5. Secret Keeper

Perkins, Mitali. Secret Keeper. New York: Delacorte Press, 2009.

Annotation:
Asha is a teenage Indian girl from Bangladesh whose father leaves to find a good job and a better life for her and her family in America. She wants to play tennis, cricket, and basically be one of the boys. Follow her story through heartache and happiness as she goes against how she should act according to her family and culture.
Justification for Nomination:
Secret Keeper is a magnificent piece of realistic and multicultural literature. One reason that I enjoyed this novel was because the plot is based in India which is a beautiful country with very interesting and wonderful traditions. I also liked that the Mitali Perkins, as stated at the end of her novel, looked into her own past and used her life as a base for her characters and storyline. Perkins using her life to write this novel means that she can relate to her characters. Almost everyone in her novel was based on someone in her life. It is a tremendous accomplishment when an author can relate to her audience. Perkins can relate to real young Indian girls (and girls from other backgrounds) who may be going through the same situations as she herself has gone through as well as what her characters are going through. Before reading Secret Keeper I did know a little about Indian traditions and culture, but only from movies. I enjoyed reading and learning about Indian traditions through Secret Keeper. Another one of my favorite reasons for nominating Secret Keeper was because the author instead of having the plot be based in 2009 (which was when the book was published), she did something totally different and had the plot be based in the mid-1970s which was when she was a teenage girl living in India. I find it utterly amazing the way an author can write a novel that is based on her past life and some fiction, put it all together and then turn it into something brilliant. Not many fiction books are based on the Indian people and their culture, but I think that Secret Keeper was beautifully written and it very well deserves a nomination. It doesn't matter if you're reading this novel for pleasure or not, I think that many people will enjoy Secret Keeper.
Genre Category: Multicultural Fiction, Family Life (India), Individuality, India (history)