Rosita by Anita Desai

I found this via Obama's Summer of 2025 Reading List--he always has a couple of things on it that I would have missed otherwise and this short novella is one of them. I am not 100% sure that I totally understand it, but for me the crux was that Bonita, a young Indian woman, is visiting San Miguel, Mexico and meets a trickster, an elderly woman who claims (without any evidence or credibility in my mind) that she knew Bonita's mother. She tells Bonita that her mother attended what became a life-changing lecture discussing parallels between art about the partition of India and the Mexican revolution and then and there decided to study Mexican art in Mexico. Why believe her? Bonita is more unsettled by her than falling for her story hook line and sinker, but there is something about the tale that rings true for Bonita and she pursues it, whether it is true of not. There are clues to her mother's past that Bonita has to pursue because she doubts that she knows the whole truth, and now that her mother is gone, she cannot ask her. There is a surprising amount to think about here.