Mamaji

A heartbreaking journey of loss, strength, and personal development, Mamaji is a powerful read. I greatly enjoyed reading this.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Incredible book! I could not put it down. Great for fans of Educated and The Glass Castle.

The author immigrated from India to Minnesota in the 1960s as a preschooler. She writes about life in a family of 8 children with her abusive stepmother and abusive and neglectful father. Throughout the book, she harkens back to Mamaji, her mother who died when she was 3

I love memoirs about chaotic childhoods. I’m deeply fascinated by the world the children build for themselves to survive cruelties beyond their control.

The author shares many such world-building moments that she and her siblings used to insulate themselves from their cruel father and stepmother. For example, the children were not able to properly grieve their mother and cry. So the children play a game called “Mamaji is dead.” They say the phrase and they all lookEd at each other and tried to keep a straight face. Eventually the children played the games so many times, they burst into laughter at the phrase. In this way, the author shares many darkly funny moments. Despite the difficulties the author faced, the book has many laugh out loud moments.

One favorite of mine was when the children convinced the prim and proper aunt, in her neatly wound sari, to sit in the back of a children’s toy car. The children had tied the car to an older sibling’s car with a rope. What happened next had me laughing out loud.

As in Educated and The Glass Castle, the author’s father and stepmother keep her isolated from the outside world. The children are not allowed to socialize outside the home and their every choice is dictated by the adults. They presented happy family to outsiders but inside the house, children were forced into grueling manual labor and underfed. This taught me about the dynamics of abuse within a family and how victims can be isolated.

I also enjoyed reading the author’s experience as one of the only Indian families in a small Minnesota town in the 1960s. There were few Indian immigrants in the US at the time, and not much has been written about them. The author talks about the misconceptions of the Americans around her about India and Indians.

The first chapter or so feels disjointed and isn’t as strong as the rest of the book. If you feel this way too, skip the first chapter or two and dig right in to when the family moves from balmy Chandigarh, India to Minnesota on a frigid Thanksgiving Day. From that point on, I could NOT put this book down. Highly recommend this powerful book!

I lost my father when I was just a year older than Elisheba Haqq was when she lost her Mamaji (honoured mother). At times when reading this book, I struggled to 'get' her obsessive longing for her lost parent and her attribution of almost saint-like behaviour to her. As the youngest of seven children, she was jealous about the knowledge her siblings had about her mother.

A year and a few days after her mother's death, Elisheba and her siblings got a new 'Mama' - a selfish woman who wanted their father but saw his children as the price she had to pay. With a son born to the new couple, all the step-children just slipped off her radar and all love, attention, money, gifts and goodies, were just for Mama's boy. The seven children were subjected to social and financial control by their parents, accused of being loose if they spent any time out of the house doing anything 'fun', and forced to hand over all their earnings from part-time and later full-time jobs.

Part of me enjoyed the gossip and dirt-dishing on the woman whose face was pixelated in one of the photos as a gesture to eradicate her from the official family history. Part of me wanted to egg Haqq on when she was telling of all the mean-spirited and controlling things her step-mother did. Another part of me wanted to shake her and ask WHY she still kept trying to win the love and affection of this cold woman. But, sadly, another big part of me felt rather uncomfortable that somebody had waited for her father and her step-mother to die (too late for them to read it or to give their side of the story) before she could tell her tale.

For these reasons, I'm very torn. I enjoyed the 'outsider' aspects of the story. What proportion of Indian-born immigrants to the USA in the 1960s from Punjab would have been Christians (I'd always associated Indian Christian communities with the south of the country, not the Sikh heartland of Punjab and the ultra-modern stylish setting of Chandigarh)? What proportion of those Christians from Punjab would have found themselves in such a cold, unwelcoming, and almost exclusively white community? I was less comfortable with some of the 'washing of dirty linen in public' and I really do hope that the author's siblings will be supportive of what she's done.

Mostly the book is beautifully written. Towards the end it gets a bit rushed, but for the most part, it's a delightful read about a girl who can't forget her Mamaji and struggles to live with her Mama. The book's title is, however, misleading as it's MUCH more about the step-mother than the mother.

I received an ARC from Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Mamaji by Elisheba Haqq, is a sometimes heartbreaking, but ultimately uplifting memoir about self-discovery and a child’s journey from babyhood to being an adult without the guiding influence of a mother.

The loss of her mother at 3 years old provides a poignant counterpoint to the love and laughter that fills Elisheba’s life from her six older siblings. The family have moved to Minnesota from India, and the children find it hard to fit in at school. A year after Mamaji dies, her father marries again and the children have a new stepmother in their lives. Sadly, she is not much interested in taking over the role of mother, appearing disinterested and selfish. The children of the family have a roof over their heads, but very little else and there is no love and affection for the children, apart from the love they have for each other.

Elisheba tells the story from her own point of view, honestly acknowledging her inability at 3 to understand what has happened, throughout her school years where she must try to fit into a school where she is an outsider, and into college and marriage, eventually having children of her own. Throughout the book, she tries her best to get on with her stepmother and maintain her relationship with her father. When Elisheba is able to visit Chandigarh, the place where her parents had spent their early married years and talk to relatives, she is able to find remnants of her mother and answers to the many questions that she has had. The book is filled with family photographs, which are memories of happy times.

