Room to Fly: A Transcultural MemoirRoom to Fly is a unique journal—or ongoing memoir—by a woman who traces the elusive contours of cultural perceptions East and West, welcoming us into the intimate geography of individual lives. The book takes its shape and direction from a tenet of Japanese Sumi painting: If you depict a bird, give it space to fly. Padma Hejmadi explores the human spaces surrounding language, landscape, literacy and illiteracy, music, dance, legend, the cadence of ancient craft, and the ceaselessly unfolding layers of family relationships. Part autobiography, part lively meditation, Room to Fly represents a new genre with an old diction. Hejmadi's spare, luminous prose combines lyricism with humor and intellectual rigor, drawing us from Bombay to the Bahamas, from Japan to New England, the Greek Isles to New Mexico. |
Contents
Glorious Illiteracy | 1 |
Wet Pavements | 19 |
Lines in the Dark | 37 |
Shifts Journeys Transformations | 53 |
Singing Saints and Others | 73 |
Curve of the Mind | 81 |
Places Making People Making Places | 97 |
Cadences of Craft | 141 |
Dance Story | 165 |
Bitter Gourd and Green Mango | 173 |
Cessation and Continuity | 187 |
Epilogue | 195 |
Acknowledgments | 197 |
201 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Agate Pass Amma Bahamas Bainbridge Island Basavanna become beneath Bhimsen Joshi Bitter Gourd blue breath Chennai comes craft cultures dance dark Delhi dialect donkeys door earth edge eyes face flowers front garden gentle gold green grow Guruji hand head hear Hindi human India Isakki island jewelry keep Kitsap Peninsula Konkani language learning leaves linguistic live look Mangalore mango Manipuri dancing mother mountains Mumbai necklace neem never night once ornaments Ossabaw Island perhaps plant Pune Radhakka rain Raksha Bandhan Ramu river road Sanskrit says shape shetty silence singing sister Sokhom sometimes sound space speak stands stop story street talk Taos tell there's things tongue town tree trying turn verandah voice walk wall whole window woman women words Yokanta