Motherland: The Other Side of My Heart

Maya has not been back to southern India, where she was born, for three years. At fifteen, she would rather spend the summer with her New York friends, but her mother wants her to go to Tamil Nadu to embrace her heritage and the devoted relatives who raised her until she was four.

Maya's uncle and aunt welcome her to share their home among the tea plantations. But it is Maya's grandmother, Maya's first "mother," around whom her summer revolves. Over the course of three months, Maya comes to terms with her divided loyalties and learns the cause of the estrangement she feels between her mother and herself.

Motherland reverses the classic migration story in a journey from west to east, America to India. Maya's coming of age is also a coming home, a chance to resolve the claims of the past so she can meet the promise of the future.