In the face of our families, it seems that it is always difficult for us to open our mouths and express the true thoughts in our hearts.
The latest Newbery Children's Literature Prize, The Late Night Diary, is a diary written by a little girl named Nisha to her mother.
In the diary, whenever she was sad late at night, the little girl confided in her deceased mother about her friendship and encounters, confusion and longing.
Once published, the book touched tens of thousands of readers and won major international children's book awards.
"Now, the world seems so small. And I don't even have you in my world, Mom. ”
A diary for my mother
A growth monologue that belongs to everyone
A 12-year-old girl, on her birthday, gets a beautiful diary, and the late night diary also starts from that day.
Her mother, who died in childbirth while giving birth to her and twin brother, begins with "Dear Mom."
The girl is introverted and sensitive, the younger brother is smart and active, the father is much like a typical oriental parent, strict and unsmiling, while the grandmother is responsible for taking care of the family.
The girl left her own observations and confusions in the late-night diary and confided in her deceased mother. However, this family full of warmth, this peaceful life, almost overnight, overturned.
"Mom, I want to be brave, but maybe I'm already brave."
A journey of life to protect your homeland
Bravely transform in the whirlpool of fate
The novel is set in 1947, when the original India was divided into two countries, "New India" and Pakistan.
The girl's father was Hindu and her mother was Muslim, and after her mother's death, the family changed back to Hinduism, and the city where the family was located belonged to Pakistan, which was an Islamic city.
If you don't leave, the whole family will fall into the vortex of danger and violence day by day; and it is not easy to leave.
For a sensitive 12-year-old girl, leaving "home" is almost an unbearable thing.
First the escalation of street conflict, then the interception of trains to India, the Great Migration has only one way left: trekking through the desert.
In order to facilitate the road, the girl's family gave up almost all of the family property, bringing only food and water as much as possible. But the difficulty of crossing the desert is far beyond imagination.
Her world became chaotic and absurd, and in these brief but turbulent experiences, friendship, sharing, and helpfulness became dangerous and harmful, and plundering, killing, and hurting became the new order.
When the girl finally arrives in India, lives in a border city, and rebuilds her life, she is unable to speak because of this series of internal traumas, until she re-encounters the family she has worked so hard to find, and then reopens.
The strength of the family is ultimately greater than everything else, and they are no longer separated from each other.
"The home is destroyed, but something new is starting to grow – you love us, Mom."
Adaptation of a true experience
There is great faith and courage in misfortune
The author of the book, Veera Hiranandani, is currently teaching creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College in the United States, and her work has been nominated for the Sydney Taylor Book of Excellence and the South Asia Book Award.
The Late Night Diary is based on her own real-life experiences, and almost half of it comes from family history: her father was a Hindu Indian who lived through the Great Migration, while her mother, a Jewish-American, influenced Vera from an early age with her perception and reflection on multiculturalism.
Veera Hiranandani
After "Late Night Diary" won many awards, including the Newbury Children's Literature Prize, Vera was interviewed by the media and asked to talk about how to write Nisha's story, and Vera said:
When there are differences of opinion within a country or around the world, what I notice is why things turn so quickly into anger and division. How useful are the 'mistakes' that have occurred in different countries, in different regions, and in different generations, and how can it be a cautionary story? - This is something I've been thinking about...
I'm sad that people are always too quick to forget history, especially those that happened in other countries.
"Accepting differences has always been a huge challenge for humanity, and Nisha's story is one of them." Vera wrote in the afterword to The Late Night Diary.
The cover of The Late Night Diary also hides elaborate ingenuity: the details on each wrist seem to be different, with Hindu red ropes, Sikh iron or steel bracelets, a block printed fabric of Ajrakh, and bracelets or bare wrists indicating that the person may be Muslim.
At the end of the bottom is the hand holding a pen, which the author says is the girl's hand that writes the diary, and she is on the cover, the window through which every reader enters the book.
The world is complex. Sometimes we feel that it is not necessary to understand all the complexities of the world, especially when we are in a stable time.
But just like the girl's experience, sometimes we can't predict some sudden changes, such as the epidemic that swept the world in 2020, can make us realize the warmth and power of home.
After the change, life seems to return to the "normal" order, but the more such moments, the more we need to lead our children to understand the meaning of home.
Let the child follow the girl's family in the way of reading, from the civilized homeland, through the desert of human nature, and then rebuild life, this is the "Late Night Diary" through the growth of a girl, a search for a homeland, eternally left in our memory of the imprint.
Newberry Award for Coming-of-Age Fiction
Late Night Diary
We also have these activities
-End-
2022.3.4
Edit: Yoyo | Review: Chu Xu