Finding Ammi

A nail-biting adventure and a vivid portrait of the power that binds families together, Finding Ammi is the story of one girl who has to battle political shifts and navigate the darkness in both India and the United States in order to reunite her family, by renowned activist and award-winning documentarian Ruchira Gupta. Twelve-year-old Simi Singh has grown up with loving parents and grandparents in her north Indian town. Her life is marked by birthdays, harvest festivals, school exams, hockey competitions, Diwali and Id celebrations. Until now, her only worries have been winning the next hockey championship, getting better grades than her best friend Ravi, and of course--avoiding the comments that her class nemesis, Ashok, makes about her being "a Paki." But one night, as a rock crashes through the window of her family's Id celebration, as her family reads the note wrapped around it and the silence brings their celebration to a halt, Simi realizes that something very bad is happening. And life will never be the same. A vigilante group against inter-faith marriage is targeting her Hindu Sikh father and Muslim mother. And in the face of mounting violence, they must choose whether to separate or leave India. When her father decides to flee the country, Simi's once peaceful world shatters into a million pieces. In a terrible twist of fate, by the time Simi's father applies for family reunification, the US policy on political asylum has become stricter. His petition is rejected. Desperate to escape the threats at home, Simi's mother, pays a smuggler to sneak them into the US. But when they are separated while crossing the Arizona desert-each told that the other is dead-Simi must form friendships and navigate the darkness of her current situation to find her mother who she knows must be alive... Ruchira Gupta is a writer, feminist campaigner, professor at New York University and founder of the anti-sex-trafficking organization, Apne Aap Women Worldwide. She won the Clinton Global Citizen award in 2009, the Sera Bangali Award in 2012 and an Emmy for outstanding investigative journalism in 1996. She has helped more than twenty thousand girls and women in India exit prostitution systems. She has also edited As If Women Matter, an anthology of Gloria Steinem's essays, and written manuals on human trafficking for the UN Office for Drugs and Crime. Ruchira divides her time between Delhi and New York. I Kick and I Fly is her debut novel.