Title: Blue Skinned Gods
Author: S J Sindu
Genre: Novel, Coming of Age, Religious Fiction, Metaphysical Fiction, Bildungsroman Novel, LGBT Literature
Original Language: English
Plot Setting: India and USA
S J Sindu
S J Sindu is an American writer of Sri Lankan decent who has written two literary novels on the Tamil Diaspora namely, ‘Marriage of a Thousand Lies‘ and ‘Blue-Skinned Gods’ ; two hybrid chapter books namely, ‘I Once Met You But You Were Dead’ and ‘Dominant Genes’ as also ‘Shakti’, a middle grade fantasy fiction graphic novel.
She did her Masters in English from University of Nebraska-Lincoln and then went on to get a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University. She has won the Turnbuckle Chapbook contest and the Black River Chapbook Competition for her books ‘I Once Met You But You Were Dead’ and ‘Dominant Genes’ respectively. Her book ‘Marriage of a Thousand Lies‘ has won Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, American Library Association Stonewell Honor Book, Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and has also bagged the Silver Medal at the Independent Publisher Book Awards. She now teaches Creative Writing at University of Toronto, Scarborough and lives with her poet partner Geoff Bouvier.
Blue-Skinned Gods
Blue Skinned Gods is a remarkable bildungsroman story of a boy who was born with blue skin and was made to sit on a high pedestal as a God- the 10th and final incarnation of Vishnu, Kalki. It is a profound story of how we are fed information about the world we live in, so much so that we start believing in a world that does not exist, or in this case, the situation that didn’t exist.
My divinity had been as real as flowers, or the sun, or my own skin
This novel has it all, a manipulative father, an oppressed mother, an intense bonding with a brother, tender first love, flying out one day to find a new world-one that he had never imagined, the dogmas, the diversity of cultures, a truth that had a different meaning, punk music, redemption and above all finding an answer to a universal question- Who am I? All his life Kalki believed that he had healing properties, that he was a God. He bore the pressure of consistent performance until one day he did not. Sindu has marvelously charted one boy’s journey from an isolated ashram in the interiors of India to the clubs and night life of New York City.
And when that godhood broke, reality itself had shattered to pieces around me
An excellently written entanglement of a boy born with a medical condition made into a God, this is a compelling and emotionally charged tale.
The biggest takeaway from Blue-Skinned Gods:
The questions, the options and the answers. We have to find them ourselves. It is every individual’s journey and everyone have to find their own path.
The Spell Bound 