SOURCE: King, Adele. Review of An American Brat, by Bapsi Sidhwa. World Literature Today 68, no. 2 (spring 1994): 436.

In the following review, King criticizes An American Brat as a problematic and flawed novel, noting that Sidhwa's narrative is “unsophisticated” and that the story oversimplifies American life.

Bapsi Sidhwa's earlier novels were set in Pakistan and India and described life in her own Parsee community. An American Brat is a result of her years living in the United States and tells of the problems of adjustment to a new culture as experienced by her heroine Feroza, a young Pakistani Parsee girl who comes to visit and then to study in the U.S. and who becomes “an American brat,” according to some of her relatives. Her impressions of American life, her comparisons with the life of her wealthy family in Lahore, and the experiences of a small group of friends she...