SATA
ENTRY TYPE: new
WORK TITLE: Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://soniapatel.net/
CITY: Honolulu
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COUNTRY:
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LAST VOLUME: CA 407
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born ca. 1974, in NY; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Stanford University, B.A.; University of Hawaii, John A. Burns School of Medicine, M.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Psychiatrist and author. Youth and family psychotherapist in HI for twenty years.
AVOCATIONS:Running, hiking, hip-hop, dancing.
AWARDS:William C. Morris Debut Award finalist, 2017, for Rani Patel in Full Effect; In the Margins Book Award, 2020, for Bloody Seoul.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes, edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter and Rocky Callen, Candlewick Press (Somerville, MA), 2023.
SIDELIGHTS
[open new]A practicing psychiatrist, Sonia Patel has drawn on her life as an American daughter of Indian immigrants, as well as her patients’ experiences, in writing young-adult novels broaching traumatic topics with therapeutic intents. She was born nine months after her Gujarati parents, paired in an arranged marriage, arrived in New York. She was raised first in Connecticut and then on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i. Patel’s family life grew challenging, then abusive as her father came to reject the companionship of his wife and forced his daughter to become his intimate companion. Convincing herself that she was at least lucky not to be starving or living in a war-torn country, she buried her feelings and said nothing about the abuse for years. Patel was eleven when the compelling beats and rhymes of Run DMC got her hooked on rap and hip-hop. In her teens she started writing verses that coalesced as her first original rap songs. She explained to Sally Lodge of Publishers Weekly, “The rap expressed my hurt, frustration, and rebellion against my family’s dysfunction. My father’s manipulative, controlling, and abusive actions isolated my mother and me, not only from our Gujarati Indian culture but also from American culture.” She went on: “Fortunately, hip hop threw me a lifeline—the music soothed my soul, and rap gave me a voice for my feelings of inadequacy and rage. All the things hip hop gifted me with kept me afloat while my family’s ship capsized.” Patel gained acceptance to Stanford University and after graduating furthered her studies in psychiatry at the University of Hawaii. Upon earning her medical degree she set up a psychiatric practice serving youths and their families, to which she devoted herself through the early twenty-first century.
The conception of Patel’s debut young-adult novel came about in 2014 when she was working on a new rap and took a break to review the binder holding her years’ worth of songs. She explained to Lodge, “I read it in a certain order, and to my surprise, that order told a story of a girl overcoming adversity. Aha! It hit me. The story could be a blend of struggles and triumphs—mine, those of some of my patients, and my imagination.” Reliving her personal experiences brought grief and regrets, but also catharsis and healing. Patel hoped that a fictional treatment of overcoming traumatic circumstances might for some teens be even more helpful than psychotherapy. About the power of realistic fiction for troubled youths, Patel told YA Books Central: “Validation of real life adversity, struggle, and dysfunction is the first step to agency and empowerment, and sometimes a realistic book might be the only validation a young person has.”
Rani Patel in Full Effect is narrated by sixteen-year-old Rani, the only Indian girl in her Hawaiian town. She has conflicted feelings about her dysfunctional home life, where her father has progressed from abusing Rani herself to spending time with a mistress only slightly older. With rap her favored creative outlet, Rani’s emotional state is buoyed by the discovery of an underground hip-hop crew, but trouble lurks in the form of attention from Mark, the thirtysomething who runs the crew and whom Rani’s friends warn her about. With her mind caught in traumatized cycles, Rani needs a breakthrough.
In Voice of Youth Advocates, Elisabeth W. Rauch hailed Patel’s debut as the story of “a misguided cultural patriarchy, the difficulty of recognizing and leaving abuse behind, and the importance of finding support and healing.” Booklist reviewer Sarah Hunter affirmed that through “slick rhymes packed with an empowering feminist message,” Rani’s narrative “commendably and strikingly stands out in the YA landscape.” Hunter praised Rani Patel in Full Effect as “vivid, bold, and passionate.”
Patel’s next novel is Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story. Neither Jaya nor Rasa, whose lives unfold in alternation, has had an easy time in life with family. Jaya is biologically female but identifies as male, something his Gujarati parents demonstrate they would be unable to accept in trying to raise him as the ideal feminine daughter. With her mother a prostitute, Rasa has had to raise her siblings and has been unwillingly initiated into her mother’s trade. Abandonment and fosterhood only lead to further subordination to a pimp named Xander. Because his father is unfaithful and his mother suicidal, Jaya has little time to spare; but as soon as Jaya and Rasa cross paths, the need to know each other, and to follow a path together however they can, for however long, takes hold.
Admiring the star-crossed duo of Jaya and Rasa for “desperately seeking love and belonging regardless of obstacle,” Lisa A. Hazlett affirmed in Voice of Youth Advocates that Patel’s “powerful prose is terse and tense, scrutinizing … situations with gritty honesty.” A Kirkus Reviews writer marveled at how Patel has created a novel “so intense and messy that it may just reflect real life in a way that neither fairy-tale endings nor outright tragedies can.”
With Bloody Seoul Patel ushers readers to Korea, where sixteen-year-old Rocky is the son of a crime boss with the Three Star Pa gang. Admiring his father’s exploits, Rocky runs his own violent high-school gang—though he also appreciates art and opera. Reflecting on the suspicious disappearance of his mother a decade earlier, Rocky finds clues pointing to substance abuse and starts ruing his actions in the present. A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that Patel’s “choppy, terse sentences reflect Rocky’s precarious emotional state and compulsive behavior,” tying in with themes of “redemption, self-discovery, and generational trauma.” A Kirkus Reviews writer remarked that “Rocky’s friendships with his gang members … are the strongest element of his journey” in this “archetypal” redemption tale.
