An Indian transgression into Australian-hood Kiran Bhat Christopher Raja . Into the Suburbs: A Migrant's Story. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2020. 155 pp. $23.99 ASIN: B08CS18JDN This memoir begins in a somewhat shriveled corner of the world—Kolkata and a little boy, young Chris Raja, who is learning the meaning of his surname. The reason Rajatnaram has been shortened to Raja is simple enough. It was a hard name for the people at the convent to pronounce, and so Chris's grandfather changed it to make it easier on them. It is not Chris's parents who are telling the seven-year-old boy the origins of his surname. Rather, an auntie, who is in the middle of spilling a bunch of other family secrets, feels like telling this one as well. Chris's father only comes out in the middle of the scene, to interrupt: "What are you saying?" he asked. "Some things are best left alone" (5). This tension—between what must remain unsaid, what must be changed, and what remains a part of oneself—remains the core of Into the Suburbs, a memoir by an Australian author who spent his childhood years in India. Most of the scenes in Into the Suburbs take place in Melbourne, where Chris moves as a teenager. Unlike a lot of coming-of-age migrant narratives, Chris is not positioned as a helpless Indian boy struggling in a sea of racism. He does get made fun of here and there, but he is known for being quite charming, a prankster, and he has his luck with the ladies. What interests Raja is not depicting the discrimination embedded in the migration narrative but instead the state of transformation that the migrant must undertake. Chris knows that he has the characteristics of someone born in another land, and he feels a pressure to change these aspects of himself, to fit the country in which he is being raised: "The [End Page 144] more rebellious I became, the less people teased me. I was no longer seen as a nerd. There was shame attached to being good at school and getting good grades, especially if you were a boy. Being a 'nerd' or a 'curry-muncher' were the worst insults. In Australia, it seemed, boys were brought up to self-destruct and be reckless" (43). Over time, Chris starts losing the Indian lilt to his words, and he puts a lesser focus on studying and more on playing sports. He eats "bread instead of paratha," with "tomato sauce instead of mango pickle," just as "[meat] pies or banana and honey sandwiches replaced kichiri or rice-and-dhal-and-curry for lunch. Coca-Cola took over from Campa Cola, and Big M replaced lassi" (43). While Chris's very conscious decisions to make himself more like an Australian ensure his popularity with his classmates, they further alienate him from his parents, who are still struggling to find a place for themselves in Australia. This conflict ultimately surges to its breaking point when Chris reaches the University of Melbourne and finds himself impassioned by what he is studying. Chris wants to become a writer, but his father is not pleased. At one point, while Chris is talking to him about his love for Lady Chatterley's Lover, his father shouts out, "You should be working towards getting perfect scores and transferring to Law, so you can make a positive contribution with your life…. We didn't come to Australia for you to discuss the merits of these writers and their deviant sexual lives…. You are wasting your time" (117). More fights erupt—some small, some big. The rift growing between Chris and his father becomes insurmountable, yet, as tragedy occurs, Chris is left to wonder how much of it is his fault and why he put so much pressure on himself to change at the cost of the people who loved him the most. Nevertheless, to be an artist, to be an author, is at the core of who Chris is, and it is something that cannot change. When his father confronts him again as to why he wants to write, Chris tells him...