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wounds, scars, shards of colonialism live on in her grandmother's struggles, in the harsh community's attitudes towards her-both men and women are implicated; in the descriptions of unrelenting conditions of poverty, exploitation, of racism. Yet, good lives are made even of this-lives filled with love, affection, care, bonds, magical stories that conceal and reveal, narratives and a strong spirituality that sustain, a past that both haunts and nourishes, a past and a present that provide a sense of belonging which is precious. Parita Mukta explores the purpose of writing thus: '[W]riting knowledgeably. Writing words. Words have a way of reaching out, of binding, of opening up different universes: they can also undo, pierce, rive. Words contain that magic which dissolves the boundary between a hard rock and the ether of the inner eye, and the power to scythe through the tinsel wrappings around the world to reveal the house of poverty and the house of arson-look, there, right at the heart of the globe, where genocide takes many forms' (p. 179). This book reveals contradictory and multi-layered realities that are inhabited. Reading and receiving Parita Mukta's memoir is pleasurable, thought provoking, emotional and demanding as it challenges the reader not to reach out for the already thought, because as she herself warns 'yunless we are vigilant we will always be tugged by the pull of the known' (p. 184). Amal Treacher references

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