A college freshman with dreams of doctorship takes center stage in Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up. Forming a trio at Stanford with neighbor Jane and model Marisol, Gita is distraught to recognize that men’s sexual attentions invariably alight on them, not her. When she finally ends up with someone who makes her feel desirable, the interaction evolves into assault, with Gita unable to raise her voice. As she strives to assert herself but keeps ending up victimized, Gita reaches back toward memories of a favored aunt who suddenly returned to India—and the uncle and other man who wrought psychological sabotage through abuse.
Asked by Elise Dumpleton about the inspiration for Gita’s life trajectory, Patel replied that it came from her own college experiences. She forthrightly explained: “Back then, I had no language to conceptualize or describe what was done to me. I had no idea that chronic childhood abuse and emotional invalidation caused damage to the developing structures and functions of my brain, resulting in hardwired neuronal stress adaptations and living in a chronic ‘survivor mode.’ I had no idea that in that survivor mode, I had no free will in situations and relationships that resembled my past adverse situations and abusive relationships. I had no idea that the brain adaptations manifested as the ‘double life/double self’ I was living.” Patel concluded, “In writing Gita, I wanted to expose those things.”
In view of the harm Gita endures, a Publishers Weekly reviewer appreciated how “bright spots in the form of her kindhearted older brother and supportive gay peer help to carry the burden.” A Kirkus Reviews writer commended the “thoughtfulness and humor” that mark Gita’s narration, and which make her doubts and self-loathing all the harder to bear. Appreciating how a “sense of dread builds until an explosive, cathartic confrontation occurs,” the reviewer praised Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up as “funny, messy, gut-wrenching; a tough read that’s worth the discomfort.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 2016, Sarah Hunter, review of Rani Patel in Full Effect, p. 109.
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2017, review of Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story; May 1, 2019, review of Bloody Seoul; July 1, 2024, review of Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up.
Publishers Weekly, May 27, 2019, review of Bloody Seoul, p. 94; July 8, 2024, review of Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up, p. 176.
Voice of Youth Advocates, October, 2016, Elisabeth W. Rauch, review of Rani Patel in Full Effect, p. 66; December, 2017, Lisa A. Hazlett, review of Jaya and Rasa, p. 60.
ONLINE
Nerd Daily, https://thenerddaily.com/ (September 10, 2024), Elise Dumpleton, author Q&A.
Publishers Weekly, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (October 13, 2016), Sally Lodge, author Q&A.
Rich in Color, http://richincolor.com/ (August 15, 2017), Sonia Patel, “Keep It Real or You Might Die.”
Sonia Patel website, https://soniapatel.net (February 3, 2025).
YA Books Central, https://www.yabookscentral.com/ (September 9, 2024), Cherokee Crum, “Author Chat with Sonia Patel.”
Sonia Patel is a first-generation Indian American born in New York and raised in Hawai’i. Her break-out novel, Rani Patel In Full Effect, was a finalist for the William C. Morris Debut Award, a YALSA and Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book, and received four-starred reviews. Her subsequent YA novels Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story and Bloody Seoul both received the In the Margins Book Award. She contributed a short story—Nothing Feels No Pain—to the YA anthology Ab(solutely) Normal: Short Stories That Smash Mental Health Stereotypes. Her fourth YA novel, Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up, will be published Fall 2024 (Penguin/Dial). As a child and adolescent psychiatrist trained at Stanford University and the University of Hawaii, Patel has spent over twenty years providing psychotherapy to youth and their families. She lives in Honolulu with her husband and they have two young adults in college.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sonia Patel is an American psychiatrist and author of young adult novels.
Biography
Patel is a first-generation Indian immigrant.[1]
She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Stanford University and her medical degree from the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.[1]
Patel works in Hawai'i on the islands of Oahu and Molokai. She primarily works with young adults who exhibit "emotional issues with behavioral manifestations, gender and/or sexuality issues, abuse of all types, and/or family conflicts, to improve their self-worth, relationships, decision-making, and moods."[1] She also works with families to "resolve complicated family systems issues."[1]
She lives on the Hawaiian island of Oahu with her spouse, two children, and dog.[1]
Publications
Rani Patel in Full Effect, published October 11, 2016 by Cinco Puntos Press
Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story, published September 12, 2017 by Cinco Puntos Press
Bloody Seoul, published July 2, 2019 by Cinco Puntos Press
Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up, expected to be published in 2023 by Penguin/Nancy Paulsen Books
Ab(solutely) Normal, edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter and Rocky Callen, expected to be published in 2023 by Candlewick Press
Awards and honors
Year Title Award/Honor Result Cite
2017 Rani Patel in Full Effect YALSA's Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults Top 10 [2]
William C. Morris YA Debut Award Nominee [3]
American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer List Selection [4][5]
Texas Library Association Top 10 Teen Books Top 10 [6]
2016 BookExpo America Editor's Buzz Selection [7]
Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Books Selection [8]
New York Public Library 50 Best Teen Books Selection [9]
BookPage Best Teen Book of 2016 Top 10 [10]
Multnomah County Library Best Books of 2016 Selection [11]
Volumes Bookcafe Staff's Best 20 of 2016 Top 20 [12]
Sonia Patel
Author
website
Represented by Victoria Wells Arms
Sonia Patel, represented by Victoria Wells Arms, writes out of her experience as a first-generation Indian-American born in New York and raised in Hawaii, an experience lushly and brilliantly explored in her debut novel, Rani Patel in Full Effect. Rani was a finalist for the Morris Award, received four-starred reviews from trade magazines, and was listed on YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults and Kirkus Reviews’ Best Teen Books of 2016. Her subsequent YA novels, Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story and Bloody Seoul, both received the In the Margins Book Award. She was a jury member for the renowned 2021 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist trained at Stanford University and the University of Hawaii, Patel has spent over fifteen years providing individual and family psychotherapy to children, adolescents, and their families. She lives in Honolulu with her husband, two teens, and dog.
