Moth: An Evolution Story

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Whilst it is Partition that drives the book forward, the focus is predominantly on the women. The Guardian review finishes by saying: With its unflinching focus on violence against women, her strong, captivating debut tells a story that is at once firmly rooted in a time and place and yet pressingly relevant to the here and now. Summary: I enjoyed this book. I thought it was a great visual and explanation of natural selection and how animals adapt to their environment. I really enjoyed the illustrations in this book and how it helped readers grasp the concept of adaptation. Everything I experienced – from the architecture, people, landscape, colour (the food!), the places of worship and daily religious rituals – is filtered into the novel’s minutiae."

Moth by Melody Razak review – the end of innocence in India

It was a need to write about something political, intimate and about women that led Razak to the trauma of Indian Partition in 1947. Listening to the radio one night in her cafe, she heard a show called Partition Voices –– interviews of elderly survivors and their experiences of living through the Partition of India. She was moved. “It wasn’t just about the political and geographical rupture in India. It was ruptures between families, between friends, between people because there was so much love there. And that was kind of ripped apart,” she said. The illustrations are just as fascinating as the information in this book, and I also noticed the texture of the book paper is very high quality, unlike most of the children's books I read! The artwork was created with watercolor, crayons, acrylics, collage, and Photoshop. Moth is at times a very challenging read posing many questions to the reader and offering insights into a world that is far beyond the comprehension of many of us. There is strength and a beauty in Melody Razak’s narrative. It really is quite difficult to believe that this is a debut novel. Her attention to detail, the dialogue, the sense of time and place is really quite remarkable. I won’t say this is by far the best partition literature that I have read, however I did enjoy this unique insight which encapsulated historical events and experiences flawlessly. There were a few instances where Hindi phrases were misprinted which I am willing to overlook as it was written by someone who is uninitiated to the language and they were far and few!Devastating, heartbreaking and a hard read this was. The violence between humans, especially towards the weaks, the appaling misogynistic views on women with their housewives duties, the disgusting act of child marriages that was so prominent, the unfairness of caste system, there are so many themes that were so hard to discussed yet this book brought all of this to the light. All i can say this was such a difficult to read for how graphic some of the scenes are, for how it gets me to actually look at this and see how horrible they are. That being said, I appreciated Razak’s commentary on religion, nationalism, colonialism, fascism, feminism, classism, etc. As I now understand, this period, the Partition Era, and India's Independence were wrought with political and social upheaval. To Razak’s credit, I felt that with her debut novel she attempted to speak on the multiplicity of issues that were occurring during this period, through the experience of this fictional family. I believe this story was meant to elicit relatability and emotionality to the circumstances via a domestic setting. A huge welcome to everyone taking part in the Great Science Share for Schools! Here are some ideas and resources for exploring the wonderful world of moths in your classroom over the coming weeks: Inspiring children to write their own books is the absolute BEST feeling so I was over the moon when CLPE shared these amazing books created by pupils at #hawkhurstprimary Melody Razak has brought the terror of many during Partition so completely alive. The treatment & abuse of women on both sides is incomprehensible. When she began writing Moth the concept of freedom was very important to her story

Moth identification guides | Butterfly Conservation Moth identification guides | Butterfly Conservation

Mom: And why did they make machines? Did they hurt moths on purpose, or was it just something that happened? Year 6 pupils at Grange Farm Primary School in Coventry worked in small teams to explore the impact of pollution on the peppered moth, natural selection and survival! Concise guide to the moths of Great Britain and Ireland. Martin Townsend & Paul Waring, 2007. Illustrations of all macro-moths in natural resting postures plus concise field notes. British Wildlife Publishing.And so this British-Iranian woman immersed herself in the history and literature of the period: fixing on objects ( a cooking pot, a quilt sewn with tiny mirrors, resembling a sea of stars), talismans of an entire world that is about to be destroyed. We are thrown into a community of rich and unique characters, Hindu and Muslim, Brahmin and lower-caste, male and female, children and adults. The cherished daughter of an intellectual Brahmin family, Alma, just fourteen and about to be married off when the novel begins, is the main character. Intelligent, observant, compassionate, yet convincingly adolescent, she is an ideal guide, but the two characters whom I found most compelling were Roop, Alma's feral five-year-old sister, and her Kashmiri mother, Ma, a woman ". . . almost too advanced for her age, too intelligent, too liberal," as Razak said in that Telegraph of India interview, "[who] was always going to be punished for just being 100 years too early. She was going to get burnt. Because there was no society to help hold a woman like her at that point in time,” I discovered The Moth phenomenon, not in its original format or the podcast, but as this book. It happened through complete serendipity in a Dublin bookshop a year ago - the type of r The younger daughter Roop is something of a psychopath in the making - prone to pulling the wings of insects or otherwise torturing them and to an obsession with blood and death. This is the first partition book I have read from a non-Indian author and all I can say is Melody Razak has done a commendable job. The research is impeccable and the atmosphere she creates with her sense of time and the place will drag you right in and make you a part of the story; living and breathing with the characters.

