Trigger warning for brief mentions of child sex abuse and rape.
Although she has managed to reinvent herself many times, Sunny carries her past selves deep inside. In the first pages of Nanda Reddy’s emotional novel, A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl, a letter from her sister arrives to release all of Sunny’s hidden memories. Sunny frets, but at last, she’s finally ready to tell her whole story.
Many years before the letter will be written, Sunny lives with her family in rural Guyana. Her father and older brothers did manual labor in fields and construction sites, while her mother did manual labor around the home. Sunny and her older sister, Roshini, attend school. They live a far from luxurious life, but there’s little hope of that changing until Sunny’s father learns of a way to turn another family’s tragedy into his own family’s good fortune. A young teenager who is almost Sunny’s double has died, just before she was due to take a plane ride into America. If Sunny takes Nanda Das’s place, she can work off the debt and, in a few years, start bringing her family across, too.
The first part of the plan goes off without a hitch. Sunny safely arrives in America, where her “mother”, Lila picks her up. Lila cleans houses and works at a flower farm. Lila and her husband, Prem, are also undocumented immigrants from Guyana. Trouble starts when Mr. Michael, the man who ferries people between America and Guyana, exports Lila for more money. And then things get even worse when Prem reveals his monstrous self to Sunny. These two men make the second part of the plan—for Sunny to make enough money to bring the rest of her family to America—impossible. Sunny, now Nanda, has to run away.
Sunny has a fearsome amount of grit, more than any girl should need at the ages of twelve and thirteen. She also has a friend in Janna, one of the Americans Lila and Sunny clean for. Janna is terribly naive about what the American government can and will do to undocumented people (even in the 1980s and 1990s), but she is observant enough to know that something is terribly wrong about Sunny’s situation with Lila and Prem. More than once, she offers a helping hand when Sunny needs it. I was so glad that Sunny had someone, even the prim Janna, in her corner when she has to brave so much on her own.
A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl will be heavy going for some readers. There are several points where it seems like Sunny just cannot catch a break from people who want more from her than they should even think of asking for. Thankfully, we see enough of Sunny’s “present” to know that her grit, her resilience, and her helpers will be enough to save her from the men who would grind her into dust.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.