Message to Bookclub Readers:
Dear Bookclub reader:
It is solitary work to bring a novel to birth over three to four years,
but so rewarding when readers like you begin discussing the ideas and
characters. Then the novel takes on a life of its own and doesn't need me
any more.

My books seem to address two audiences -- one for whom they are written,
the other at whom they are written. What the Body Remembers, like English
Lessons and Other Stories and A Foreign Visitor's Survival Guide to
America, usually finds both audiences.

What the Body Remembers is the story of two Sikh women, Satya and Roop in
a polygamous marriage to Sardarji (the name equates to 'Mister' or
'Monsieur' -- it was not the custom to call your husband by his first
name in those days). It takes place in colonial India, in the region that
is now Pakistan. Those were years of British physical and mental
colonization, of the struggle of the brown man to be considered a person,
and a time of miserably low literacy. In oral cultures "stories are not
told for the telling but for the teaching", whereas in our time, a time
when stories are no longer told, but read, my purpose as storyteller was
to explore what it must have been like to live in those times, as a
younger woman, an older woman, a colonized brown man.

At bookclubs like yours, women in Canada, the US, India, S. Africa and
Australia have discussed the similarities between their own so-called
"post-colonial" societies and the one in which Roop and Satya lived,
particularly with regard to issues of class in female relations,
surrogate motherhood, right to own your body, and the institution of
polygamy (still practised in the USA and many parts of the world, though
outlawed in 1956 for Sikhs and Hindus in India).

Economics is key to understanding the continuing importance of sons; in
economies with no social security or health insurance sons and other male
relatives are all people have in sickness or old age. As any traveller to
India or Pakistan knows, these economics and the absence of social
security persists in these and other non-welfare underdeveloped nations
today, often legacies of colonialism, and the result of multinational
neo-colonialism. Requirements of providing for old age lead to an
overvaluation of sons and an undervaluation of women, even by women
themselves. Sometimes readers in North America who are accustomed to
Social Security/Social Insurance and Medicare confuse that recognition of
economic dependence and self interest with "low self-esteem".

In some bookclubs, readers have discussed What the Body Remembers as "a
feminist book" and others as historical fiction -- "a Partition novel" --
and of course it is both, assuming you define feminism as the radical
idea that a woman is a person. Some readers get the analogy between
Sardarji's marriage and the larger political scene at once, and for some
it has to be pointed out. Some readers think how awful are the problems
of women "over there", forgetting that many of us are second and third
wives in the North American culture of serial monogamy and the children
the usual battleground. A few men have said they don't find any redeeming
qualities in the male characters, but most women readers disagree. Male
readers do get impatient to skip ahead to the war scenes, and some say
they are not bloody enough to describe what Partition was really like.
But if you do, you miss the larger point: that violence is never random
madness but has deep mythological and economic causes that begin from
personal and domestic power and economic relations. Some readers say
there are "too many books on Partition" -- at which point I feel
compelled to mention that there are about 600 non-fiction and fiction
books on the Partition, while there are 70,000 non-fiction books about
the American Civil War.

Moments of empathy such as Roop experienced on the death of Satya or that
we experience when reading a story tell us that but for a few years
difference and geography, any of us could have been Satya or Roop. And as
Roop learns, eventually we are not as different from our enemies as we
think we are.

Sadly, the problems faced by any minority in a democracy, be it India,
Pakistan, the UK, Canada or the USA, are similar.  If you're Canadian, as
I am, separatism and Partition are the ever-present threat to
non-English, non-French minorities. If you're American, remember that 241
hate crimes were logged against Sikh-Americans in five days in the USA
after the WTC Attack on Sept 11, 2001 because bigots believe that because
our men wear turbans, we are related to Bin Laden. Then Arab-Americans
and Muslim-Americans began to catch it a few days later. The far Right
continues to promote the mingling of church and state, and bigots equate
religion and race -- when you read What the Body Remembers, you can
project the possible results. Yes, it can happen here

So: I hope you love my characters as much as I do, and that the book
gives you an insight into their times and our times.
Read with love, to augument the soul.
Best regards,
Shauna
Shauna Singh Baldwin
What the Body Remembers ( Knopf Canada; Transworld, UK; Nan
Talese/Doubleday USA; Editions du Seuil, France;
Bertelsmann, Germany; Psichogios, Greece; Editorial Anagrama, Spain;
Keter, Israel; Uitgeverij De Geus, Holland; Mondadori Editore, Italy;
Enciclopedia Catalana, Spain. 1999-2001)
English Lessons and Other Stories (Goose Lane, Canada 1996; Harper
Collins India, 1999)
A Foreign Visitor's Survival Guide to America (John Muir Publications
USA, 1992)