“In my village, you’re not allowed to choose who you want to marry, they will throw you out of the village...

Even if it’s a leper you have to marry him!” – Phoolan Devi

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By 1983, Phoolan Devi, the legendary and controversial India’s Bandit Queen was wanted dead or alive and was the subject of the largest manhunt in India. Phoolan evaded capture for three years and transformed into a female Robin Hood, avenging abuses against women, and dispensing her own brand of rough justice to high-caste men who raped low-caste girls.  Devi overcame devastating physical, sexual, and psychological abuse to fight against her Karma, for justice and equal rights. After her surrender with her infamous all male gang, and more than a decade of incarceration, Phoolan was elected a member of India’s Parliament.  Like Mahatma Gandhi, Devi not only fought for the rights of the lower caste but became a major inspirational force to her people.  After reading about Devi’s surrender in the Los Angeles Times, Coelho, embarks on a journalistic venture to India to meet Devi in prison….and becomes the friend and confidante of this rebel against oppression.

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“The truth was simple: we were Brahmin. We were pure. And everyone else was something less.” – Rani Coelho

 

Rani, the author’s mother, forsook her tight-knit Brahmin family, her privileged birthright, to free herself from the patriarchal societal expectations, suppressing her individuality. Susie discovers her mother’s journal and begins to understand her mother’s rebellious struggle that led her from India to America. Her mother’s journal also provided the missing pieces regarding the difficult cultural barriers that she had to navigate, how it had changed her, and how remnants of some of these same hurdles remain for women and immigrants even in a country as comparatively free as America.