with delicacy, grace, and a certain calm tone. Unfortunately the stories trawl back and forth over the same thematic territory to such an extent that the book ends up feeling rather repetitive.Certainly, Reddi adeptly captures a range of voices, from that of an indignant elderly ex-judge who can't accept the smallest slight, to a young teenage boy trying to fit into his white-bread Midwestern school, and all manner of husbands, wives, and aunties in between, including a fully assimilated 20something woman. This is accomplished without trotting out a kitchen sink's worth of cultural touchstones, which is a welcome change from so much writing of this kind (although food, traditional dance, and clothing all play small roles in setting various scenes, and contrary to several reviewers, arranged marriage does play a central role in one story, and is a key factor in a few others).However, by the end, I didn't feel particularly enriched by the book. The immigrant experience is central to American literature, and I had a difficult time finding anything new or through-provoking in these stories. They're all well-written, and each has its moments of nice imagery or subtlety of tone, but there was nothing fresh to grab me -- rather, they felt like well-executed versions of a well-trod genre. Published individually in other publications (as, I believe they were, although there's nothing indicating this anywhere in the book), I can see the stories standing out more and having a greater impact, but side-by-side, they start to blur and blend.

It is a series of short stories that detail some of the issues with being "different" and "assimilating" into American culture. I found many of the characters charming and engaging. The stories are short and quite simple, but I thought the book might be of interest to fellow teachers. I expect the experiences described are quite known to our students and in fact to many of us

Rishi Reddi is such a meticulous master of dialogue and inspired painter of scene throughout this collection. These stories convey Indian and Indian American culture with a touch that is both illuminating for outsiders and honoring to those they portray. What is it to have a culture, to be of a place? Where does one's culture live? Is it transportable? Translatable? Sustainable across space and through time? Bequeath-able?The tethers connecting one generation to the next in these families both nourish and grasp, strengthen and thin when tradition is pressured to change and the future is asked to remember.Reddi plays the tensions of these strings clearly, honestly, with a sweetness that is complicated, and a compassion that doesn't take sides. Each character arrives at his or her own unique cultural identity, a blend in proportions that is personal, landing somewhere on the spectrum between there and here. They are every one of them real people, people a reader can care about and sympathize with and respect.Reddi's collection is beautiful.

witty

Written with imagination and sensitivity, this book of short stories is quite outstanding. Paticularly noteworthy is the first story of the anthology, "Justice Shiva Ram Murthy."