I am highly recommending LUCKY
BOY by Shanthi Sekaran, particularly for book clubs. This novel shares stories of two women: Soli is a
young teenager who travels illegally to the United States from Mexico and Kavya
Reddy is a driven professional who is thinking about starting a family with husband Rishi. Of course, their stories eventually intersect - maybe collide is a better term? And the main reason is the "lucky" boy, Nacho, of the title.
I found LUCKY BOY
to be very moving and memorable and was intrigued by the moral choices it
explored. What would prompt Soli to
leave loving parents and endure the trauma of entering the United States
illegally? Should she give birth to a child conceived on that journey? What factors help and what hinders assimilation? How do
US detention centers really function and treat people? Will that be changing in
the future? What obligation, if any, do private employers have for their domestic help? How do different cultures and generations view adoption? For Nacho, born in the United States, what childhood experience is
best and why? To what extent should the
adults and families involved be considered?
I read LUCKY BOY
as an eBook so I did not really notice the length (over four hundred and fifty pages) and would still
highly recommend this title, filled with sharp perceptions about life in Berkeley and
about American social class strata:
- “Do you know our people [tech employees] have walked out of Starbucks without paying because they’ve actually forgotten that the rest of the world pays for its food?"
- “She waited in a chair for two hours. She was learning that being rich in this country meant never having to wait. And being poor, even just a little poor like she was, meant steeping in impatience.”
- "More than five million children in the United States have at least one undocumented parent." (author note)
LUCKY BOY will be a likely selection for our upcoming book
group. Here is the link to the Discussion Guide for LUCKY BOY which received multiple starred reviews (Booklist,
Kirkus, Library Journal).
