![]() But many would envy how Rani is also connected to the warmth of grandparents and other relatives, some still in India. ![]() Typical American teens would agree with Rani that her mom is too strict. The rough-edged Oliver is from a broken and poorer family. No spoilers here, but even in a city as woke as Evanston, ethnic and class differences matter, and become sources of confusion and conflict. Knowing her strict mother would not approve of her 1) dating, and 2) dating this kind of guy, Rani sees him on the sly, with the frequent connivance of her best friend Kate, a white girl Rani’s mother likes so much she calls her betiya (daughter). She is modest about her photos, while he is intense about making art (painting, collage and installation). Rani, a high-school senior in Evanston, Illinois, dutifully follows the study-hard, get-into-medical-school trajectory her Indian parents sanction, until her encounter with Oliver, a tattooed white classmate, at a gallery opening of her photos. ![]() Stir in hormones and a love both first and forbidden, and that journey of self-definition becomes an urgent one. ![]() Rajurkar’s “American Betiya” is a 21st-century variant of an archetypal tale: the first-generation American navigating between her parents’ old-country values and the exciting world around her as she figures out who she is. ![]()
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