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Margaret Mascarenhas. Skin. New Delhi. Penguin. 2001. 257 pages. Rs250. ISBN 0-14-- 100465-7
MARGARET MASCARENHAS was born in America of a Goan father and a Caucasian mother. Pagan, the protagonist of Skin, was born in America of a Goan father, Francisco, and a Caucasian mother, Katie-so she believes. The action begins in Palo Alto. A man harasses her in a bar; she takes his gun and, although she has never handled a gun before, nearly shoots him. Mysterious things lie in her. She has been dreaming of a woman named Saudade. She tells her lover, Xico, that the problem is her inability as a crosscultural hybrid to figure out, in America, where she belongs. Then her Goan grandmother, Dona Gabriela, has a stroke, so she leaves for Goa, telling Xico that there is a word in Portuguese for which there was no English equivalent: "Yearning, Nostalgia, Bitter-sweetness-all...