The Sisters of Mokama

 Tired of reading romances where a fiesty (and beautiful of course) lady finds true love (and never worries about who pays the bill)?

Tired of SciFi/fantasy books with superheroes/heroines who beat every monster in the universe without breaking a nail or getting her hair mussed?

Tired of books by bitter women who fight the evil world by destroying the patriarchy (but never ask what happens when they destroy civilization?) 

Tired of religion in novels being portrayed as crazy, and believers as stupid or evil people, or (worse) "religious" novels portraying believers as two dimensional characters spouting cliches whose struggles seem to have nothing to do with real life?
 
Well, I have a book for you. And it's not what you think.

The Sisters of Mokama relates the story of some Kentucky nuns who started a hospital in an isolated area of India in the confusing days following Indian independence. 

No, not a treachly book about white saviors, nor a pseudo inspirational book about pushing Christianity on the heathens, but a realistic story of women who had the willingness and expertise to start a hospital from scratch, and gradually expand it into a regional center with a nursing school.

And it is also the story of the Indian girls who, against many odds, joined them and became nurses: written by the daughter of one of these nurses, who later immigrated to the US.

It is the story of idealism and hard work. It is a feminist story, where women use their skills to help others. And the background of the struggles of India to become a nation, a story that is not well known in the west, is part of the story.

From Harvard.com:

New York Times editor Jyoti Thottam’s mother was part of an extraordinary group of Indian women. Born in 1946, a time when few women dared to leave their house without the protection of a man, she left home by herself at just fifteen years old and traveled to Bihar—an impoverished and isolated state in northern India that had been one of the bloodiest regions of Partition—in order to train to be a nurse under the tutelage of the determined and resourceful Appalachian nuns who ran Nazareth Hospital...

Fascinated by her mother’s story, Thottam set out to discover the full story of Nazareth Hospital, which had been established in 1947 by six nuns from Kentucky. With no knowledge of Hindi, and the awareness that they would likely never see their families again, the sisters had traveled to the small town of Mokama determined to live up to the pioneer spirit of their order, founded in the rough hills of the Kentucky frontier. A year later, they opened the doors of the hospital; soon they began taking in young Indian women as nursing students, offering them an opportunity that would change their lives. One of those women, of course, was Thottam’s mother......

 Author interview on Spotify.LINK

an excellent well written book if you are interested in feminism, biography, the history of medicine/nursing, India, the history of partition in India, and even a short lesson on the logistics of setting up a hospital from scratch.

I give it a four out of four stars.

-------------------------------------

By the way:  the religion part in the book is shown by what these women do: having the courage to face the challenges and overcome them, This is true not just for the nuns, but in the stories of the Indian girls who saw this as an opportunity to help the patients but also a way to improve not only the lives of their patients, but the lives of their families, in a changing India.

Catholic hospitals (and schools and other outreaches) is not about preaching, but service: It's sort of the feeling that God gave you these gifts, and it is your responsibility to use them to help others:  because they are your brother or sister and need help. Behind this is the belief in God. It is time taken out of a busy day for prayer that gives you the strength to go on another day and to keep things into perspective.

Helping people without regard for their beliefs is part of the culture of Catholicism, and one of the things I like about Pope Francis is that he is stressing this aspect of the faith.