“The Other Family” is a short story by Himani Bannerji, a writer, among other things, who lives in Canada and was born in Bangladesh. It’s about a mother’s reaction to the picture her little daughter drew of her family—a family that doesn’t look anything like them—and how the girl responds the next day. Here’s a summary of “The Other Family”.
“The Other Family” Summary
A little girl walks home from school. It’s already dark out and her mother sees her through the window, walking through the ice and snow. She thinks how different her daughter’s childhood on a lonely Canadian street is from her own on a sunny, busy street in her home country. Seeing her daughter’s lone figure makes the mother feel her own solitude.
At dinner time they talk about their day. Today, the mother is a bit distracted by something. Mother and daughter talk a little about the cat’s food. In school today, the class drew pictures of their family. They both go to the comfortable chair to look at it.
The mother looks at the picture a long time, feeling sad and angry. She tries not to scare her daughter. The girl notices and asks what’s wrong and the mother explains. Her family doesn’t look like this. They’re dark-skinned with dark hair, not light-skinned and blond with other Caucasian features.
The little girl quickly recovers from her guilt and defends herself. She copied the picture from a school book that everyone has. They all drew it too and the teacher liked it.
The mother asks where their family is, and if this is how her daughter wants to be. She regrets it immediately, blaming her for wanting to fit in. She imagines her only daughter becoming ashamed of her and them becoming enemies. “They”, the authority of the outside world and the school, view this as “the family”, regardless of what her family is like.
The mother bursts into tears and says incoherent things while the girl listens quietly. The mother takes her daughter to bed and then sits in the kitchen, thinking of her daughter rejecting herself, and how she’s the cause.
Later, the little girl gets out of bed and looks in the full-length bathroom mirror. She looks at her brown skin, black hair, the scar on her nose and other traits, contemplating them. She goes back to bed, taking the cat with her.
The next day, the girl takes her picture back to her teacher. It’s not finished, and she’d like to work on it more. She puts in on the newspapers on the floor and paints. She noticed the children in the class are of different colors and shapes.
The girl brings the finished picture to her teacher. The blond family is still there in a semi-circle. Next to them is another group of dark-skinned, dark-haired people. A man, a woman who wears clothes from her country, and a little girl with a scar on her nose. This is the other family.
I hope this summary of “The Other Family” by Himani Bannerji was helpful.
