"My Story" by Kamala Das

I was very excited to read this book because I heard it was extremely "controversial". Controversial can be good and bad, and I found this book to be "controversial in a good way".

It's an autobiography of a Malayalam (India) poet, writer and a woman - Kamala Das. I've never heard of Kamala Das before, and I just wanted to see what made this book so controversial. 

I was slightly disappointed because there was nothing very shocking except for some lesbian break-through at a high school and the way this lady thought she was not beautiful and had "body image issues" while in real life she had quite a few male fans. I was actually shocked by how "liberal" her husband was (from my perspective).

"An exciting, sensual and deep - autobiography of a woman who was who she was and shared her every bit in her writings."

After reading this book I felt I learnt so much about Kamala Das background, her caste, her home, her relatives, family and the lifestyle and believes of those people. It was amazing to read what happened decades ago somewhere in South India, what where the customs of Nair family - I read about it for the first time. 

Also it was very exciting to read about the British Raj times where there were so many Anglo-Indians and how they differed from the locals, about clothes, food and things that people did. Of course, all of the writer's life is described in the book and it's a very strange feeling to see all that life just start and finish so fast in nearly only 200 pages. It makes you really think "what is life", "what's the point" at the very end of it...A little bit spiritual, happy and depressing at the same time.

I also found the language that the writer used to be a little hard to read. I couldn't understand why exactly because I understood every single word, but I'm guessing she had her own very interesting way of combining and choosing words.

There were some poems in the book as well but I am not a fan of poems, so I will not comment on that.

This book made me cry and laugh and I found it to be overall inspiring. I would recommend everyone to read it as it's a high quality literary work and I can see why it was translated to so many foreign languages. It is a very entertaining autobiography and it feels super modern and very up-to-date. I think young people, women and men would love this book.