You Bring the Distant Near

Sonia’s diary serves as a motif for the theme of Womanhood and Empowerment. As a teenager, writing offers her an escape from her fraught family life and a safe way to express her complicated thoughts and difficult emotions. During the 15-year-old’s flight from London to her new life in New York, she reflects on the way her diary gives her a sense of power and makes her experiences feel more meaningful: “There’s something about putting words on a page in private that makes me feel powerful in public. [...] [E]verything I write about is real. Thoughts, emotions, ideas, and beliefs. It’s weird how writing them down gives them weight” (15). When Sonia Das feels like a captive in her Flushing apartment, writing offers her freedom and solace. Perhaps the most significant of her diary entries is the one in which she writes that her mother is “to blame for [their] family falling apart” (68). Understandably, Sonia feels upset when her mother violates her privacy by reading her diary. However, she soon decides that the diary has served its purpose of supporting her empowerment, and she proves that she is ready to write the next chapter in her story by burning the waterlogged notebook: “The words have been captured.