Shanthi Sekaran
Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the Portuguese Artists Colony and the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Her work has appeared in Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine. Her first novel, The Prayer Room, was published by MacAdam Cage. A California native, she lives in Berkeley with her husband and two children.
Along with trenchant observations of privilege and power, Sekaran delves fearlessly into rape, infertility, adoption, identity politics and more. She captures — in harrowing, moment-by-moment detail — the treacherous border crossing of 18-year-old Soli, who makes it from Mexico to California and finds work as a housekeeper and nanny for a wealthy Berkeley family. Her precarious existence is further complicated by the birth of her son, Ignacio, whom she’s raising as a single mother while earning around $200 a week. In catastrophic ways, Soli’s narrative will collide with the story of an affluent Indian-American couple, Kavya and Rishi, whose bedroom comes to signify a “theater of failure” after they are unable to conceive. In pitting two very different kinds of immigrants against each other — one comfortably assimilated, the other helpless in every sense — Sekaran offers a brilliantly agonizing setup.
Sekaran is a master of drawing detailed, richly layered characters and relationships; here are the subtly nuanced lines of love and expectation between parents and children; here, too are moments of great depth and insight. A superbly crafted and engrossing novel.
— KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)
Along with trenchant observations of privilege and power, Sekaran delves fearlessly into rape, infertility, adoption, identity politics and more. She captures — in harrowing, moment-by-moment detail — the treacherous border crossing of 18-year-old Soli, who makes it from Mexico to California and finds work as a housekeeper and nanny for a wealthy Berkeley family. Her precarious existence is further complicated by the birth of her son, Ignacio, whom she’s raising as a single mother while earning around $200 a week. In catastrophic ways, Soli’s narrative will collide with the story of an affluent Indian-American couple, Kavya and Rishi, whose bedroom comes to signify a “theater of failure” after they are unable to conceive. In pitting two very different kinds of immigrants against each other — one comfortably assimilated, the other helpless in every sense — Sekaran offers a brilliantly agonizing setup.
A fiercely compassionate story about the bonds and the bounds of motherhood and, ultimately, of love.
— CRISTINA HENRÍQUEZ, Author of The Book of Unknown Americans
It's a story about immigration, privilege, and parenthood, and shows us how we are connected, and how we are, perhaps irreparably, divided. It swept me away and took a little piece of my heart with it. It's a perfect book.
—EDAN LEPUCKI, Bestselling author of California
[A] deeply compassionate exploration of the emotional toll of infertility, the insidious ways in which class divides us, the weight of social judgment, and the explosive touch-point of today's headlines regarding illegal immigration ... [Sekaran delivers] penetrating insights into the intangibles of motherhood and indeed, all humanity.
— BOOKLIST (starred review)
An ambitious, compassionate and intelligent book with new things to say on the timely subjects of motherhood, fertility, class and identity. This is a deeply human and humane novel by a gifted young writer.
—TOM BARBASH, Author of Stay Up With Me
A gripping, obsessive, character-driven narrative of sacrifice and identity—where the lives of two women become forever tangled in the roots of motherhood.
—SIMON VAN BOOY, Award-winning author of The Illusion of Separateness
Links
https://www.shanthisekaran.com/
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529983/lucky-boy-by-shanthi-sekaran/9781101982242/
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/opinion/sunday/the-privileged-immigrant.html
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/01/10/lucky-boy-shanthi-sekaran-captures-mix-berkeley/
Social Media
https://twitter.com/Shanthisekaran?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
https://www.facebook.com/ShanthiSekaranauthor/