Q & A with Sonia Patel
By Sally Lodge | Oct 13, 2016
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In Rani Patel in Full Effect, out this month from Cinco Puntos Press, debut YA novelist Sonia Patel introduces a teenager living in Hawaii with her Gujarati Indian immigrant parents, struggling to find her identity and discover where she belongs. Sexually abused by her father and feeling isolated from her introverted mother, Rani takes solace in writing rap songs and performing in the early 1990s underground hip-hop milieu, where she makes risky choices that, ultimately, enable her to uncover her strengths and reconnect with her mother. The author, a psychiatrist of Gujarati descent who lives and practices in Hawaii and is an accomplished writer of rap verse, spoke with PW about creating the character of Rani – whose identical surname is hardly a coincidence – and relaying her story.
The autobiographical strains of your novel sound loud and clear. What led you to share some gritty pieces of your life with teen readers?
In my role as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, I do not reveal my personal life to my patients. I make occasional exceptions if I think divulging bits of my experiences will be therapeutic for the patient. There are many times I want to interrupt my teen patients and blurt, “Hey, listen, I’ve been there, done that. Don’t waste your time making those kinds of mistakes. Don’t learn the hard way like I did! Listen to me!” Of course, that’s not how psychotherapy works, and it’s rarely useful to lecture. Over the years, I got to reflecting on what additional tools I might use in therapy to help guide teens away from destructive behaviors. I kept coming back to self-disclosure. It just seemed logical that my patients and their families would be more likely to consider making behavior changes if they knew I’d practiced what we were discussing.
Why is fiction an effective medium for communicating that message?
One day in the fall of 2014, when I was working on a new rap, I took a break and skimmed over the binder of rap I’d written over the years. I read it in a certain order, and to my surprise, that order told a story of a girl overcoming adversity. Aha! It hit me. The story could be a blend of struggles and triumphs – mine, those of some of my patients, and my imagination. This type of mix would hopefully produce a troubled but relatable protagonist. By writing a realistic YA novel, I was confident I could help teens in a way that, for some of them, might be more powerful than psychotherapy.
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Did the key role that hip hop and rap played in your teenage life inspire its importance to Rani?
It was never really a decision to incorporate hip hop and rap into Rani’s story. Rather, her story was born out of the rap I’d written over the years. I’d been hooked to hip hop – especially rap – since I was 11, from the first time I heard Run DMC rap to a dope beat on my boom box. Later in my teens, I put my pen to my pad and words flowed into rhymes. The rhymes gelled into rap. The rap expressed my hurt, frustration, and rebellion against my family’s dysfunction. My father’s manipulative, controlling, and abusive actions isolated my mother and me, not only from our Gujarati Indian culture but also from American culture.
So listening to and writing in this musical genre reduced your sense of isolation?
The bottom line was that, though my genetic ancestry is Gujarati Indian, I’ve never felt Gujarati Indian enough. Though I am the first person in my immigrant family to be born in America, I’ve never felt American enough. And though I was raised on the island of Moloka’i, I’ve never felt Hawaiian enough. I picked up positive bits and pieces of my surrounding cultures – Gujarati Indian, Native Hawaiian, and American – but these positives couldn’t balance out the worthlessness I increasingly felt as my father rejected my mother and made me into his intimate companion. Fortunately, hip hop threw me a lifeline – the music soothed my soul, and rap gave me a voice for my feelings of inadequacy and rage. All the things hip hop gifted me with kept me afloat while my family’s ship capsized – like it did for Rani. Hip hop saved her life, yo! And mine, too.
Fast-forwarding to your adult life, how did your experience working with teenagers in your psychiatric practice help shape Rani Patel in Full Effect?
My experiences treating teens from all walks of life definitely fueled the novel and offered a helpful counterpart to my personal experiences. Each teen I’ve treated has his or her own story and challenges. The insight they gain from therapy helps them change their behavior and tolerate a spectrum of thoughts and feelings until their self-worth improves. I try to instill them with the desire to keep striving to overcome and thrive. Through my YA fiction, I hope I can impact more teens than in my office alone. I’m looking to entertain, but also to inspire, to help, and to guide. Rani doesn’t get it right away, and that’s why her story is a realistic response to trauma. Rani repeats old, bad behaviors for a long time – that’s all she knows.
So you’re hopeful that Rani’s circuitous path to recovery will encourage readers dealing with trauma to persevere on their own healing journeys?
It’s one thing for me in my capacity as a psychiatrist to discuss not giving up with my teen patients. It’s another, maybe more potent, thing for them to think about the real, relatable experiences of another person. And perhaps it’s even more compelling for them to read a YA novel about a young protagonist whose world they can climb into and live in for a while. Perhaps in this vicarious manner they can gain empathy for their own situation and be inspired to keep trying to make positive change.
Was it difficult, or cathartic, to revisit painful parts of your past to relay Rani’s story?
It was both – and also therapeutic. “Physician heal thyself” most certainly applied when writing Rani’s story. I never had a psychiatrist growing up, when I was in the thick of my family turmoil. Deep down, I knew there was a problem, but I buried all my feelings because no one else seemed to think there was anything wrong. I figured it was just the way things were, and that I was way better off than kids who were starving or being beaten or growing up in war-torn countries.
It was only in the process of writing Rani’s story that I found true healing. However, I also found grief – the grief I’d avoided my entire life. Grief about the reality of my family’s problems and the long-term consequences my mother and I suffered. Grief about the terribly hurtful choices I’d made. Ultimately, through the process of writing Rani’s story, I gained tremendous insight into my past and how it connects to my present. I’ve solidified my identity, self-worth, and ability to make good interpersonal decisions – something I’ve been encouraging my patients to strive for all along.
Your novel was selected as a YA Editors’ Buzz book at BEA, and has received multiple starred reviews. As a first-time novelist, this enthusiastic reception must be very gratifying.
