A Yellow House
Author : Karien Van Ditzhuijzen
Genre : Fiction
Number of pages : 368
"When people look back they like to think everything was better in the past.
They apply a rose-coloured filter.Like, they see it as an Instagram shot."
Ditzhuijzen treats her readers like a ten year old who is new to this world full of problems at every level and slowly starts revealing everything in a very organic manner. Set in Singapore the book starts by introducing the reader to,Merpati, the new domestic worker in the house of our protagonist,Maya, who dislikes her even before meeting her because for her Merpati is replacing her late grandmother who she dearly loved.
Maya is a very curious child, who tries to observe and understand things, it is through her that the reader is able to get to the root of a lot of problems discussed in this book because of her curiosity she asks the questions which needs to be asked. The main plot of this book is the plight of domestic workers, which Ditzhuijzen was able to discuss very well because I as an inhabitant of this world and a reader have never known about it. This book is a coming of age novel, which means it not only shows us the development of maturity in our protagonist but also develops the knowledge of the reader.
"--but with us, the things that weren't said were the loudest." One of the sub-plots which I think was really well handled was the relationship the 'tech-gen' have with their parents. Maya is a child of a father who is a lawyer, a Britisher living in Singapore, and a mother who is trying her best to beat patriarchy but is also suffering from the recent loss of a parent, and how Maya just can't understand the complex relationship with her parents, where she feels ignored.
Feminism is another sub-plot discussed in a very subtle way. Merpati has left her family in Indonesia to earn money and support her children, yet her children are angry with her for leaving them. In the same way, Maya is angry with her mother for being obsessed with her job but later on when Maya finally understands the reason it is explained beautifully in the following paragraph,
" Mama's job was different from the jobs of the aunties. They worked because they had to--obviously,nobody would do that job if they had a choice. Mama worked because she wanted to.I understood it now,feminism and all that, and it wasn't about being financially independent. Mama was wrong about that.It wasn't about the money.I'd seen aunty M grow from a shy,meek servant to a strong and independent women when she started running the helpdesk and the helpdesk didn't even pay her."
Last but not the least, another very important topic discussed by Ditzhuijzen was bullying. Maya in a desperate moment to impress and prove herself does something which makes her the center of attention for all the bullies and she goes into a mental cocoon. She herself doesn't even know that she is depressed, but her helping other domestic workers, getting a purpose in life, helps her in coming out of her depression.
"And every time we made someone else feel better, I felt a little better too.And when I felt better in myself, people at school seemed to treat me better. It was like a spiral so deep down, that there was no way for it to go but up."
In a nutshell, Ditzhuijzen has discussed a lot of topics which are very necessary in today's time and needs to be talked about, because if not now then when?
My Verdict : 4.5/5
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