Stepping Into the River: An American Psychologist in Mother India

Stepping Into the River: An American Psychologist in Mother India

INDIA: Home to the greatest beauty and most appalling poverty in the world. Come on a journey with American psychologist Marc Nemiroff and meet saints and sinners, the poor, Untouchables, and others who are a part of the Indian tapestry, and discover the soul of this deeply moving country. Nemiroff and his Indian colleague, Asha Dutia, spent one month each winter for 9 years working with the disenfranchised of India: abandoned elderly blind, children and their families in the Mumbai slums, street children, young adults kidnapped as children for the sex trade, parents of deepest poverty living in hospital with their very young children receiving cancer treatment, students and teachers in Bombay's slum schools, the inhabitants of a remote tribal village, etc. Nemiroff intersperses the biography of his relationship with his deeply abusive mother, as it relates to his Indian story. This book is also the story of the development of a deep cross-cultural relationship between an Indian and an American, with ever-increasing trust, warmth, and humor. Using an engagingly objective-yet-poignant, sometimes impressionistic style, Nemiroff passionately uncovers the spirit of India and its greatest strength: the women and men of poverty, poor mothers caring for their children under impossible circumstances. India's soul ultimately brings inspiring personal healing to the author in a concluding dream sequence. Nemiroff tell a remarkable story of his work as a psychologist with at-risk children (and others) in India while, at the same time, allowing the reader to glimpse the shattering childhood experiences that prompted him to become a healer of children in the first place. It is the story of a spiritual journey, a vivid eyewitness account of an exotic and colorful but also unsettling place, and a resonant literary memoir that reminded me of 'The Snow Leopard.'" Jonathan Kirsch, author of "Gods Against the Gods," and "The Woman Who Laughed at God.