Yes – it’s been such an honor! I am new to the YA world and feel grateful for this buzz. I consider myself an outlier in terms of authors, because my focus is on emotional and interpersonal realism as opposed to shock value, world building, or epic storytelling. So while Rani Patel in Full Effect may not make the New York Times bestseller list, I am already well on my way to achieving my goals as an author – to help and inspire teens.
What is next up for you as a novelist? Any chance you will continue Rani’s story in a sequel?
I often fantasize about writing a sequel with Rani in college in New York City. I’ve imagined her there kicking up her rap skills, and developing a strong network of female friends. Maybe someday I’ll get to that. Currently, though, I’m working on a tragic teen love story set on Oahu – a trans Gujarati boy and a girl from Hauula meet by chance. And though their lives are filled with chaos of all kinds, their love grows. They start to solidify their true identities, but then... you’ll have to wait and see!
Rani Patel in Full Effect by Sonia Patel. Cinco Puntos, $16.95 Oct. 978-1-941026-49-6; trade paper, $11.95 ISBN 978-1-941026-50-2
Guest Post: Sonia Patel
Posted on15 August, 2017AuthorCrystal
Please welcome Sonia Patel to Rich in Color today. Her newest book, Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story, will be available next month. We really enjoyed Rani Patel in Full Effect, her debut last year, and are looking forward to this new release.
KEEP IT REAL OR YOU MIGHT DIE.
Keep it real or you might die. Sound extreme? Let me explain this short but profound sentence I often use to help struggling teens in my child and adolescent psychiatry practice. I’ll start by breaking it down into two parts.
Keep it real = Determine your true thoughts and feelings in the moment and speak up for yourself in all honesty.
Or you might die = If you stay quiet and believe the negative automatic thoughts, feelings, and risky impulses that your mind is tricking you with then you might be more likely to go through with the risky impulses (suicide attempts, accidental excessive drug/alcohol use, unprotected sex, etc.) because there doesn’t seem to be any other way out of the intolerable swirl of chaos in your mind.
Obvious? Not to everyone, especially not to vulnerable teens. These are the pained teens—from all walks of life—I have the honor of treating. These are the teens who have a genetic predisposition to an emotional illness (such as depression or anxiety), have lived through trauma, or have dysfunctional family systems—or all three. These teens are more likely to remain silent about the unwanted, false, automatic negative thoughts, feelings, and impulses that plague them. For different reasons, these teens aren’t taught to speak up about, tolerate, or cope with all the negativity. This silent suffering becomes their invisible “teacher” and they learn to act out on their self-destructive impulses. Soon the only way they know how to minimize emotional distress is to act out with dangerous behaviors. It may become hardwired into their brains.
I value meaningful talk therapy as the foundation of my psychiatric treatment to teens. It is my goal to educate them on positive ways to maneuver through life. Over the course of weeks, months, or years we work together to discover how they can become self-aware, how they can say exactly what’s on their mind in any given situation, and how they can ride out the extremes of their negative thoughts, feelings, and impulses.
How they can keep it real so the don’t die.
I strive to be their keep it real coach. There is no better reward than to watch these teens learn to find their voices and be assertive. They become keep it real experts.
I also aim to be a keep it real author. I want to bring this powerful message to as many teens as I can. That is why I write YA novels the way I do—boiled down and raw.
In my office, teens who confide in me don’t speak in perfect prose when they share their innermost thoughts, feelings, impulses, and secrets. They might stumble on their words. They might not be able to find the right words. They might get straight to the point. They might ramble. They might swear. They might cry. They might scream. They might do a combination of all of that. So why would I write their stories in a pretty, elegant way? This is not to say these teens are not intelligent. They are. Some of them read at college level, take A.P. classes, and study hard. They know many big, fancy, SAT words. Those that don’t pursue academics to their full potential are still smart. But what I’ve found is that in the privacy of my office most teens prefer to talk in an informal manner rather than with refined formality. They choose to speak with their broken hearts.
It is with all this in mind that I wrote Rani Patel In Full Effect and the forthcoming Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story. I am excited for the world to meet Jaya and Rasa. They are blends of real patients I’ve had the privilege of treating (I must confess that there are also bits and pieces of me in Jaya!).
The way I write how Jaya experiences things in his life—such as private school, wealth, elitism, modern day Native Hawaiian oppression, lack of acceptance of his gender by his Gujarati Indian parents, bullying by his classmates, depression, self-blame for his parents’ fights, low self-worth, and the unconscious recreation of his parents’ relationships with Rasa—is how many of my patients describe their similar experiences.
The way I write how Rasa maintains a happy front while likening herself to a strong black widow spider is part of her response to trauma. It’s how she’s managed to survive her challenging circumstances. She’s learned to equate her body and sex as power and control over men who are actually abusing her. Under her black widow exterior is a vulnerable girl who hasn’t been given the chance to develop her self-worth or identity apart from being an object for others. She hasn’t had the luxury of a safe life in which her basic needs are met.
Neither Jaya nor Rasa have been taught or encouraged to become self-aware or speak their minds concerning their true thoughts, feelings, and impulses. So they’ve both stayed in their heads trying to survive their respective hardships. Their patterns of negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors become more and more ingrained as the years pass. That is, until they meet each other. The intense love that develops between them forces them to confront the flaws in their internalized ways of functioning in the world. They realize that they have to keep it real or they might die.
Check me out online!
Website: soniapatel.net
Instagram & Twitter: soniapatel808
Facebook: SoniaPatelAuthor
Author Chat with Sonia Patel (GITA DESAI IS NOT HERE TO SHUT UP), Plus Giveaway~ US ONLY!
September 9, 2024No Comments
Written by Cherokee Crum, Staff Reviewer
Posted in Authors, Giveaways, Interviews, News & Updates
Today we are very excited to share an interview with author Sonia Patel!
Read on to learn more about the author, the book, and a giveaway!
