Pat’s India - eBooks.
Memories Of Childhood By Patricia Booth
A warm, candid memoir capturing the richness and complexity of growing up between cultures as the child of New Zealand missionaries in mid-20th century India.
This book will help you:
- Gain a rare child’s-eye view of missionary life in India.
- Understand the challenges and rewards of growing up between cultures.
- Appreciate the personal impact of historical events like WWII and the Bengal famine.
- Explore the concept of belonging for “third culture kids."
- See the value of personal letters as a record of growth and change.
- Learn about India–New Zealand cross-cultural connections in the 1940s–60s.
- Inspire social studies, history, and cultural awareness projects.
Features
- Draws on more than 200 letters written from boarding school to parents.
- Rich historical context on WWII’s impact in northeast India.
- Honest reflections on identity, belonging, and cultural heritage.
- Companion to In Heavenly Love Abiding by Catharine Eade.
- Illustrated with photographs and personal mementos. You are buying a zipped file containing eBook editions of this 140 page book in PDF, ePub and Mobi formats. (2017).
ISBNs:
Mobi 9781927260760
ePub 9781927260753
PDF 9781927260777.
Click for Print book
What does it mean to belong?
For Patricia Booth, born in northeast India during World War Two to New Zealand Baptist missionary parents, the answer was never simple.
As the Allies fought to halt the Japanese advance just 250 kilometres away in Kohima, Patricia’s early years unfolded in Agartala on the plains of Tripura.
Schooling took her far away – to the cool air of Darjeeling in the Himalayas – while wartime upheavals, the Bengal famine, and cross-cultural living shaped her formative experiences.
Through more than 200 letters written to her parents from boarding school over a decade, Patricia reconstructs a vivid portrait of her childhood. These letters, preserved across time, capture everything from school routines and friendships to drama and music, alongside the undercurrents of separation from family.
Yet the greatest paradox emerges when, as an 11-year-old on furlough in New Zealand, she felt like a foreigner in her parents’ homeland. In her thoughtful reflections, Patricia grapples with the layered identity of a “third culture kid," navigating two worlds without fully belonging to either.
Pat’s India is both personal memoir and social history – revealing the human side of missionary work, the resilience of children growing up between cultures, and the enduring question of where home truly is.
Rich with photographs, family stories, and the perspectives of those who knew her, this book is a valuable resource for historians, educators, and anyone interested in cross-cultural childhoods.
Praise for Pat’s India “I found Pat’s India both engaging and informative. Reading it sent me off to the bookshelves to find her mother, Catharine Eade’s autobiography In Heavenly Love Abiding. Read together the two books complement and complete each other.
Pat’s India is revelatory in important ways, casting light on the purposes and organisational arrangements of the missionary enterprise, on her parents, the missionaries, as real people with individual personalities and on the costs and rewards of being a family in the mission field.
Importantly, it is that rare thing a child’s view, reporting from the inside on growing up and moving between two cultures. The self reflections of the last chapter are a thoughtful and thought provoking contribution to the growing literature on third culture kids." Joan Metge, New Zealand social anthropologist, educator and writer
“I could see a range of audiences – great for intermediate age kids doing social studies type projects, great for teachers who have kids from other cultures in their class; great for people researching and writing various kinds of histories, e.g. about the role of “religious colonisation" versus the social support and skills building provided by the missionaries, culture, race and social class. There’s no end to it.
I learnt stuff too – I hadn’t realised the Japanese activity in Burma had such an impact on its neighbours during the war – pretty obvious when you think about it.Nor did I know about the Bengal famine. This kind of book has got to be good for all sorts of people." Alison Gray – author and social researcher
“…It is a book of memories, letters and photos of a