Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine, Kashmira Sheth, Hyperion Books, 2006

In Blue Jasmine, Seema Trivedi is a young girl living in Gujarat, India, at least until her father gets a new job in America and the family has to move.  Seema, her little sister Mela, and their mother board a plane to the United States, leaving behind their village, their language, their celebrations and their relatives.  Seema in particular misses her cousin Raju, her best friend and the person she cares about most in the world.  Seema is shy and lost at first in her new school in Iowa City.  Class struggles become evident as Seema slowly grows close with Mukta, a girl growing up in extreme poverty.   Though the two sat side-by-side in school in India, they don’t really become friends until Seema leaves.  Seema begins to understand Mukta’s struggles when she has to face her own challenges with fitting in America.  Eventually Seema makes friends in Iowa, improves her English, and starts to feel comfortable with her new life.  Upon traveling back to India to visit her sick grandmother, Seema feels torn between cultures, between continents, but upon returning to Iowa, she realizes that she is lucky to have two homes.  

This novel is definitely appropriate for a middle-school-aged audience, though it would perhaps work best for a 6^th grade level.  It deals with themes of family, friendship, school, immigration, and culture.  Seema’s experiences, including a quest for acceptance in her home and school community, learning to handle bullies in school, missing loved ones, and celebrating her identity, are ones that most adolescents will be able to identify with, regardless of whether they’ve ever immigrated to a new country or not.  Sheth intersperses many words in Gujarati throughout the novel, but there is a glossary in the back to help readers along and most of the phrases are fairly self-explanatory given the context.  This might also present a valuable teaching opportunity if there any students who speak Gujarati in the class.  This novel would work well for individual reading as well as DRTA or Lit Circles in class.