Meet the Author: Sonia Patel
Sonia Patel writes out of her experience as a first-generation Indian American born in New York and raised in Hawaii, an experience lushly and brilliantly explored in her debut novel, Rani Patel in Full Effect. Rani received four starred reviews and was a Morris Award finalist and a YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults and Kirkus Reviews’ Best Teen Books selection. Her subsequent young adult novels, Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story and Bloody Seoul, both received the In the Margins Book Award. Her short story, “Nothing Feels No Pain,” appears in the YA anthology Ab(solutely) Normal. As a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist trained at Stanford University and the University of Hawaii, Patel has spent over twenty years providing individual and family psychotherapy to children, adolescents, and their families. She lives in Honolulu with her husband, and they have two adult children in college.
Website * Instagram
About the Book: GITA DESAI IS NOT HERE TO SHUT UP
From Morris Award finalist Sonia Patel comes a sharply written YA about a girl grappling with a dark, painful secret from her past, perfect for fans of All My Rage and The Way I Used to Be.
It’s eighteen-year-old Gita Desai’s first year at Stanford, and the fact that she’s here and not already married off by her traditional Gujarati parents is a miracle. She’s determined to death-grip her good-girl, model student rep all the way to med school, which means no social life or standing out in any way. Should be easy: If there’s one thing she’s learned from her family, it’s how to chup-re—to “shut up,” fade into the background. But when childhood memories of her aunt’s desertion and her then-uncle’s best friend resurface, Gita ends up ditching the books night after night in favor of partying and hooking up with strangers. Still, nothing can stop the little voice growing louder and louder inside her that says something is wrong. . . . And the only way she can burst forward is to stop shutting up about the past.
Purchase * Goodreads
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
GITA was inspired by my own experiences in college and the experiences of teen girls and new adult women I’ve treated in my psychiatric practice, in terms of addressing toxic hookup culture, boundary-setting, and the long-term fallout of chronic childhood incest/sexual abuse (as opposed to circumscribed sexual abuse).
YABC: Who is your favorite character in the book?
Gita! She’s funny, hardworking, loves her brother and friends, and her path to turning her poor decisions into healthy ones is realistic in being excruciating and frustrating.
YABC: What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?
I’m most proud of the hookup scenes that uber-realistically show Gita’s textbook mute language of chronic childhood sexual abuse—her inability to set boundaries with men who treat her as a sexual object.
YABC: What came first, the concept, landscape, characters, or something else?
The concept! I wanted to write the book I needed as a teen!
YABC: If you could only write one genre for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
Definitely realistic YA! Validation of real life adversity, struggle, and dysfunction is the first step to agency and empowerment, and sometimes a realistic book might be the only validation a young person has!
YABC: How do you keep your ‘voice’ true to the age category you are writing within?
I’ve spent over twenty years listening to, speaking with, and guiding young and new adult patients, so this realistic YA voice of flaws, struggle, and resilience comes easily to me. That and I always try to channel my younger self when I’m writing.
YABC: What can readers expect to find in your books?
Emotional pain, humor, and slow and imperfect self-reflection and growth.
YABC: What is your favorite snack when writing?
Roasted and salted pistachios or cashews!
YABC: If you were able to meet them, would you be friends with your main character?
I would love to be friends with Gita, she is flawed, funny, and just beginning to find her strength and voice beyond her unconscious and learned “survivor mode.”
YABC: What’s up next for you?
A realistic YA with a male protagonist, most likely in verse!
YABC: Is there anything that you would like to add?
Thank you for this opportunity to share!
Q&A: Sonia Patel, Author of ‘Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up’
Elise Dumpleton·Writers Corner·September 10, 2024·5 min read
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We chat with author Sonia Patel about Gita Desai is Not Here to Shut Up, which is a sharply written YA about a girl grappling with a dark, painful secret from her past, perfect for fans of All My Rage and The Way I Used to Be.
Hi, Sonia! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello! Thank you for having me! I’m a psychiatrist and young adult novelist. In both capacities, I seek context and the expression of reality as opposed to labels and sugar coating. All of my young adult novels are based on my own personal experiences and/or those of my teen patients. It’s important to me that I depict inconvenient characters and messy stories because that was my reality and has been the reality for the teens I’ve treated for over two decades.
My parents had an arranged marriage in Gujarat, India and then immigrated to New York where I was born nine months later. I grew up in Connecticut and on Molokai. I attended Stanford for undergrad and the University of Hawaii for medical school. I live on Oahu with my husband and we’re lucky to have two awesome kiddos in college.
In my free time, I love reading, running, hiking, listening to hip hop and trying to keep up with the latest hip hop dance moves, and watching foreign films.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I grew up during the golden age of hip hop and naturally gravitated towards rap. I loved writing rap and poetry. But it wasn’t until I was forty that I began writing stories, and it began out of necessity. I’d hit a rock bottom in my life and I’d assigned myself the homework I often recommended to my patients: journaling. I filled up journal after journal, including poetry and rap. I found that if I put the rap in a certain order, it told a story. My story. That was how my first young adult novel Rani Patel In Full Effect was born. After that, I was hooked.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
The first book you ever remember reading: Nancy Drew
The one that made you want to become an author: Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by: Isabel Quintero
The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Bone People by: Keri Hulme
Your latest novel, Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Secrets, silence, abuse, voice, empowerment
What can readers expect?
Readers can expect a transcription of the silent, biological language of abuse. I’ve tried to take the natural, automatic brain adaptations that occur in response to incest and emotional invalidation and show how those things realistically manifest years later in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, particularly how it leaves someone vulnerable to repeating her role as an object for men. And, as I know personally and from work as a psychiatrist, only when Gita is able to acknowledge and validate her past experiences—which occurred and continued unchecked because of secrets, denial, and enabling as is always the case in this context—can she begin to find agency, empowerment, and positive behavior change.
Where did the inspiration for Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up come from?
