Mangoes on the Maple Tree

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish Studies at Laurentian
University.

The Bhaves are an Indo-Canadian family coming to terms with changing
times: 19-year-old Jayant is preparing for a year-long road trip with
three Canadian buddies in a much-repaired 1976 Pontiac; Jyoti, secretly
engaged to Pierre (“not someone of our own kind,” as her father
Sharad says), is planning to get married in a few months and move to
Edmonton; their aunt, Veejala, has decided to leave her position as an
associate professor of astronomy at the university to return to India,
leaving her husband, Anant, and two children in Winnipeg; Veejala’s
son, Vithal, and his girlfriend, Donna McCallum, are having their ups
and downs; and Jyoti discovers that a longtime friend, Sridhar, really
is in love with her, and that she has unresolved feelings for him. Add
to this the other societal adjustments and challenges faced by any
family in transition between the life they remember “back home” and
the new life they are making in Canada, set it in the midst of the great
flood of 1997 in Winnipeg, and you have Uma Parameswaran’s first
novel.

To paraphrase the epigraph at the beginning of the novel, “family is
all,” and as Parameswaran explores the intricacies of the
relationships that bind the Bhaves and their cousins, the Moghes, we see
that family is both the rock of our foundations and the hard place we
chafe against. We also see that integrating into another society and
culture, dealing with discrimination and racism, establishing new roots,
and coming to feel less like strangers is a different process for every
individual of every generation. Mangoes on the Maple Tree adds another
perspective to the ongoing experience of becoming Canadian and reaffirms
the strength, endurance, and adaptability of the human spirit.