I Create Purty Thangs: Guest book review - The Other Shore: Ordinary People Grappling with Extraordinary Challenges by Madhu B. Wangu

The Other Shore: Ordinary People Grappling with Extraordinary Challenges. A collection of twenty stories where we meet people struggling with inevitability of death, unavoidable circumstances, relationships gone sour, and our connection with nature. Some tales hover between reality and fantasy, while others reflect on outdated customs and tradition, prejudice and bigotry, altruism and kindness. The stories come alive with characters living in India, or Indians living in America, their American friends and people from around the globe. The stories are about human heart, hurt and search for life’s meaning and purpose.

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"The Other Shore showers you with aesthetic pleasures by allowing you to examine the cross-cultural experience. Madhu Bazaz Wangu’s tales are filled with physically vigorous and mentally vital moments that exist in the now. Her narration has strong leanings in establishing identity, and her conversational style makes you feel relaxed as if you are getting acquainted with the characters face to face. I cannot help but feel moved by the story of Unrequited Love, as the theme profoundly illustrates one typical problem that arises among close-knit Asian families. There is always a striking point in all of these twenty stories where Wangu seems adept at scrutinizing the role of women in contemporary society. In the end, it is difficult not to feel moved or affected after reading these stories.” - Vincent Dublado for Readers' Favorite

More to enjoy from the author

Guest book review by Rachel Quaill

These stories of human interrelatedness and existence speak to your soul on such a deep level. Madhu B. Wangu has the innate ability to propel you to the ins-and-outs of the character’s sense of being in such a relatable way that you cannot help but reflect on each character and see something you recognize in them, either in yourself or others that have come in and out of your life.

Each unique story is like you are meeting someone new yet so familiar as you are given a view of their world and how they see things. Wangu’s use of prose to place you right in the middle of each place and time offers every reader the opportunity to take yourself out of your reality and feel that you can taste the foods, smell the scents, envision the landscape. Yet, you still get the opportunity after each chapter to reflect on your own life and what the meaning of the story offers to you and how you can learn from it.

I look forward to much more of Wangu’s work in the near future.

5 Stars

About the author

Madhu B. Wangu is an award-winning author and the founder of Mindful Writers Groups and Retreats. She has a doctorate in the phenomenology of Religion from the University of Pittsburgh (1988) and a post-doctoral Fellowship from Harvard University (1989-1991). For fifteen years she taught Hindu and Buddhist art history at the University of Pittsburgh, Rhode Island College and Wheaton College. She joined Pennwriters Organization in 2005 and served as a Board member from 2007-10012. In 2020 she won Pennwriters Meritorious Award for being “a valuable asset to the writing and publishing world.” Dr. Wangu also serves as a board member for Books Bridge Hope, the non-profit organization with a mission to promote reading, writing and literacy to community members residing in shelters and on the streets of Pittsburgh.

More than three decades of meditating and journaling led Dr. Wangu to teach meditation and to write. The work resulted in a practice she calls Writing Meditation Method. You are welcome to join her every morning at Online Mindful Writers Group.

Madhu Wangu’s CDs, Meditations for Mindful Writers I, II & III, inspire professional as well as novice writers to improve focus, remove blocks, and increase writing flow and productivity. Her CDs include: Meditations for Mindful Writers: Body, Heart, Mind (2011), Meditations for Mindful Writers II: Sensations, Feelings, Thoughts (2017), and Meditations for Mindful Writers III: Generosity, Gratitude, Self-Compassion and Trust (2019)

Dr. Wangu has written books about Hindu and Buddhist goddesses: Images of Indian Goddesses: Myths, Meanings and Models, (Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 2003) and A Goddess Is Born, (Spark Publishers, 2002). Her illustrated books for young adults are, Hinduism (Facts on File, Inc., New York, 1991) and Buddhism (Facts on File, Inc., New York, 1993). Madhu has also held five one-person shows of oil paintings and prints and has exhibited with art groups in India as well as USA.

Dr. Madhu Bazaz Wangu also writes fiction including Chance Meetings: Stories About Cross-Cultural Karmic Collisions and Compassion (2015), and two novels The Immigrant Wife: Her Spiritual Journey (2016) and The Last Suttee (2017).

Currently, she is writing her second collection of short stories, Little Journeys (forthcoming in 2021). The manuscripts of her third novel, Meaning of My Life (2023) and a guidebook, Unclog Your Creative Flow, Enrich Your Daily Life (2025) are currently being written.

Read her daily posts that she writes for Online Mindful Writers Group on Facebook.

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