The inspiration came from my own experiences in college. Back then, I had no language to conceptualize or describe what was done to me. I had no idea that chronic childhood abuse and emotional invalidation caused damage to the developing structures and functions of a my brain, resulting in hardwired neuronal stress adaptations and living in a chronic “survivor mode.” I had no idea that in that survivor mode, I had no free will in situations and relationships that resembled my past adverse situations and abusive relationships. I had no idea that the brain adaptations manifested as the “double life/double self” I was living.
In writing Gita, I wanted to expose those things. They are things/experiences I also commonly see and hear about from my patients. I wanted to show that young women who think, feel, and behave in a way that isn’t healthy aren’t shameless, bad, or terrible people, instead, they might have been through something and their actions might be an expected response. I wanted to show that behavioral repetition is the silent language of the chronically abused child, something I hadn’t read before in another young adult book.
See also
Shaun Hamill Author Interview
Q&A: Shaun Hamill, Author of ‘A Cosmology of Monsters’
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved writing the moments and interactions between Gita and Sai and Gita and Pinky Auntie. In those loving and accepting relationships, she could be more herself than be in “survivor mode.” And in her relationship with Pinky Auntie, Gita found agency and empowerment and was able to begin the process of confronting her painful past.
This explores an array of topics from the toxicity of college party and hookup culture to PTSD. How did you go about approaching these topics and what do you hope readers may take away from Gita Desai?
I approached these topics as realistically as possible based on my own college experiences and what I’ve witnessed and heard from other women in my life and in my psychiatry practice (and, not all of those women endured incest, there are other experiences that can lead to similar long-term patterns of difficulty with boundary-setting and lingering shame). That type of realism takes away the power of secrets and shame. I hope that vulnerable readers can find emotional validation in how those topics/scenes are addressed and begin to contemplate what might make it difficult for them to set boundaries with others. I hope that those topics/scenes allow all readers to expand their understanding and empathy of young women who grow up confusing sex as validation, and that those women might have other deeper, painful issues that they aren’t yet aware of, or are avoiding.
What’s next for you?
I am working on another young adult novel, this one with a male protagonist who has endured a different kind of adversity in his life. I’m excited at the possibilities of this new project!
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I read some incredible books this year! My favorites so far were: Hurdles in the Dark by Elvira K. Gonzalez, Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi, and A Man of Two Faces by Viet Thanh Nguyen. I can’t wait to get my hands on Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel and Knife by Salman Rushdie.
Will you be picking up Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up? Tell us in the comments below!
Rani Patel in Full Effect. By Sonia Patel. Oct. 2016. 224p. Cinco Puntos, $16.95 (9781941026496); paper, $11.95 (9781941026502); e-book, $11.95 (9781941026519). Gr. 9-12.
As the only Indian girl in her entire Hawaiian town, 16-year-old Rani often feels like an outsider. She finds some comfort and empowerment in rap and slam poetry, and when she learns about an underground hip-hop crew in her town, it seems like she's finally found the perfect respite from her home life, which is marred by her parents', intensely traditional marriage, her father's brazen infidelity, and--worst of all-the lingering trauma of the sexual abuse her father inflicted on Rani for years. That's a lot for her to handle, but when Mark, the older man who runs the hip-hop crew, starts taking a special interest in her, it seems like he's the perfect solution to her problems, despite her friends' warnings. Debut author Patel offers a unique perspective in Rani, whose punchy first-person narrative--peppered with early90s hip-hop references; Hawaiian, Hawaiian Pidgin, and Gujarati phrases; and her own slick rhymes packed with an empowering feminist message--commendably and strikingly stands out in the YA landscape. While Rani's recovery from her trauma is unrealistically speedy and conclusive--something Patel, a psychiatrist, freely admits in her author's note--most teens won't skip a beat, since Rani's voice, oscillating from righteous anger to thrilling pride, swooning crushes, and heartbreaking insecurity, will resonate with many, even those with little to no familiarity with Rani's background. Vivid, bold, and passionate.--Sarah Hunter
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Hunter, Sarah. "Rani Patel in Full Effect." Booklist, vol. 113, no. 1, 1 Sept. 2016, pp. 109+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A463755259/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1eca14a6. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Patel, Sonia. Rani Patel in Full Effect. Cinco Puntos Press, 2016. 224p. $16.95. 978-1941026-49-6.
Rani Patel finds strength in her rhymes, in her flow, in her rap, which she really needs since her father has left and her mother will not even speak to her. The guys around Hawaii do not see her as more than a friend. In her senior year of high school, she is really lonely and missing the attentions of her father now that he has moved on to a girlfriend only a little older than Rani. When Mark, a thirty-one-year-old who regularly visits her workplace, becomes more than friendly, she is thrilled to have male attention again--so thrilled that she ignores the warnings of her friends and the familiar signs of abuse. Her relationships are going bad, but Rani has always dealt with her heartache by writing rap lyrics, so throughout these difficult times, Rani's talent flourishes, earning her a spot in an underground rap group in Moloka'i.
This is a story of a young woman trying to define herself outside of a family molded by repeated emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Rani uses rap to tell her story and often mentions the late '80s hip-hop that is pulling her through her best and worst times. Ultimately, she tells a story of a misguided cultural patriarchy, the difficulty of recognizing and leaving abuse behind, and the importance of finding support and healing with those who need it too.
