Room to Fly A Transcultural Memoir [Hardcover]

Room to Flyis a unique journalor ongoing memoirby a woman who traces the elusive contours of cultural perceptions East and West, welcoming us into the intimate geography of individual lives. The book takes its shape and direction from a tenet of Japanese Sumi painting:If you depict a bird, give it space to fly. Padma Hejmadi explores the human spaces surrounding language, landscape, literacy and illiteracy, music, dance, legend, the cadence of ancient craft, and the ceaselessly unfolding layers of family relationships. Part autobiography, part lively meditation,Room to Flyrepresents a new genre with an old diction. Hejmadi's spare, luminous prose combines lyricism with humor and intellectual rigor, drawing us from Bombay to the Bahamas, from Japan to New England, the Greek Isles to New Mexico.

Padma Hejmadi(who has also written under the name Padma Perera) is the author of Birthday Deathday and Other Stories(1985 and 1992); Dr. Salaam and Other Stories of India(1978); andCoigns of Vantage(1975). Her work has been anthologized inMirrorwork: Fifty Years of Indian Writing, 1947-1997(1997), edited by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West. Her shorter work has been published in theNew Yorkerand other publications. She has also held solo exhibitions of photography and visual art, with her work on the cover of this and other books.

Room to Flyis a feast of great richness and variety, filled with exquisitely nuanced descriptions of places that have shaped the spiritual growth of the author. She brings to the most fleeting encounters her memories, her reflections, and her deep knowledge of Indian history, all woven with consummate skill on the loom of her own life. Nancy Willard, author ofThe Mountains of Quilt

Room to Flyis unique in both form and content. I know of nothing else with which it might be meaningfully compared. This book is a treasure . .l“é