The Braided Tongue

Fiction. Asian American Studies. "A high-speed novel as brilliantly colored as a Mexican tapestry"--Meena Alexander. Plagued by vague but painful memories of her renegade father and her childhood in Mexico, the novel's main characer--Katy Cooper--is a painter of Parsi Zoroastrian ancestry living in Half Moon Bay, California, when her strange adventure of self-discovery begins. At the center of her mystery is an elderly ghost with a scar on her neck, and a black butterfly who has followed Katy all her life. Editor of the anthology Encounters: People of Asian Descent in the Americas (1999), Roshni Rustomji was born in Mumbai, India and has lived, studied and worked in India, Pakistan, Lebanon, the United States and Mexico.