cover image Daughter of the Ganges: A Memoir

Daughter of the Ganges: A Memoir

Asha Miro, , trans. from the Spanish by Jamal Mahjoub. . Atria, $24 (274pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-8672-5

This memoir is an assemblage of two books chronicling Miró's first trips back to her native land of India since being adopted in Barcelona at the age of six in 1974. Miró (who works on cultural documentaries) begins with her only memory of India— a Christian orphanage in Bombay—interspersed with her adoptive mother's journal entries. In India, she struggles with stories that reinforce her history of being abandoned by her father, as well as the stunning news that she has siblings. The second book tells of her subsequent return to India to film a documentary about her story. Retracing the steps of her first trip, Miró finds that not all the stories she first heard were true. The woman documented as her mother is not her mother after all, and her father didn't simply abandon her as she'd been led to believe. These discoveries encourage Miró to become a public speaker on adoption, yet the voice of this section lacks the intimate tone of the first. Regardless, Miró's moving attempt to create a personal history from two distant worlds and a few scattered facts will enlighten readers about the emotional journey many adopted children undertake when searching into their past. (June)