--Elisabeth W. Rauch.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
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Rauch, Elisabeth W. "Patel, Sonia. Rani Patel in Full Effect." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 39, no. 4, Oct. 2016, p. 66. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A467831114/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ae29d1ff. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Rani Patel In Full Effect
Sonia Patel
Cinco Puntos Press
701 Texas, El Paso, Texas 79901
www.cincopuntos.com
9781941026496, $16.76, HC, 224pp, www.amazon.com
Almost seventeen, Rani Patel appears to be a kick-ass Indian girl breaking cultural norms as a hip-hop performer in full effect. But in truth, she's a nerdy flat-chested nobody who lives with her Gujarati immigrant parents on the remote Hawaiian island of Moloka'i, isolated from her high school peers by the unsettling norms of Indian culture where "husband is God". Her parents' traditionally arranged marriage is a sham. Her dad turns to her for all his needs--even the intimate ones. When Rani catches him two-timing with a woman barely older than herself, she feels like a widow and, like widows in India are often made to do, she shaves off her hair. Her sexy bald head and hard-driving rhyming skills attract the attention of Mark, the hot older customer who frequents her parents' store and is closer in age to her dad than to her. Mark makes the moves on her and Rani goes with it. He leads Rani into 4eva Flowin', an underground hip hop crew--and into other things she's never done. Rani ignores the red flags. Her naive choices look like they will undo her but ultimately give her the chance to discover her strengths and restore the things she thought she'd lost, including her mother. "Rani Patel In Full Effect" by child and adolescent psychiatrist Sonia Patel is an extraordinary and deftly crafted novel that will have particular and special appeal to young readers ages 12 to 18. While very highly recommended, especially for high school and community library YA Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Rani Patel In Full Effect" is also available in a paperback edition (9781941026502, $11.95) and a Kindle format ($7.44).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/cbw/index.htm
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"Rani Patel In Full Effect." Children's Bookwatch, Dec. 2016. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A475325134/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=098c5014. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Patel, Sonia JAYA AND RASA Cinco Puntos (Children's Fiction) $16.95 9, 12 ISBN: 978-1-941026-86-1
Rasa and Jaya live totally different lives in Hawaii, each struggling to find themselves when they find each other. Teenage Rasa supports herself and her younger siblings by doing the sex work she was groomed to do by her mother. When they are abandoned, Rasa is put into a separate foster home from her siblings. A sense of stability begins to take hold in her until her carers sell her to a sadistic, wealthy pimp who terrorizes and gaslights her until her identity is obliterated. Meanwhile, Jaya lives a life of privilege in a wealthy Gujarati family, but their picture-perfect life is a lie he detests. His father cheats on his mother, they both drink excessively, and they pressure Jaya to be the ideal daughter. Jaya knows he's trans but isn't sure how to tell them that he's a boy and is never going to marry a wealthy man. One day, Jaya sees Rasa picking liliko'I fruit and is sure he's seen a goddess. A budding romance turns dark as Jaya's paranoia about Rasa's caginess and dishonesty comes to a head and they learn the truth about each other. Readers may find it difficult to reconcile how they feel about Jaya toward the end after rooting for him the whole way through, as there's some unanswered abuse in his reaction to finding out who Rasa really is. Nevertheless, Patel has written a book so intense and messy that it may just reflect real life in a way that neither fairy-tale endings nor outright tragedies can do. (Fiction. 14-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Patel, Sonia: JAYA AND RASA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A502192253/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4ce3d7c3. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Cinco Puntos, September 2017. 224p. $16.95.978-1-941026-86-1.
4Q * 2P * J * S
Jaya is biologically female but identifies as male, with his Hawaiian home only luxurious in appearance. As his traditional Indian parents dramatically fight over his father's infidelity and his mother regularly attempts self-harm, Jaya must remain near to intervene. In between attacks, they bully him to appear more feminine, so Jaya knows only tension and depression. Raya is of mixed ethnicity and poverty-stricken; she raises her siblings for her uninterested, prostitute mother, who forces her into a brutal threesome before vanishing. Foster homes follow, but Rasa's includes Xander, a pimp who assures her absolute compliance through violence and threats. Jaya and Raya meet by chance, their attraction instant and powerful, but as Jayas mother and Xander control their lives, togetherness is frustratingly rare. Eventually, desperation forces their rash, dangerous meeting in which they decide to run toward a future of possibilities.
Jaya and Rasa are first seen as children, with alternate chapters relaying their stories through time. Its powerful prose is terse and tense, scrutinizing Rasa and Jaya's situations with gritty honesty. The novel is packed with additional complicated issues; alcohol and drug abuse, bulimia, infidelity, indigenous peoples, suicide attempts, family issues, and more, with each connected to the characters without overshadowing them. Although Jaya and Rasa's pasts created their current identities, older readers will see the immense commitment needed to break free and move forward. Of course, the central theme is romance; Jaya and Rasa resemble the age-old Romeo and Juliet, desperately seeking love and belonging regardless of obstacle.--Lisa A. Hazlett.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
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Hazlett, Lisa A. "Patel, Sonia. Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 40, no. 5, Dec. 2017, p. 60. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A522759429/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=54fe950a. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story
Sonia Patel
Cinco Puntos Press
701 Texas, El Paso, Texas 79901
www.cincopuntos.com
9781941026861, $16.95, HC, 224pp, www.amazon.com
Seventeen-year-old Jaya Mehta detests wealth, secrets, and privilege, though he has them all. His family is Indian, originally from Gujarat. Rasa Santos, like many in Hawaii, is of mixed ethnicity. All she has are siblings, three of them, plus a mother who controls men like a black widow spider and leaves her children whenever she wants to. Neither Jaya nor Rasa have ever known real love or close family--not until their chance meeting one sunny day on a mountain in Hau'ula. The unlikely love that blooms between them must survive the stranglehold their respective pasts have on them. Each of their present identities has been shaped by years of extreme family struggles. By the time they cross paths, Jaya is a transgender outsider with depressive tendencies and the stunningly beautiful Rasa thinks sex is her only power until a violent pimp takes over her life. Will their love transcend and pull them forward, or will they remain stuck and separate in the chaos of their pasts? "Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story" is a deftly crafted and consistently entertaining novel that will grasp the readers full attention from beginning to end. While unreservedly and enthusiastically recommended for both highschool and community library YA Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story" is also available in a paperback edition (9781941026878, $11.95). Author Sonia Patel's first YA novel, "Rani Patel in Full Effect" (9781941026502) is also available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions.
