She wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal she wants an English Christmas, not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities - but more than anything, she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang.īlonde, cool, aloof, outrageous and sassy, Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. As one of the few Punjabi inhabitants of her village, her daily struggle for independence is different from most. She is the daughter of Indian parents who have come to England to give her a better life. Meena is nine years old and lives in the village of Tollington, 'the jewel of the Black Country'. The story of nine-year-old Meena, growing up in the only Punjabi family in the Black Country mining village of Tollington. GradeSaver, 23 July 2022 Web.The debut novel from the award-winning screenwriter of Bhaji on the Beach. Next Section Anita and Me Summary Buy Study Guide How To Cite in MLA Format Rafferty, Jackson. The novel is included on the set text list for Britain’s GCSE English Literature exam, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 2002. Published in 1996, Anita and Me was shortlisted for The Guardian Fiction Prize of the same year, and won Meera Syal a Betty Trask Award. Since its release, Anita and Me has received critical acclaim, with The Washington Post favorably comparing Meera Syal's writing to Mark Twain's, calling protagonist Meena a "female Huck Finn." Kirkus Reviews wrote of the novel, "Far from just another coming-of-age saga, Syal's impressive debut offers a charming yet troubling evocation of recent times." Thematically focused on ambiguities, on walking the fine line-between bully and victim, lying and story-telling, love and pity- Anita and Me blends comedy and tragedy to create a compelling portrait of a young girl’s struggle to find self-acceptance as she navigates the balance between her British and Indian cultures. But as Anita buddies up to Sam Lowbridge, leader of a teenage biker gang, and perpetrator of xenophobic violence, Meena must confront the contradictions of her relationship to Anita and to her larger community. Narrated by an older Meena, the novel recounts Meena’s childhood friendship with Anita Rutter, an older girl admired by Meena for her rebellious, risqué, and free-spirited personality. In part inspired by Meera Syal’s upbringing in the West Midlands, Anita and Me is set in 1960s Tollington, a fictional mining village near Wolverhampton, and explores the era’s rising racial friction through the eyes of an unpredictable child, daughter of two New Delhi emigres. Meera Syal’s 1996 debut novel, Anita and Me, is the coming-of-age story of nine-year-old Meena Kumar, a drama-seeking, pop-song-singing, slime-trail-extolling, British-Indian school girl.
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