WINGS TO SOAR

A displaced girl’s hope takes wing in this verse novel.

The year is 1972: Ten-year-old Viva opens the story by asserting that her name is not “refugee.” Expelled from their Kampala, Uganda, home by President Idi Amin, Viva’s family, who are of Goan Indian origin, end up in a resettlement camp in England. As Viva, Mummy, and her sister, Anna, try to understand their new lives, they wait impatiently for news of Daddy, who’s the family’s “hope holder” and meant to be joining them soon. They also dream of their eventual departure for Canada. The family’s story is underscored by racism, alienation, and upheaval, even as Viva sometimes discovers “little cups of happiness.” The refugee crisis of the Ugandan Asians is a tragic episode from history that’s rarely explored in children’s fiction. Athaide’s book starts with a lot of promise and has an interesting format that includes photographs, correspondence, and definitions of vocabulary interspersed among the poems (Viva is a logophile; she also has a fondness for Diana Ross). The book is at its strongest when the text describes Viva’s yearning for her family to be reunited and the hatred the refugees faced in a Britain where anti-immigrant feelings were on the rise; these segments are searing and honest. Unfortunately, the execution falters as the book progresses, and the writing in the later portions is not as strong.

Friendship, family, and identity form the core of this heartfelt but uneven story.