The strength of a mother’s love for her daughter and that of a daughter for her mother, will stay with you long after you have closed this book.

Mamaji by Elisheba Haqq will be released in October 2020.

An extremely well written memoir chronicling the lives of Haqq siblings after the untimely demise of their mother. The Haqq family migrated to Minnesota from India where their beloved mother, fondly called 'Mamaji', died. The author clarifies this fact of name at the start of her book which I liked because like many Indian readers, I associate the word 'Mamaji' with mother's brother.
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As the youngest of seven siblings, Elisheba recounts her early years with an uncanny humor and liveliness. Their father remarried which ultimately led to estrangement between the new family (comprising of stepmom/Mama, their father and Jordan - the stepbrother) and the siblings. The elder siblings moved out as soon as they can, stifled by the strict and unloving atmosphere while the younger ones had to remain back, facing the stepmom's blatant partisanship and wrath.
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Even the chapters which contain the prime examples of how the new mum tried her best to separate the father from his children are told with fond remembrances of happier times and the love shared between siblings.
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The writing style is simple and witty. I find the pages flew by as I was compelled to read more about the Haqq family. Although I would have liked to know more about the elder siblings and to get to know them better. The book is interspersed with photographs of Mamaji and author's family which are a delight to see as they give a peek into bygone times.
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The pain of losing the mother and then forced to live life in a home where your real allies are only your siblings, where every type of restrictions abound and where even your own father is turned against you, it's a testament to author's strength to find the courage to write this memoir and to follow her dreams.
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Thanks to @netgalley, the author and the publishers for providing me an eARC for this book.

I have read several memoirs similar to Haqq's and each one is equally heartbreaking. The author lost her mother when she was three and her father quickly remarried to distant, remote, and cruel second wife. The blatant favoritism showed to her son by giving him preferential treatment while doing the bare minimum for her stepchildren was dreadful. Haqq's father is also to blame for the negligence and draconian rules for all of the children except the favored youngest. I think the author meant this memoir not only to be a loving tribute to the mother she barely remembered but also an emotional catharsis for the years of emotional cruelty she endured. The faces of her youngest brother and stepmother are scrambled in a couple of photos and I understand why.

Mamaji was an interesting and sad read. I was originally intrigued due to looking at the family relationships the description alluded to. I think it takes a look at how children without guidance as well as love or care struggle with finding concrete footing in the world. I feel like the book. I understand the book is more a memoir but I thought it would have been interesting to explore attachment and trauma in childhood from the fathers point of view, like if that could have been included. I feel like it was interesting to see how there was so much of the stepmother dissected in the book but there was really no relationship with her. It made me ponder a lot about love and how we learn to define it when our lives have been absent of it. Overall I think it was a good read.

Mamaji is a book about a dysfunctional family and the loss of motherly love. That particular loss was felt repeatedly by the author throughout her life, despite having numerous brothers and sisters, a stepmother, and a father. The author lost her beloved Mamaji at a very early age and went through life wishing and praying she was still with her.

This book came about after the author got married and had her own family. She could bestow the love and care of her children that she felt she had never received from her cold and unfeeling stepmother. Writing her book about her birth mother, Mamaji, was her chance to finally come to terms with a significant loss in her life.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It took me a little bit to get into this one, but I just can’t believe some of the things the stepmother put this family through. I can’t believe the dad went along with it either! It was a well written memoir.

At first i thought this story woukd be hard to read because i felt like i had nothing in common with the author. I was wrong. This was a very interesting and enlightening story. Even though her culture is foreign to me, we have more in common than i ever expected. I enjoyed this book and certainly recommend it.

This poignant memoir packs an emotional punch. Elisheba Haqq is the youngest of seven children in a family that migrates to rural Minnesota from India in the 1960s. Their Christianity affords them some connection in their community, but they still stick out as some of the only brown people in the town. When Haqq is three or so, her beloved mother dies from cancer. She spends the rest of her life only knowing her mother through her older siblings' memories, as well as what she learns as an adult from her mother's side of the family. Her father remarries quickly, and her stepmother is cold and manipulative like the character of a stepmother in a fairy tale. When she gives birth to Haqq's younger brother, he is quickly considered the favorite and treated better than all the rest.
The descriptions of emotional abuse and injustice within the home is infuriating, but Haqq tries to see the bright side, such as how close she was to her siblings and how the difficulties at home forced them to become more creative. I also found myself frustrated at how often Haqq writes glowingly of her father, even though he was largely ignorant or tolerant of the abuse taking place in his home. His rigid belief system also made him unlikeable to me, and yet it's only towards the end that Haqq acknowledges her father's failings.
The book takes place largely during her childhood, but she does mention how her relationship (or lack thereof) with her stepmother affected her own mothering when she had her sons. That in and of itself could be its own book, I'm sure, and I would be interested to learn more about how she had to conscientiously act differently from what she was accustomed to in order to be the kind of mother she imagined Mamaji would have been had she lived. All in all, this memoir was heartbreaking, with a little side of hope.