From May ’06 Spotlight: Just in time for Mother’s Day comes a thought-provoking new memoir from a surprising source. Devyani Saltzman is the daughter of two filmmakers. Her mother is Deepa Mehta and her father is Paul Saltzman. “I was their only child, a half-Hindu, half-Jewish daughter, born during a snowstorm in Canada.” Devyani absorbed both cultures, celebrating some holidays with her Nani and Nanu in New Delhi and other holidays with her Bubbi and Zaida in Toronto. Devyani will be in Chicago to read from her book Shooting Water: A Memoir of Second Chances, Family and Filmmaking. She will appear at the Women and Children First bookstore on North Clark Street in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 9.
Devyani told me her goal in Shooting Water became “to balance the political, the cinematic, and the personal stories so that none of them trumped the other.” “I feel lucky,” she concluded. “I am of many. I’ve inherited two diasporas. My multiple heritages gave me the tools to write.”
For more information about the May 9 event, visit the Women and Children First bookstore website
For more information about Devyani, visit her website
