Secret Daughter

Somer is a wealthy white woman and physician who struggles with infertility, which leads her to adopt her daughter, Asha. Somer has blonde hair and looks like a stereotypical “American” woman. She proves herself to be a self-conscious mother, who isn’t certain she’s connecting properly to her daughter. She also fears that Asha will drift further away from her should she pursue Indian culture and her birth parents. As the novel progresses, and Kris and Somer separate, Somer comes to realize that not allowing her husband or her daughter to connect to their Indian heritage has caused the family’s rift. By the end of the novel, she reconciles with her family’s identities and seems to accept their multicultural selves rather than simply accepting their “American” selves. 

The adopted daughter of Somer and Kris, Asha is a curious-minded girl who aspires to be a journalist, despite her parents—particularly her mother, Somer—wanting her to become a physician. Asha has a desire to understand and know the Indian side of herself; and when she spends a year abroad in India, as an intern at The Times of India, and she decides to seek out her birth parents. Asha feels stuck in the middle in many ways: She does not fit in as Indian, and she does not fit in as an American. In India, she feels like an outsider when she realizes that she does not have any of their grooming rituals and does not understand anything about traditional female Indian garb. In America, she is regarded as “exotic” by her white peers. Asha makes peace with what happened with her birth parents, and she comes to a deeper understanding of why they did what they did, but she also finds a deeper gratitude for the life that Somer gave to her. The novel shows Asha developing from a young girl who loathes hypocrisy to a more mature woman who understands that the world is more complex that she previously thought.

Kavita’s husband, Jasu, is a stern man who succumbs to the temptation of alcohol during the rough first few months when their family moves to Bombay. Though Jasu made the decision to dispose of Kavita’s first-born, due to the fact it was a girl child, the reader later learns that Jasu was only doing what he felt was right, and what he was forced to do, due to the extreme nature of their poverty. Jasu is not a doting husband, like Kris can be, but he cares for Kavita and shows his affection in his own way. He recites the letter from Asha to Kavita when Kavita falls ill at the end of the novel. Jasu works hard throughout the novel to provide for his family, often sustaining injuries to do so.