My Mother, My Translator

by Jaspreet Singh

In 2008, Jaspreet Singh made a pact with his mother. He would gladly give her the go-ahead to publish her significantly altered translation of a story from his collection, Seventeen Tomatoes, if she promised to write her memoirs. After she died in 2012, he decided to take up the memoir she had started. My Mother, My Translator is a deeply personal exploration of a complex relationship. It is a family history, a work of mourning, a meditation on storytelling and silences, and a reckoning with trauma--the inherited trauma of the 1947 Partition of India and the direct trauma of the November 1984 anti-Sikh violence Singh experienced as a teenager.

Tracing the men and especially the women of his family from the 1918 pandemic through the calamitous events of Partition, My Mother, My Translator takes us through Singh's childhood in Kashmir and with his grandparents in Indian Punjab to his arrival in Canada in 1990 to study the sciences, up to the closing moments of 2020, as he tries to locate new forms of stories for living in a present marked by COVID-19 and climate crisis.

280 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2021

About the author

Jaspreet Singh (born 1969) is a Canadian writer.
He grew up in India and moved to Canada in 1990.

(wikipedia)

Reviews

[Ruth Seeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this hybrid memoir although I was profoundly shocked to learn about the 1984 Sikh massacre. And it's not that the Bhopal disaster eclipsed it - there was a deliberate media conspiracy to not report on the Sikh massacre in Canada anyway, although I cannot even begin to imagine the reasons for such a conspiracy.

[Alice]

"And then in India in 1984, 1984 happened" (177).

Was a treat to meet Jaspreet Singh at the launch of this book. :)

The book covers a sweeping array of topics, but my favourite parts were about the lingering effects of trauma, book translation, and of course, parental silences.

[Natania · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deep, important, beautiful book.

[Dalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took a while to get used to the writer's unique writing style but halfway through the book, I realized, it does the re-telling/re-sharing of his mother's story a lot of justice. A lot of difficult subjects were touched upon (partition, loss of homes and identities, changing traditions, suicide etc.) with a lot of grace and it does not look like this book could have been an easy one to write. Also, liked the fact that the author had the same academic background as me so all the shoutouts to McGill, the ChemEngg dept and 'The Word' were very cool to read.

'My Mother, My Translator' reminded me of another good book I liked, 'Makeup Tips from Auschwitz'.

[Carol Stevenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is hard to capture all I felt about this book. There were moments of boredom, when I had to read the Punjabi words followed by the English words, which I find tedious. Then there were moments of deep and profound insight relating to our relationships with both our parents and our history. this book is not a linear read, but just like life we go back and forth and around and around trying to discover who we are and what is the meaning of where we come from.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come!