{"id":66403,"date":"2008-04-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-oceanographers-book-expected-to-climb-the-charts\/"},"modified":"2008-04-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T00:00:00","slug":"uri-oceanographers-book-expected-to-climb-the-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2008\/04\/uri-oceanographers-book-expected-to-climb-the-charts\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 oceanographer\u2019s book expected to climb the charts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tComing-of-age novel set in British occupied India during WWII<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013April 3, 2008\u2014A 溏心vlog免费B站 adjunct professor of oceanography\u2019s debut novel Climbing the Stairs (Putnam, 256 pages, $16.99) is already climbing the charts and its official publishing date isn\u2019t until May. Booklist\u2019s April 15 issue will give it a starred review and Booksense will call it a notable pick for the month of May. <\/p>\n


\n\tIn a letter that accompanied a special galley mailing of the novel, Douglas Whiteman, executive vice president of Penguin, called the book \u201c a beautifully written story of love, loss and the power of one\u2019s beliefs\u201d and a \u201ctruly special book\u201d which is \u201cfascinating and heart-breaking, but redeeming at the same time.\u201d See attached schedule for author appearances and events.<\/p>\n


\n\tAlthough this is her debut novel, Padma Venkatraman has penned 20 other books on a variety of subjects for adults and children. She has plenty of story ideas, but not enough time to write them.<\/p>\n


\n\tWriting isn\u2019t her only vocation. In addition to being an adjunct oceanography professor, she\u2019s the director of the Office of Graduate Diversity Affairs. And she and her husband, Rainer Lohmann, an assistant chemical oceanographer at 溏心vlog免费B站, are new parents. <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI\u2019m really most grateful to Lynn Pasquerella, departing vice provost at 溏心vlog免费B站, for her support of my flexible schedule,\u201d says the author. <\/p>\n


\n\tVenkatraman came to the United States when she was 19 to pursue a graduate degree. She earned her doctorate in oceanography at The College of William and Mary School of Marine Science and conducted post-doctoral research at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Whiting School of Engineering. She lived in Germany and England after earning her degrees and prior to becoming an American citizen.<\/p>\n


\n\tYet her novel isn\u2019t about oceanography, engineering, or living in Europe. It\u2019s about a young female adolescent growing up in India where Gandhi is leading a nonviolence movement to Indian independence while World War II rages on. <\/p>\n


\n\tEveryone told the novelist not to take the time to title the book since publishers always change it. She did and they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI think the title works on many levels,\u201d says Venkatraman from her North Kingstown home. \u201cThe 15-year-old protagonist lives in a restricted household and is forbidden to go upstairs to the library because she is a female. She sneaks into the library anyway. Her climb is to womanhood and personal freedom. It\u2019s also about India\u2019s freedom from colonization to independence.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe book is based loosely on her mother\u2019s experiences as a teen-ager during World War II in the final years of British-occupied India.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cMy mother was very impressed with India getting its independence. Now, at 76, she is still upset that she never got to hear Gandhi speak. She wasn\u2019t allowed, although some women were.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tVenkatraman\u2019s research unearthed a lot of Indian history that isn\u2019t common knowledge, which she incorporated into the book. She also interviewed a number of people who lived in India during that time period. <\/p>\n


\n\t \u201cI don\u2019t think that I understood how difficult it was in British India with signs that read \u2018whites only\u2019. I was aware of racial inequality in South Africa and apartheid, but not really aware of the racial inequality in India.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe author also interviewed her mother. \u201cUntil I wrote this book, I didn\u2019t fully realized how much my mother experienced and overcame,\u201d says the 38-year-old writer. <\/p>\n


\n\tHer mother, Ambujam Venkatraman, has always been her role model. She is a lawyer, not a practicing one, but a well-respected author of law books and chief editor of legal journals.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe professor remembers watching her mother struggle as a woman and as a woman in her field. \u201cShe did in her generation what women were starting to do in mine,\u201d she says, admiringly. <\/p>\n


\n\tShe was also an indulgent mother when Padma, one of four children, was growing up. \u201cI was writing and making up stories and poetry everyday and my mother thought everything I wrote was fantastic. But the best thing was that she didn\u2019t push me toward writing or any other direction. She was just enthusiastic without making me feel I had to get a degree in English literature rather than one in science.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tClimbing the Stairs is being promoted primarily as a young adult novel with cross-over appeal for adults. The author, however, believes the book will appeal to a wider audience. Many books, Catcher and the Rye, The Secret Life of Bees, and Kite Runner to name a few have teen-age protagonists. <\/p>\n


\n\tShe sold her second novel last year. Although it\u2019s not autobiographical, it comes closer to her own experiences as a researcher on India\u2019s islands of Andaman and Nicobar. The publisher has asked for a few revisions. \u201cI\u2019ll do it,\u201d this modern day Renaissance woman says with a laugh, \u201cWhen I get the time.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tTo learn more about the author and the book visit the author\u2019s website, http:\/\/www.cliofindia.com\/padma, for her blog go to http:\/\/padmasbooks.blogspot.com\/, and for the summary page go to http:\/\/www.padmasbooks.com\/. <\/p>\n


\n \t Climbing the Stairs is available for pre-order through amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com and should be available at chains and independent bookstores nationwide by May 2008. Check http:\/\/www.booksense.com for independent bookstore locations.<\/p>\n


\nClimbing the Stairs<\/p>\n


\nA list of the author\u2019s appearances in the area<\/p>\n


\nMay 1: 3 to 5 p.m. The Other Tiger Bookstore, 90 High St. Westerly, R.I.

\nMay 6: noon to 2 p.m. 溏心vlog免费B站 Multicultural Center, 74 Lower College Rd, Kingston.

\nMay 17: 2 p.m. Barrington Books, 184 County Rd., Barrington, R.I.

\nMay 18: 2 p.m. Front Street Books, 88 Front St., Scituate, Mass.

\nMay 31: 2 p.m. Books on the Square, 471 Angell St., Providence, R.I. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coming-of-age novel set in British occupied India during WWII KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013April 3, 2008\u2014A 溏心vlog免费B站 adjunct professor of oceanography\u2019s debut novel Climbing the Stairs (Putnam, 256 pages, $16.99) is already climbing the charts and its official publishing date isn\u2019t until May. Booklist\u2019s April 15 issue will give it a starred review […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}