The Moth | Books The Moth | Books

This one really explores not only the cultural divide that was perpetrated by the British that led to serious violence. Equally it explores gender roles within the different cultures and how even educated women struggled in a male dominated society. It also touches upon the caste system and its impact on different people's fortunes. I felt like I learned a lot but was also touched by the different generations of this family and the impact of their decisions as they rippled through the most turbulent time of their lives. This is a book about natural selection. The story starts off with a peppered moth awakening from its cocoon, followed by multiple other moths waking up too. There are two types of moth mentioned in the book: light peppered moths, and dark peppered moths. The dark peppered moths are as dark as charcoal. The story discusses how predators are searching for food, and end up eating the charcoal peppered moths but not the light peppered ones. The reason why is because the light peppered moths can camouflage into their environment and the charcoal peppered ones cannot. However, humans build coal plants and it ends up covering the forest with smoke and sod. This time, the charcoal peppered moths blend in better and the light peppered moths get eaten. The story discusses how the moths that are surviving are passing on their genes and traits therefore causing an increase in whatever type of moth is surviving.Alma was still very much a young girl who dont understand things, she is stubborn, naive, love to spin eery wild tales of djinns and monsters, her passionate love for her family, also very immature in many things. Yet, as she was forced apart, she learned that she need to care for herself independently, she need to do anything to survive. The family, Bappu a estimated professor and the head of the family was a good man who cared so much about his family and Ma, the mother who fought against any traditional beliefs that women could not be other than housewife. She was a learned woman, become a professor and had forward thinking that gets her scrutinized for. Roop, the youngest at 6 had the characteristic of psychopath in making for her obsession with death, torturing animals, they are very hard to read through for me, it felt quite absurd and uncomfortable. My late friend Allan Segal, who made television documentaries--including a famous one about India’s partition and independence for Granada's End of Empire series--blamed England for the unimaginable violence that ensued, following its hasty 1947 withdrawal from its former colony. The divide-and-conquer policies initiated by the British East India Company and continued under the Raj fomented radical nationalism among Hindus and Muslims.

Moth and Butterfly Books | UKMoths

Moth zeros in on a complex time in India's history: the late 1940s during independence from British rule coinciding with the partition of Pakistan under the All India Muslim League. I do not know enough about the politics or religion to speak intelligently. If I read 5 more books set in this time and place, I might be able to string a sentence together. My thoughts on the book focus on storytelling and characterization. Both were superb. Colour identification guide to the moths of the British Isles. Bernard Skinner, 2009. Photographs of all macro-moths in 'set' (pinned) postures plus detailed field notes. Apollo Books. If you would like me to run a Moth-themed science, writing and art workshop at your school, please get in touch! feature in the Moth gallery Melody Razak tells this story in Moth, her remarkable debut novel. A pastry chef and café owner, she was inspired to go for an MFA in her forties after listening to elderly survivors recount their experiences on a radio program, Partition Voices, (ah, BBC Radio 4 . . .) “It wasn’t just about the political and geographical rupture in India,”she said in an interview for the Telegraph of India, “It was ruptures between families, between friends, between people because there was so much love there. And that was kind of ripped apart.” Finally, I do not understand the inclusion of the first scene of the book juxtaposed with the last scene of the book. The scenes seem unrelated, yet they are placed in a strategic and poignant way but do not offer any strategic or poignant meanings. The narrative is disorganized and while I enjoy Razak’s writing style I was very frustrated at the end scene. I felt that I already knew what happened to Alma and I could have known what happened earlier and gained nothing from reading the last 40% of the book.Cherry Tree School in Watford plotted their feelings about moths before and after reading the book! She is a talented writer but this book is not for me, though I know I will think about this novel quite often. I think having read it and understood the gravity of the events that took place during this period, I can't help but be grateful to Razak for illuminating and explicitly showing the horrors that the people in this part of the world, specifically the women, had to endure. I can appreciate and validate that I know that this author has done extensive research into this topic, which from what I can tell would not be easy, but has many stories still to tell.