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/cbw/index.htm
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"Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story." Children's Bookwatch, Dec. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A522760085/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1a29bbae. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Patel, Sonia BLOODY SEOUL Cinco Puntos (Young Adult Fiction) $17.95 7, 2 ISBN: 978-1-947627-20-8
Sixteen-year-old Rocky is the son of one of Seoul's most powerful crime bosses.
Not yet old enough to join his father's organization, he runs his own high school gang, terrorizing and bullying the kids at school, until he begins to see the truth of who his father really is. Rocky initially longs to join his father in the Three Star Pa gang's glamorous world of power, danger, and luxury, but when he starts to recognize his father's moral bankruptcy, he begins to question all his assumptions. As his eyes open to his father's alcoholism and dark moods, Rocky unearths memories of his loving mother, who disappeared 10 years earlier. He discovers ugly truths about his parents' relationship and his mother's disappearance and starts digging deeper. Patel's (Jaya and Rasa, 2017, etc.) staccato first-person prose, liberally interspersed with flashback scenes and gratuitous similes, creates an emotional distance for readers. Rocky's personal transformation from brutal bully to lovesick teen may also feel a bit too pat to be entirely realistic, exemplified by his 180-degree change of heart toward the Indian-Korean girl he had been tormenting at school. Rocky's friendships with his gang members, who turn out to be the steadying foundation for his new life, are the strongest element of his journey.
Readers who are drawn to the darker side of Korean pop culture will enjoy this archetypal, yet solid, redemption story. (Fiction. 13-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Patel, Sonia: BLOODY SEOUL." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A583840470/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cade4de1. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Bloody Seoul
Sonia Patel. Cinco Puntos, $11.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-947627-21-5
Rocky, 16, the emotionally scarred son of a powerful crime boss in Seoul, comes of age in the shadow of gang violence. Abandoned by but devoted to his substance-abusing mother and increasingly suspicious of his brutal father (rumored to have broken the gang's honor code by torturing competitors excessively), Rocky tries to exert control by bullying and extorting his fellow students. Yet Rocky is full of contradictions--he's a high academic performer who loves Italian opera and ancient art as much as wielding his knife. Troubled by and sometimes on the receiving end of his father's despotic leadership style, Rocky grapples with the hurt he has inflicted and attempts to escape from a history of violence while uncovering his family's painful past. Patel (Jaya and Rasa: A Love Story) presents the sights and sounds of Seoul accurately, though Rocky's inner dialogue is indistinguishable from an American teenager's, making the Korean setting feel superimposed. Secondary characters exist in broad caricature, with personalities and sordid secrets reminiscent of daytime television, and violent scenes portray physical and emotional harm that may be intense for the stated age range. But Patel's choppy, terse sentences reflect Rocky's precarious emotional state and compulsive behavior, which are explored alongside themes of redemption, self-discovery, and generational trauma. Ages 12--up. (July)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
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"Bloody Seoul." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 21, 27 May 2019, p. 94. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A587975315/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=57d62234. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Patel, Sonia GITA DESAI IS NOT HERE TO SHUT UP Dial Books (Teen None) $19.99 9, 10 ISBN: 9780593463185
In 1992, Stanford freshman Gita Desai dreams of becoming a doctor.
Gita is motivated in part by the encouragement of Pinky Auntie, her father's sister who lived with Gita's family for a few years before abruptly returning to India when Gita was 9. Pinky's disappearance haunts Gita, as do unsettling memories involving Neil, Pinky's husband, and Neil's friend Bhavin. At college, Gita meets fellow freshmen Jane West and Marisol Walter, and they immediately form a trio. Gita, whose family is Gujarati, cherishes these new friendships but is exasperated by the endless attention that her two charming, beautiful friends receive from men--attention that never extends to her. Gita's realization that she longs to be desirable coincides with her first sexual encounter, which turns into assault. She blames herself and tells herself she must "work hard and fix it," but subsequent sexual encounters end similarly, with Gita unable to vocalize her refusal and dissociating. As Gita's self-shaming intensifies, so does the return of disjointed childhood memories--until she arrives at an awful truth. The sense of dread builds until an explosive, cathartic confrontation occurs. Patel, whose own experiences inform this story, infuses Gita's first-person narration with thoughtfulness and humor that make her growing confusion and self-loathing cut deeply. Thankfully, Gita's friends are there to support her when she finally finds her voice.
Funny, messy, gut-wrenching; a tough read that's worth the discomfort. (author's note, resources) (Fiction. 15-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Patel, Sonia: GITA DESAI IS NOT HERE TO SHUT UP." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799332884/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=74652774. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.
Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up
Sonia Patel. Dial, $19.99 (400p) ISBN 978-0-5934-6318-5
Informed by personal experience, as addressed in an endnote, this searing 1992-set novel by Patel (Bloody Seoul) explores the ways that prolonged abuse can shape behavior. Though her Gujarati-Indian immigrant parents would rather she get married than attend university, premed student Gita Desai is excited to start her freshman year at Stanford, where she plans to keep her head down and her grades up. But Gita doesn't expect to befriend and attend frat parties with her across-the-hall neighbor Jane or beautiful model Marisol. Yet even as she immerses herself in college life, she's distracted by memories of her and her beloved auntie, and of the man who abused them both. Gita's family has always said "chup-re" (Gujarati for "be quiet") when she tried to talk about difficult topics; now, she lacks the tools to make sense of her desires and struggles to speak up for herself in intimate situations. While Gita's journey toward finding her own voice is plagued by male characters who--both intentionally and unconsciously--cause her physical and mental harm, bright spots in the form of her kindhearted older brother and supportive gay peer help to carry the burden. Ages 14-up. Agent: Victoria Wells Arms, HG Literary. (Sept.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
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"Gita Desai Is Not Here to Shut Up." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 26, 8 July 2024, p. 176. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A801800292/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f3ad0ada. Accessed 10 Nov. 2024.