Empowerment Is Found In The Center of Art and Mandalas
‘The Henna Artist’ offers a feast of delectable foods, sights, and covert commentary on women in India in the 1950s
Happy AAPI Month! I want to take the time to show some love, support and just my general love for the AAPI communities. Recently, President Joe Biden included Native Hawaiians in the Asian American Pacific Islander acronym. This month I’ll write think pieces on the literature, art, religion and other content related to this special group of people who have contributed so much to the world.
I’ve heard of Henna — and seen it. I know of mandalas, and color it. I’ve read of curry recipes — and tasted some. Yet, all of these coalesce into a bright, warm, spicy story in Alka Joshi’s The Henna Artist. It’s been a while since a multicultural women’s fiction has pulled me in and held me in its grip with such moving storytelling.
Briefly, The Henna Artist is about Lakshmi. She’s Indian with rare blue eyes and have run away from her abusive husband at the age of seventeen. Fifteen years later, she is a known henna artist to the “Uppercrust of society” in Jaipur, as well as a medicine woman. She secures her independence through hard work and becoming a confidant to the ladies she work for.
