Customer Reviews

Child of Dandelions

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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Child of Dandelions is a heart-rending story of Sabine - a teenager living in Uganda. Nanji's storytelling is pure and Sabine's (mis)adventure is full of the sights and sounds of Uganda in the 1970s when Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of some 80,000 Indians.

Nanji - a children's book author has made an impressive debut into the Young Adult genre with her new book!

Wow. Highly recommended. My grade 7 and 8 students were thoroughly engaged with this book. One of them was so inspired that she is visiting Africa this summer with her family.

A very rich story that illustrates a historical period that has been completely overlooked in the West. It is especially successful in touching issues of class, race and nationhood.

Despite the violence and chaos that this tragedy created, I love how Nanji tells the story without issuing judgment.

This book also helped my students understand life in Africa, which is something we don't come across much in our curriculum.

A must read.

Having lived through the 1972 expulsion of Indians from Uganda as a nine year old, I can attest to the authenticity of the settings, scenes, dialogue, events and characters in Child of Dandelions. But this novel is much more than the sum of its well-written parts; it's more than the riveting narrative of a physical exodus. Through the character of Sabine, Nanji effectively conveys the emotional journey of this courageous fifteen-year-old girl in the midst of political turmoil and geographic upheaval. Although Sabine and her family are the ones being expelled from the country of their birth because of the color of their skin, in one scene Sabine watches her family's servant through new eyes, eyes re-opened by the intense circumstances of the day, and she realizes "She and her family had been treating the Africans like the untouchables in India. Katana could not share their utensils, could not use their washroom. As if he'd pollute them. Every day he waited until they finished their meal; then he cleared the table, washed the dishes, and sat on the kitchen floor to eat the leftovers or cook the bubbling white ugali, a corn mush. Sabine's face felt hot with shame. It was not only Mr. Singh or Lalita who were prejudiced, but she and her family as well." (p. 135)

Child of Dandelions soars as a story of courage and self-discovery, a historically based tale of fiction that remembers a largely forgotten racial injustice that unfolded in full view of the global community in the early 1970s, a well-written, even-handed and authentic narrative that documents the perspectives and experiences of those who suffered and overcame the brutal expulsion of Indians from Uganda.

Idi Amin's reign of terror in Uganda included the ethnic cleansing of Uganda's Indian minorities. This book, from the perspective of a young girl, a Ugandan citizen but born to a family of successful Muslim Indian businesspeople, showcases the first tendency of socialists: DIVIDE AND ATTACK. Idi Amin singled out the talented and successful people in Uganda for elimination, gave them fair warning: 90 days until the exterminations begin, but then jumped the gun and started the political killings early.

Sabine, the hero of this story, watches as her culture, friendships, and family are swept away by the evil of socialism. Watches as her girlhood friend is turned into a child prostitute for the President. Watches as her family is blamed for their successes and resilience by scummy soldiers motivated by greed.

Sabine develops a "blame the victim" mindset: "Aunty, it is our fault. We took advantage of them..." p. 180. Understandable in the character, but false.

Parents should be aware that Sabine travels to a cold-storage warehouse where the mutilated bodies of tortured political prisoners wait to be identified and dumped into the crcodile-infested lake for disposal. She sees the maimed corpses, and so does the reader. Various types of torture-killings are described with friendly names: "helicopter treatment," "hammer treatment," etc. Also, Sabine barely escapes being raped by a soldier as she tries to get her paperwork to flee the regime. Lower age limit of 14, is my recommendation.

I enjoyed the book as I had a similar background and was curious about reading someone's experience on the topic. I was younger than her at the time so it was interesting for me to see what it was like for my older cousins during Amin's deportation.

Vaishali Sharma lends her smooth and evocative voice to Shenaaz Nanji's CHILD OF DANDELIONS, a story of politics and danger about the expulsion of Indians from Uganda in 1972. Here teen Sabine is part of two worlds, and sees both of them wrenched and dying in a moving story.