Home Has No Borders: A Collection of South Asian Stories - edited by Sona Charaipotra & Samira Ahmed

AUTHOR: Sona Charaipotra & Samira Ahmed

GENRE: YA Anthology

PUBLICATION DATE: May 13, 2025.

RATING: Leaving this unrated.

In a Nutshell: A teen anthology about South Asian diasporic experiences. I had been very excited for this collection, but much of the content wasn’t to my reading preferences. Thus might work better for other readers, hence leaving this without a rating.

This collection has sixteen stories written by South Asian writers, giving a voice to teens of South-Asian descent staying in another country (USA). The blurb declares that this book “explores race, class, culture, language, and the very idea of home as both a place and a feeling.” These themes made me hope for a stimulating experience, as the concept of showing diasporic experiences about their progenitors’ cultures is always an interesting one, especially when the culture is as rich and diverse as in the South Asian nations. However, the book didn’t work for me for quite a few reasons.

🚩 For a ‘South Asian’ anthology, the content is heavily dominated by India. As per SAARC, South Asia includes eight countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. But except for one story each from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the stories are about the Indian diaspora. (If you are wondering why I, an Indian, am complaining about India getting the central role, it’s simply because it’s inaccurate to call a book “South Asian” and focus on only one country.)

🚩 I always love anthologies with themes as it is fun to see how authors interpret the theme and create a variety of tales. In this case though, a majority of the stories don’t bother about the theme. Their stories are about generic YA experiences, not South-Asian YA experiences. Quite a few of the tales are about love problems. YA readers might not have any issue with this, but I didn’t pick this book up to read YA romance and crushes and heartbreaks.

🚩 I am not comfortable with foul language popping up in teen/YA books. I might have overlooked this issue had there been only a couple of such occurrences, but twelve of the sixteen stories had bad language. (15 instances of f*ck, 6 of a*hole, 38 of sh*t.) I know some readers are okay with such words in YA books as they represent realistic teen conversations, but I am not. Even the romance content in a couple of the stories went beyond my preference level for this age group.

🚩 The writing style in two stories didn’t suit me. The second story is written entirely in small case, which suits poetry better. I like fictional stories to stick to proper sentence case. And in the final story, the lingo was too gen-z for my understanding and the sentences, too broken. (Was it supposed to be a story-in-verse? Its structure was so haphazard!)

🚩 Most stories contains several words from regional languages, but there is no glossary. In some cases, I didn’t need one as I was familiar with the language. But if the book has to work in the intended target market, a glossary is a must.

🚩 At 400 pages, this is quite lengthy for a short story collection, all the more if it is aimed at YAs.

On the pro side,

📍 The foreword by the two editors of Indian origin – powerful and heartfelt.

📍 The significance of the title, even if not every story lives up to it.

📍 The pacing – decently quick.

As always, I rated the stories individually. Only two stories reached/crossed the four-star mark as they delivered exactly what the theme promised. The rest of the stories were either 3 stars or below. My two favourites were:

😍 When Durga Devi Weeps - Rajani LaRocca: When I saw Rajani LaRocca’s name in the list of contributors, I was thrilled. I've enjoyed the two books of hers I've read. She writes beautifully and authentically to the culture. This story further confirms her status in my mind. Such a perfect story in terms of characters, writing, theme, and age-appropriateness! This is the kind of story I picked up this anthology for. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

😍 No Taste Like Home - Nisha Sharma: Meet-cute, but desi style. Perfect for the theme, great combo of culture and modernity, of expat feelings and third-gen confusion. Well executed story overall. A bit too insta for this desi mom, otherwise it would have gained all the stars. - ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

All in all, this is a case of expectation-mismatch as well as preference-mismatch. I wanted a more culturally-focussed experience, but the stories turned out to be standard YA stuff. The cuss words exasperated me further. The book might still work for YA readers looking for stories with issues they can identify with. Not for me though.

I shall leave this without a rating as this simply wasn’t my cup of tea. It is undoubtedly one of my biggest disappointments of 2025. I had also planned to pick up "Magic Has No Borders", a "cousin" of this book, edited by the same team, and containing stories from South Asian folklore, but after this lacklustre experience, I am not so sure. Maybe in future, when I have put this sufficiently behind me…

My thanks to HarperCollins Children's Books for providing the DRC of “Home Has No Borders” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better.