Sugarbread

Ten-year-old Pin knows she must not become like her mother Jini but doesn’t know why. She tries to figure out her mother’s moods through her cooking, even as she fights other battles-being a bursary student in an elite Christian school, facing hateful racial taunts from Bus Uncle and classmates like Abigail Goh.

When her meddlesome Nani ji Kulwant moves in, installing portraits of Sikh gurus whose features seem the change according to the atmosphere in the house, she brings with her a new set of rules. And old secrets begin to tumble out.

A powerful coming-of-age story about women, sexism, racism, food and memory, Balli Kaur Jaswal’s life-affirming second novel is hard to forget.