37 pages • 1 hour read
Nayomi MunaweeraIsland of a Thousand Mirrors
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary
It is January 1983, and Mala is pregnant. She is delighted after unsuccessfully trying to conceive for many years. She craves meat during her pregnancy, a foreboding sign for a lifelong vegetarian (80).
Rumors of impending disaster and violence intensify. Yasodhara and Shiva remain oblivious to the encroaching violence and notice one another’s attractiveness. Their budding romantic interest halts when violent mobs attack Tamil residences one night. Sylvia Sunethra lies to the mob to protect the Tamil Shivalingam family upstairs, managing to thwart the violence for three full days while the Shivalingam family flees.
Mala feels intense labor pains during the third night of a 24-hour curfew on the town. She is two months from full term. Anuradha offers to fetch a doctor, but Mala fears what may happen to him alone on the streets, so they venture out in their car toward the hospital. They quickly encounter a mob in the streets, and Anuradha leaves the car to protect a Tamil schoolboy from “the glint of knives, broken bottles, machetes” (86). Trapped inside the car, Mala witnesses as Anuradha is violently murdered while trying to protect the Tamil boy from the crowd. Alwis, the local coconut picker, drags Mala to safety as the mob lights bodies and vehicles on fire. Mala soon gives birth to a premature baby. The baby dies quickly; Poornam, Mala’s Tamil servant girl, buries the dead infant in the garden at Mala’s instruction.
The violence subsides and Tamil families flee town, leaving behind “burned cars, shattered glass like ice on the streets, looted textile factories,” and the bodies of their loved ones (91). The Shivalingam family has also fled, leaving Yasodhara wondering about Shiva’s whereabouts. Visaka talks of leaving for America, but first the family attends Anuradha’s funeral. At the funeral reception, Anuradha’s mother blames Mala’s dark skin for Anuradha’s death. The conflict between the two women on opposing sides of the family is one Yasodhara’s last memories of Sri Lanka before her family immigrates to the United States.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Yasodhara’s family arrives in Los Angeles and temporarily lives with Visaka’s brother Ananda, Beatrice Muriel’s son who moved to America to marry for love. Ananda has been successful in America and lives in a wealthy neighborhood with his wife Ophelia.
Yasodhara is homesick and misses Shiva. Visaka goes to work as a preschool teacher’s aide while Nishan takes a job as a parking attendant. When Yasodhara and La go for a walk to explore their uncle’s neighborhood, their American neighbors call the police, and they are taken back home in a police car. They are constantly made aware of their otherness through the looks and reactions of strangers in America.
The family moves to a one-bedroom apartment, but tension between Visaka and Nishan intensifies. He spends every moment possible studying for his engineering certification exam and is promoted to an office administration position. The family begins assimilating to American life, purchasing a car and learning to substitute ingredients to mimic their Sri Lankan cuisine. When Yasodhara receives a paint set for Christmas, she is uninterested and lets Lanka keep it. Enraptured, Lanka becomes a budding artist; Yasodhara notices “that the colors have released something inside her” (115). Yasodhara finds her passion in books.
The next move is to a single-family home, “that most cherished slice of the immigrant dream pie” (117). The sisters have their own bedrooms now. La paints her room, while Yasodhara fills hers with books. La grows into a beauty, while Yasodhara is plain in comparison. These differences draw the sisters apart, with Yasodhara retreating behind books and “an impenetrable wall of studiousness” while Lanka attempts to connect with her.
As the family assimilates to American life, the civil war in Sri Lanka continues. Sylvia Sunethra provides updates from the island, Uncle Ananda encourages the family to support Sinhala forces, and more family members arrive in the United States to escape the violence. The chapter closes Part 1 with Yasodhara’s vivid dream of a female suicide bomber.
Part 1, Chapters 6-7 Analysis
The tension increases as the violence leading to the civil war gets closer to the narrator’s family. That the domestic tension continues in the United States reflects ongoing clashes back home, establishing a sense that conflict cannot be avoided simply by moving from one location to another. The family’s departure to America provides relief from the immediate violence, but Yasodhara’s dream of the female suicide bomber foreshadows Lanka’s eventual death. Leaving the island is only a temporary refuge; Yasodhara eventually learns that her ties to the island cannot be completely erased or avoided.
The immigrant experience is highlighted for readers when Yasodhara’s previously privileged family finds themselves in Los Angeles. Nishan, her engineer father, takes work as a parking attendant while he studies to gain certification in a field he already knows. Visaka, the proud daughter of the Wellawatte house in its prime, must stifle her frustration over becoming the renting minority looked down upon by an ignorant landlord. Chapter 7 brings to the surface multiple struggles associated with the experience of immigrating: a dislocating sense of otherness, frustration from feeling overlooked and misunderstood, and the struggle to acclimate to a new culture without losing your own.
Chapter 7 also marks a significant point in the plot, as the civil war officially begins. Direct mention of suicide bombers and hints that they will play a meaningful role become frequent. Yasodhara’s dream of a female suicide bomber from a house by a lagoon directly foreshadows Saraswathi’s origin and eventual role in the story, and this dream is immediately followed by Saraswathi’s voice opening Part 2. This closing to Part 1 carries the reader directly from Yasodhara’s dream into the nightmare that is taking place back in Sri Lanka.
