Born Confused

by Tanuja Desai Hidier

Book Overview

Cross-cultural comedy about finding your place in America . . . and finding your heart wherever, from an amazing new young author.Dimple Lala doesn't know what to think. She's spent her whole life... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0439357624
• ISBN13: 9780439357623
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Scholastic Press
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.5" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Summer Reading assignment for my 8th grader

My daughter had a two page list of books she could read as her summer assignment and she chose this one. It is 500 pages long and she is only 100 pages into it but she said so far she likes it.

I loved this book!

This book is awesome, but I would recommend that you be at least 13 to read it. Also, if you're a prude (clue: you can't tolerate homosexuality or minor drug use) you probably shouldn't read it. It includes a lot of flowery descriptions, which read slower, but really get you into the story. This book provides very interesting insight into American-Indian culture with funny comments from Dimple (the main character) along the way. If you like romancy-type books as well as more thought-provoking ones, you'll like this book. I can't wait to read more from Tanuja Desai Hidier!

THE BEST BOOK EVER, IMHO!

I've read this book 3 times. The first time I thought it was slightly strange but somewhat enjoyed the plot. The second time I read it, I picked up on so much more and begin to truly appreciate the subtleties of the author's writing style. It's written in almost a poetic prose, with no quotations breaking up the clean lines, just simple dashes. At first this bothered me, but I soon got used to it. Today I just finished the book for the third time and have decided I've never read a better book. Desai Hidier's style is so beautiful, I drank in every word. I lived through the feelings of Dimple, but more just appreciated the hidden humor and enchanting wording. I think it's destined to be a great piece of classic literature.

The BEST!!!!!!!!!

I don't care what anyone else said about this book. I have read it 3 times, and I think that it is awesome. So what if it is a teenager-driven book, it is not ment for intellectual harvard grads to nitpick. I am 16, and I am a pretty tough judge of books, but I thought that this book was great. You love Dimple, hate her friend Gwen, and vice versa, throughout the whole book. It's no Da Vinci Code, but if you're looking for a great book that is fun and dramatic, then choose this one. FIVE STARS!

Highly Recommends to every Indian

I enjoyed reading this book of drama, confusion, enigma and struggle of a teenage Indian girl growing up in West. This book deals with a lot of issues such as teen romance, family dynamics, cultural clashes, and lesbianism. On one side heroine Dimple, wanted to follow the traditions of his parents and on other side she wants to follow what her peers in schoolcand college do. There are clash of ideas and concepts, which is very common in the life of every Indian child born and raised in the west. Indians born and raised in the west, see everything as mirage. Like Dimple, they wanted to follow parents' beliefs and at the same time, they are bombarded with beliefs totally contrary to what they are taught to home. May be one of the answers to the confusion young Indians face, is books like Am I A Hindu? which describes every minute details of eastern culture or precisely Hindu culture in Question & Answer format. Indian parents have to understand that their children are growing up in a world of thousand thoughts and ideas, different from what they believe. So ignoring the problems will only make matters worse. Born Confused? baffles and intrigues as you read through the pages. I highly recommend this book to every Indian who lives in the west young and old like.

Stupendous!

Tanuja Desai Hidier has written an incandescent coming-of-age novel about a young Indian (as in South Asian)woman who learns to connect with her culture, her family, and most extraordinarily, herself. At the beginning of the story, Dimple is not all that different from many teens. She finds her parents frighteningly clueless and alien at times and her best friend Gwyn is a personality-plus beauty who is everything that Dimple thinks she isn't. Dimple wears her ethnicity barely skin-deep to the point that she doesn't even identify herself as Indian when she is surrounded by other Indians in a nightclub with Gwynn. Her parents "set her up" with a nice Indian boy at informal chai-drinking visit and it's dislike-at-first-sight for Dimple. But then Dimple runs into the suitable boy again as a DJ in a nightclub and she is smitten deep down. They have a heart-to-heart conversation but then trouble develops when Gwynn, her best friend, falls in love with him too. This book is so well-written that I was sorry when it ended. This is a writer who has the ability to make her characters so real that you feel that you know them. I hope that she writes many more novels as wonderful as this one is.